In the early 1970s, construction workers in Australia launched a wave of militant direct action,

winning better paying conditions, then began pursuing social goals, for better housing, for working-class and Aboriginal people,

for women's and LGBT rights, and in defence of the natural environment.

In just a few years, they held up billions of dollars of harmful development.

This is working class history.

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To late 1960s were a time of intense social upheaval and class struggle around the world. From anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia to mass strikes in France, to urban

revolts in the US, to riots in Japan and to the hot autumn in Italy. Workers, women, people

of colour, colonised and Indigenous peoples and LGBT plus people were

all fighting to advance their collective self-interests.

One place where many of these struggles coincided was Australia, primarily in New South Wales,

where construction workers decided to organise themselves and fight, not just for better

wages and working conditions, but for a different

type of society, one based not purely on profit, but on human needs, where we live in harmony

with the earth.

The tool they devised to do this was the green ban, essentially a refusal to undertake

work which was environmentally or socially destructive.

On a personal level, I first became interested in possibilities of social change as a kid because

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