The NSW Builders Labourers Federation and Aboriginal rights activism in the 1960s

ABOUT

The NSW Builders Laborers Federation played a central in the fight against the racist Aborigines Protection Act and in broader struggles for self-determination and land rights in 1960s. Strong and effective anti-racist action by the BLF was led by socialist construction workers who gained leadership of the union in 1961, including growing number of Koori members, who had recently migrated to Sydney from rural reserve communities. This presentation will explore both key moments in the struggle and the anti-racist ideas that animated these union activits, including a rejection of “White Australia” nationalism and support for global struggles against colonialism and war.

PRESENTER

Padraic Gibson is a post-doctoral fellow at the Jumbunna Institute, University of Technology Sydney. He is an historian focussed on social movements, particularly the Australian labour movement and struggles for Aboriginal rights. Padraic is an active socialist and co-editor of the Solidarity magazine.

Image credit: NSW Builders Laborers Federation (1963). The Aboriginal Worker. Communist Party of Australia archives, State Library of NSW.

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THE SERIES

Settler Nationalism and its Discontents

In 2025, the Critical Public Conversations (CPC) series we will explore the fragility, incoherence and contradictions of contemporary settler-colonial nationalisms. We seek to understand the associated politics of race, sex/gender and identity, to analyse the connections between settler colonialism, settler nationalism, and neoliberalism.

Across the series, CPC25 will track the violence of settler nationalism within and beyond so-called Australia. This is a critical juncture. Neoliberalism is dead, but the new is not emerging. The climate catastrophes of colonialism and capitalism loom. Old imperial alliances are revived; new reactionary ones emerge. The nation and its borders are obsessively reasserted.

Sovereign Indigenous people have always been on the frontline of resisting the violence of settler nationalism. CPC25 will foreground trans/national solidarities against settler trans/nationalism, making space to explore resurgent projects of Indigenous Nation-building alongside other possibilities for living otherwise. The series will diagnose the disorders of ‘the nation’ in its present moment. In highlighting the empty, incoherent and contradictory nature of settler colonial nationalism, the series seeks to contribute to its unravelling.