Australian Renters Are Organizing To Fight Evictions, Just Like They Did in the 1930s
In the wake of the pandemic, Australian renters are once again facing the threat of mass evictions. The militant renters’ struggles of the Great Depression are an excellent model for the movement that’s taking shape today.
The Renters and Housing Union (RAHU) was first conceived of during a national rent strike staged in 2020. The fiercest battle for RAHU may come in March next year, when the final cuts to the JobSeeker and JobKeeper income subsidies hit, and when most eviction moratoriums expire. (RAHU / Facebook)
In June 1931, a Sydney hospital admitted a seven-year-old boy with a severely injured toe. When asked how he’d acquired the injury, the boy told doctors that another child had thrown a brick at him during a game. “We was playin’ evictions and I was a policeman,” he said, pointing to another small boy, “and he was a communist.”
The boys’ game was inspired by a real battle they had witnessed ten days earlier. It was one of many anti-eviction actions organized by the Unemployed Workers Movement (UWM) across Sydney to resist a wave of homelessness triggered by the Great Depression.
Unemployed and on The Street
During the early 1930s, in working-class areas of Sydney and Melbourne, unemployment peaked at more than 30 percent. Because welfare recipients were paid in goods or coupons, rather than money, and few owned homes of their own, the result was a wave of evictions. In poor suburbs, it was common to see bailiffs (today called sheriff’s officers) dumping furniture — and families — onto the road.
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