Lyr Add: Siege of Union Street (Alistair Hulett)

Subject: Lyr Add: SIEGE OF UNION STREET (Alistair Hulett)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 20 Feb 09 - 10:54 AM

THE SIEGE OF UNION STREET (words & music by Alistair Hulett) words taken from 'The Cold Grey Light of Dawn' by Alistair Hulett & Dave Swarbrick
Musikfolk Ltd, 1997.

The Unemployed Workers Union was formed in Melbourne during the Great Depression to fight evictions by heartless landlords of destitute families for non-payment of rent. A Sydney branch soon followed and the UWU drew thousands into it's ranks. Matters came to a head in Union Street in the inner city suburb of Erskinville in Sydney, when over a thousand militants fought a pitched battle with police that lasted several days. The tenants were a 'war widow' and her children, so emotions were running high and the struggle received much media coverage
The Communist Party was deeply committed to supporting the UWU and the police had assistance from the covert right wing paramilitary group identified by D.H. Lawrence in his novel "Kangaroo." Casualties on both sides were high but the issue was finally resolved when the Labor State Premier, Jack Lang, introduced legislation to protect the unemployed from being thrown out of their homes. Jim Munroe, a founding member of the UWU is the source of the material on which much of this song is based.


You should have seen us down at Erko
Fourteenth August, Saturday night
To Newtown, Stanmore, Enmore and Petersham
Calls went out 'Workers unite!'
We built a bloody great wall
With planks and boards full seven foot tall
We didn't mind the howling wind and sleet
When we stood around the fire at Union Street

The man from the shop said put it on tick
The kids came round with bottles and bricks
There was Irish stew and home-made lemonade
They were grand old days on the barricade

I never thought I would join a party
Carry a card or see things red
The sight of bare foot children crying
Out on the pavement turned my head
There old man's over in France
Flapping like a rag on a barbed wire fence
Their Mum does what she can to make ends meet
And she's down at the siege of Union Street

The cops came down and they came down hard
They must have numbered five hundred strong
They called us reds and they cracked our heads
To teach us poor sinners right from wrong
I learned a lesson that night
It's all out war when you stand and fight
I saw those brisk young coppers on their beat
Behave like thugs in Union Street

Sunshine danced on the broken glass
It shone like diamonds as morning broke
The cops were back by the railroad track
And the streets were filled with working folk
They'd bashed us bloody and raw
But it forced Jack Lang to change the law
Now the landlords have to cop it sweet
And the Red Flag flies over Union Street

The man from the shop gave out licorice sticks
To the kids who cleaned up the bottles and bricks
Down the years those memories never fade
Of the grand old days on the barricade

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Seige of Union Street (Alistair Hulett)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 21 Feb 09 - 04:39 PM

Alistair Hulett has generously made available an mp3 file of the entire song THE SIEGE OF UNION STREET on his web site. (Click here to play.)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Seige of Union Street (Alistair Hulett)
From: freda underhill
Date: 29 Jan 10 - 05:32 PM

I used to live in that street, and it was full of council tenants and single parents. it's great to hear the ong again, thanks Sandra and Jim.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Seige of Union Street (Alistair Hulett)
From: GeoffLawes
Date: 22 Jul 22 - 05:42 AM

Here is a link to a paper called “The Eviction at Newtown 19 June 1931” by John Hood. It was posted on the Mudcat thread ANY AUGUST SONGS ? (Date: 21 Jul 22 - 10:59 PM) by GerryM. And I think it may be interest to tsome of you who contributed to this thread.
http://jcmhood.squarespace.com/newtown-eviction

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Seige of Union Street (Alistair Hulett)
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 22 Jul 22 - 06:40 AM

thanks, Geoff for that interesting article

Alistair Hulett - Back from Down Under by Mel Howley From The Living Tradition magazine - Issue 34, Sept 1999 ... Twenty-odd years in Australia fostered in Hulett a taste for the "old" Australia, and its politics - and in his song "The Siege Of Union Street" there is a case of direct action from the times of the depression. "Somebody gave me a pamphlet and said that I might like to read it 'cos it was about the street I was living in at the time! I read it and it amazed me. There had been a struggle to prevent the eviction of a war widow and her children, and over a thousand people had fought in the streets for three days against the police and the landlords, and managed in the process to ultimately get the law changed." Alastair was given a copy of a taped conversation with a man by the name of Jim Monroe who had been a founder member of the Unemployed Workers Union, the organisation which had waged the Union Street campaign. "One of the things he said was about the solidarity amongst the people fighting to prevent this unjust eviction - they were grand old days on the barricade! - and I knew that that was the angle I wanted to write from. After that, the song just wrote itself."

video- Alistair Hulett & Dave Swarbrick live at the Trinity Sessions, Adelaide March 31 2007.