Labour History Society Public Meeting – 27 July 2025
“The Community Movement in Bowden, Brompton and Hindmarsh: A People’s History of Organised Community Activism, 1970 – 2000”
The July public meeting will be held at the Box Factory Community Centre at 2.00pm on Sunday 27 July and features a presentation by Lindsay Holmes, Viv Streeter, Wil Heidt, Andrew Derrington & Colin Ball of the Hindmarsh Residents Association Community Archive Group. The presentation will be preceded by a screening of the 1984 film “Give Them A House And They Take A Street”.
In October 1972 Mrs Sara Kitto from the Hindmarsh Parish Pastoral Council wrote to Professor Henderson of the Commonwealth Enquiry into poverty, asking that Hindmarsh be considered in the National Review. $10,000 was allocated to the Hindmarsh Action Group and the Community Movement in Bowden, Brompton and Hindmarsh commenced. Students from Adelaide University’s Social Action/Abschol group surveyed, identified & responded to local needs by establishing programs for specifically targeted social groups. By 1973 a state Department of Community Welfare DCW grant became the ongoing source, employing part time community workers and a coordinator and by decade’s end the Bowden Brompton Community Group (BBCG) was established. It confronted the 1968 Liberal Country League state government’s Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study (MATS plan) - the loss of housing for a transport corridor and a multi-tiered Hindmarsh Interchange reflected a 41% drop in population over 20 years. The BBCG acted as incubator for other groups. Another conservative government idea to place a remand centre in Hindmarsh on Port Road in 1980 accelerated dissent. Activists formed the Hindmarsh Residents Association (HRA) in 1980. They protested demolitions, occupied houses and lobbied governments. In 1981 the Hindmarsh Housing Association (HHA), The Hindmarsh Pughole community newspaper and the Bowden Brompton Community Legal Service (BBCLS) were all based at the Brompton Community Centre at 131 Coglin Street Brompton. The HRA successfully ran candidates in local government elections. In 1983 the state Labour government abandoned the MATS plan and announced a residential redevelopment, attempting to resolve the conflict between residents and industry. Residents formed the Community Planning Group (CPG) in 1984 and utilised environmental design input from the Urban Permaculture Consultants (UPC) into the Alternative Plan. Government’s Supplementary Plans to divide the town into industrial and residential enclaves pleased no one. Into the mid 1980s community activists resisted this compromise, established the Hindmarsh City Farm, built earth dwellings in their cooperatives, protested contaminated lands and defended their community centre and newspaper. Community Archivists have identified five periods to encompass this history: The foundational and early years - Bowden Brompton Community Group, 1972 to 1980; Organised Community – Dissent & Resistance, 1981 to June 1983; Period of Changes, July 1983 to December 1985; Grass Roots Innovations, January 1986 to December 1990; and Neoliberal Reaction, January 1991 to 1995. Resident activists, Lindsay, Wil, Viv, Andrew and Colin will tell the story.
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