Save Willow Grove
By Giacomo Bianchino
At 5am on Tuesday the 22nd June, more than fifty concerned unionists, community members and communists gathered around the entrance to the Willow Grove heritage site. Covering the main entry points, they blockaded the entrances to stop scab workers for Infrastructure NSW gaining access to the area. As the light broke and morning descended over Western Sydney, a comrade from the CFMEU put things straight: “if anyone touches Willow Grove we will do whatever it takes to defend it.”
So what is the situation at Willow Grove and what is motivating such an impressive display of working-class solidarity? The site is a state-heritage listed manorial estate representative of the high-Victorian era in Sydney architecture. Over the years, it has been both a private villa and a maternity hospital. More importantly, it has become a link for Parramatta residents to a complicated past.
Far be it for radicals to romanticise periods of colonial violence and exploitation. But since the announcement of Willow Grove as the site for the relocation of the Powerhouse Museum to Western Sydney, there has been a “groundswell” of community opposition to the proposal. Of the 1638 public and individual submissions to infrastructure NSW during the development planning period last year, only 27 supported the project. In fact, the Environmental Impact Statement handed down by the government on the 30th of June 2020 was mired in opacity and double-dealing. At the height of pandemic restrictions, the government carried out its consultation virtually, barely satisfying the criteria for public transparency.
“Green Bans, a tool used in the labour struggle in NSW since 1970, mobilise the right to withhold labour from work the movement deems harmful to society at large”
One community group was outraged at this lack of engagement over the issue. The North Parramatta Residents’ Action Group (NPRAG) formed in 2015 to push back against the movement of the powerhouse to Parramatta and the slated destruction of Willow Grove. In 2020, they managed to bring the CFMEU’s Construction branch onboard in a historic Green Ban of work on the site. Green Bans, a tool used in the labour struggle in NSW since 1970, mobilise the right to withhold labour from work the movement deems harmful to society at large. The decision to adopt such a tactic transformed the Willow Grove struggle into a site of labour militancy.
Despite the publicity and community support for the green ban and the general movement, Infrastructure NSW continued with the planning, which was approved by the state government on the 15th of February, 2021. In response, unions stepped up their militancy around the issue. The CFMEU and MUA agreed to move May Day 2021 out to Parramatta; the first time that the event had been held in Western Sydney. The march adopted the “Save Willow Grove” slogan wholesale, and speakers at the event connected the Green Ban to indigenous issues (the site being important for the Dharug community as a traditional ceremonial location and access point for the Parramatta river) and to the struggle for socialism at large. The whole event marked widespread worker support for the movement to save the site.
Meanwhile, NPRAG was preparing for a date in court to attack the laxity of the government’s consultation process. In their submissions to the Land and Environmental Court (LEC) on the 24th of May, they argued that the “environmental assessment on which the approval relies did not comply with legislative requirements.” Not only this, but Infrastructure NSW had failed throughout the process to suggest any other possible locations as alternative sites for the project. In other submissions to Infrastructure NSW, they also pointed out that the development is an attempt to smuggle a new retail and residential facility into Parramatta under the guise of an arts and community precinct. On top of this, the viability of such a large construction project so close to the river posed ecological questions. As the presiding Justice Tim Moore opined, the project was akin to building a house “on sand.”
Despite this, and despite NPRAG winning a “Highly Commended” designation by the State Trust for work on heritage defence, the plea to save Willow Grove was quashed by the LEC on the 16th of June. Instead, Infrastructure NSW provided a “relocation plan” for the building, which would be “deconstructed” and moved to a new site. That site is to be determined by “consultation”; in the meantime, the materials are supposed to be moved to a storage facility. Advisian, the company tasked with putting the plan together, determined that a huge amount of material in the Willow Grove precinct was of “little” significance, and would be demolished.
Justice Moore gave NPRAG 28 days from the 16th to appeal the decision. The NSW minister for Heritage, Don Harwin, assured that building would not take place during that period of time. Despite this, in what NPRAG coordinator Suzette Meade called a “low dog act”, scab workers commissioned by Infrastructure NSW turned up on the 21st of June for what the government called “ancillary works.” When NPRAG found out, the call went out to defend the site. Comrades from the unions and ACP turned up in force, successfully stopping any damage being done. A stakeout took place over the course of the evening, in case “Destruction Don” sent in more scabs. At 5am, CFMEU militants started arriving, and the blockade began in earnest. Meanwhile, an injunction was filed by NPRAG to have Infrastructure NSW respect the appeals period and cease work at the site, which was accepted and upheld by the courts.
It’s not every day that people from across the movements for labour, community and socialism come together in solidarity. That it could be centred on a humble, Italianate villa from the 1870s is all the more staggering. What this shows is that social movements are capable of huge victories when comrades form alliances of principle. This should form a precedent for the construction of a historical ‘bloc’ against developers, capital and the bourgeois state that protects them. The ACP will fight alongside the unions and NPRAG to save Willow Grove until victory. We invite all others to join the struggle.