Tom Uren – Sydney Town Hall Memorial

Combined Trade Union Choirs Sing the Ballad of 1891 in a service devised by Tom Uren

Unions NSW

Vale Tom Uren, long serving ALP Parliamentarian, Prisoner of War under the Japanese, Manager of Woolworths in Lithgow, the first ever Federal Minister for Urban and Regional Development who ensured Woolloomooloo was saved for public housing after the BLF and local residents campaigned against grotesque redevelopment, and a stalwart campaigner and fighter for free speech.

In 1978 Tom Uren joined the fight for the right to protest in Brisbane. Senator George Georges, (ALP QLD) invited Uren to a civil liberties rally. The Bjelke Petersen government had legislated that no more than three people were permitted to march together and could only do that with police permission.

The police of course were refusing permission to groups who opposed uranium mining, damage to the Barrier Reef and supporters of Aboriginal Land Rights for example. The Waterside Workers Federation and the Seamen’s Union supported the rally.

Uren spoke, invoking the words of Martin Luther King: “…there are two types of laws: just and unjust… One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty.” The Wharfies and Seamen, with Uren, Georges and others proceeded down the street and arrests were the consequence. They were arrested numerous times in the following months.

Champion of the left
By Tanya Plibersek

Among the last veterans of World War II to serve in the House of Representatives, Tom's wartime experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese left him not with bitterness, but with an unshakable conviction of the importance of mutual support and collective action - of the strong helping the weak, of the well helping the ill, of those who could bear a heavier burden willingly shouldering that load in the interests of all.

It left him with a deep dedication to the cause of peace and, having witnessed the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, an abiding aversion to nuclear weapons. He was the first Labor MP to question Australia's support for US intervention in Vietnam, in August 1962, and he was a regular and stalwart presence at marches and demonstrations, jailed more than once.

He also never ceased to work in the interests of his fellow veterans - from all wars. One of his proudest moments was just recently when, after a long campaign for a payment to surviving prisoners of war, he received a visit at his home from prime minister Julia Gillard to tell him the payment would go ahead.