REDFERN: The unprepossessing building at 199 Cleveland Street, opposite Prince Alfred Park, is known to many residents as the 40-year home of the innovative theatre company, Performance Space. Prior to this, from 1932 to 1969, the building was the headquarters of the Australian Railways Union (ARU).
The ARU-renovated building, opened at the height of the Great Depression, was named Transport House and regarded a bold expression of a modern union providing a full range of services to its members. These included a hall for the staging of plays and films, meeting rooms and a library which specialised in socialist publications.
A campaign led over the last four years by the Rail, Tram and Bus Union Retired Members Association with support from Performance Space members, other unions, MPs and individuals has resulted in the building being placed on the NSW State Heritage Register as Transport House.
Transport House and the ARU were for many years an integral part of the local community. The largest employer in the Redfern and Darlington districts was the Eveleigh Railway Workshop which employed thousands of workers, the overwhelming majority of whom lived locally. Political and social activities were very much a local affair with ARU and other workshop unions prominent in local social, sporting, political and religious organisations.
The NSW labour movement has played a significant role in preserving the state’s historic buildings, especially through the Jack Mundey-led Green Bans of the late 1960s and 1970s when the Builders Laborer’s Federation challenged the wrecking-ball, pro-developer approach of the then conservative government.
The documentation prepared by the NSW Heritage Council summed up the importance of Transport House to the ARU in the following terms: “[T]he site and its acquisition represented a coming of age for the ARU. It could put behind its years of bitter memories, entrenched resistance to unionism by railway management and conservative governments. Successive deregistration of the union, sacking and imprisonment of union officials, factional infighting, economic depression, a distant and devastating world war, and the catastrophe of the Great Strike of 1917. Through its education program the ARU emboldened workers to challenge management and the status quo … it brought self-realisation and an understanding of rights.”
Transport House had historic associations with several significant political struggles. The ARU Branch Secretary in the 1930s and 1940s, Dr Lloyd Ross, was a central figure in the Movement Against War and Fascism and Transport House was an important centre for the Spanish Relief Committee in the worldwide movement against the rise of fascism in Spain. The leadership of the ARU during this period included communists and socialists.
The ARU sought to educate members about their position in society. The Union established a 28-piece band, football and cricket teams. It was among the first unions in Australia to establish a women’s auxiliary which was active in industrial campaigns for women rail workers. In 1948 the ARU established the first trade union holiday camp in NSW at Sussex Inlet. It was opened by the NSW Labor premier James McGirr and offered rail workers an inexpensive holiday by the sea.
Transport House was associated with numerous campaigns to improve the working lives of rail workers who in many circumstances suffered under appalling working conditions.
This was an era when there was no Occupational Health and Safety legislation.
The building which contained Transport House has had three major phases. It was built in 1874 as a stately Victorian residence for a significant Australian manufacturer and philanthropist.
The second was its reuse and modernisation as union headquarters for the ARU from 1932 to 1969.
The third major phase of the building’s history, from 1980 to 2020, was as a centre of radical and experimental theatre, dance and performing arts. Performance Space was known as a centre for “new form”, “cutting edge” theatre. It was a vital part of Sydney’s cultural life.
