The Sydney Push was an intellectual subculture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. Its politics were predominantly left-wing libertarianism. The Push operated in a pub culture and included university students, academics, manual workers, musicians, lawyers, criminals, journalists and public servants. Rejection of conventional morality and authoritarianism was a common bond. Students and staff from Sydney University, mainly the Faculty of Arts, were prominent members. In the 1960s, students and staff from the University of New South Wales also became involved.
The Royal George Hotel in April 2004. It has been renamed the Slip Inn. The Sydney Push met in the "back room", a little above ground floor, at left.
The Lincoln Coffee Lounge, located on Rowe Street, is said to be the birthplace of the "Sydney Push" movement in its early days, just after the war. A popular meeting place for artists & writers, it comprised a mixture of university students, lecturers, bohemians and libertarians.
Sydney Push associates Ian Parker (left) and Bob Gould in a 1960s pavement demonstration outside the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney. Parker died in the late 1970s; Gould, a notable bookseller, died in 2011.
A group of Push associates at a reunion in 2012
Eva Maria Cox is an Austrian-born Australian writer, feminist, sociologist, social commentator and activist. She has been an active advocate for creating a "more civil" society. She was a long-term member of the Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL), and is still pursuing feminist change by putting revaluing social contributions and wellbeing onto political agendas, as well as recognising the common ground between Australia's First Nations and feminist values of the importance of the social.
Eva Cox
