The repressive years

The police resisted proposed reforms to the Traffic Act throughout 1967. On September 5, 1967 a proposed anti-war march was postponed in the hope of gaining a permit, but on September 7 Premier Nicklin announced that although the fee for placards would be removed, the Superintendent of Traffic's unqualified power of veto over permits would remain.

The next day, on Friday, September 8, SDA leaders addressed a mass forum of students and staff at the University of Queensland's St Lucia campus. They asked the forum to vote on a proposal to march without a permit, to insist on their right to march as a matter of civil liberties. In the repressive political climate, they expected a few hundred students might be prepared to participate.

In fact, 5,000 students and staff at the forum voted to march without a permit, after which about 4,000 students and staff, approximately half the campus population, marched 8km from the St Lucia campus up Coronation Drive to Roma Street.

Close to the city they were confronted by hundreds of police who ordered them to disperse, but instead the marchers sat down on the road. Newspaper accounts at the time described police punching, kicking and threatening students and staff as they arrested more than 100 of them.

Forty years to the day it seemed history was repeating itself in Sydney. Once again a protest march of about 4,000 people, designed to be peaceful, still featured draconian behaviour by police, this time with snipers and helicopters overhead as well as arrests and violence on the ground.

Under the dark skies on this day, family activism became serious, and Sydney is still reeling from the shock.