IT WAS 99 YEARS AGO, this week, that the principal elements of the New Zealand Left began arriving in Wellington. At a time of extraordinary social stress, they were gathering in search of unity and a clear way forward. Yes, the trade unions were well represented, but they were by no means the only progressive voices present. The New Zealand Labour Party, which was born 99 years ago, in July 1916, saw itself, rather, as a vehicle for the “democratic public” – that fraction of New Zealand society for whom political participation has always meant more than simply endorsing the decisions of the powerful.
The trade unionists and journalists, clergymen and temperance campaigners who came together that July were both alarmed and appalled at the imminent introduction of military conscription. They saw it as evidence of just how completely the war was swallowing New Zealanders’ civil liberty. The ruthless brutality of Bill Massey’s government; it’s willingness to deploy deadly force against its opponents; was raising doubts about the true purposes of the war.
What, exactly, were so many young men dying to defend? What had become of progressive New Zealand? Of “God’s Own Country”? The relentless din of wartime propaganda made it difficult to remember the 20-year-long Liberal Era of John Ballance and Richard Seddon. Censorship and sedition trials made it difficult – even dangerous – to object to what had taken its place. War mania had rendered rational argument impossible. The “democratic public” of New Zealand felt themselves to be (and, almost certainly, were) a beleaguered minority.
Over the course of the next twelve months much will be written and spoken about the formation of the New Zealand Labour Party. The celebration of the party’s centenary will be used, as all such occasions are, to bolster the authority of those currently in command of both the party and the wider labour movement. Every effort will be made to convince the Labour Party members and trade unionists of today that their present leaders are worthy successors to the men and women of 1916.
That is why it is so important that New Zealand’s left-wing historians spend the next twelve months acquainting today’s progressives with the facts of Labour’s history. They must loudly give the lie to those who attempt to deny the radicalism of Labour’s past; and who argue that moderation and compromise have always been the party’s watchwords. The blatantly political purpose of such historical revisionism is to promote the idea that the extreme timidity and ideological conservatism of today’s Labour Party is nothing out of the ordinary; that Labour has always been timid and conservative.
Nothing is more likely to ensure Labour’s demise than the triumph of this right-wing revisionist account of its history. Labour’s future depends upon how truthfully her struggle on behalf of the “democratic public” is retold. The progressives of today deserve to know how a beleaguered minority, in spite of vicious government persecution and constant media vilification, eventually transformed itself into a radical majority, and how that radical majority changed this country forever – and for the better.
The Czech-born writer, Milan Kundera, wrote that: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. In a curious way, the Labour Party was founded to keep the memory of the Liberal Party’s achievements, and of its vision of an economically just and socially progressive New Zealand, alive. Over the course of the next year the struggle to prevent Labour’s huge contribution to the history of New Zealand from being forgotten, or, worse still, misrepresented, must be waged unceasingly.
If the “democratic public” is ever again to become a radical majority, then the memory of how it fought – and won – the battles of the past needs to be kept alive in the hearts and minds of every progressive New Zealander.
Very true, young fellow. And I certainly look forward to your contributions to this pantheon.
Having an MSM to keep this in front of the populace would be good too, but I don’t think I’ll be holding my breath…
“The New Zealand Labour Party, which was born 99 years ago, in July 1916, saw itself, rather, as a vehicle for the “democratic public” – that fraction of New Zealand society for whom political participation has always meant more than simply endorsing the decisions of the powerful”
Bloody good article Chris,
I appreciate tis very much as I learnt the true beginning of this peoples party’s birth that I was unaware of in all my 70 yrs.’ on this planet.
I do have to think of Labour in simply different way now.
All I remember was when I was about 5-6 yrs.’ old in Pt Chevalier my father was out of work and we went through a turmoil and wound up in Napier and saw Walter Nash come to our Highland games and we all did what dad wanted as we waved flags wildly as he past us in his motorcade like royalty, and dad said he is a good man.
Later about thirty years we were told the real truth that Dad was a card carrying man on the picket line during the 1951 Wharf strike, and he was blacklisted, so now we see why dad had suffered and found it hard to come to terms with that very ugly part in or history.
Labour was a beacon of democracy returning after all those years of turmoil, and we must remember the past where we all came from and those workers who stood up to the oppressors of freedom & democracy.
Thank you for your care for re-erecting the founding principals of the labour party and we hope the modern Labour holds fiercely to these principals our forefathers fought to save for us.
Sorry CleanGreen. I have given up hope in today’s Labour Party! I did have a hope they were coming right but after their stabbing in the back of David Cunniliffe and working against the progressive left in Mana and the Greens the quicker this labour party passes away the better. Let some-one pick up the banner and advance with it.
I hope it is Mana and the Greens
Why the f#ck isn’t Chris leader of the NZ Labour Party? Absolutely spot on article.(In fact they always are) It’s not just something that progressive NZers have to be reminded of. All muddle NZ takes it’s relative comfort way too much for granted. The middle class of today was created by massive wealth re-distribution started by the first Labour government in the 1930’s who (among other things) raised taxes, nationalized several major private business and channeled government revenue into a public health system, a welfare state and a huge house building program. The impact of these changes on a post Great Depression population must have been phenomenal. For us now – we take all of these things for granted and whinge and complain about public services and vote for lower taxes and hope our nice comfy job comes with private health insurance. All this without considering for a moment what it would actually be like to have no public health system or social services. What did a pre-social welfare NZ look like? That’d be interesting to know. That’s what NZ should also be reminded of because they really don’t remember.
Well basically I agree in sentiment .
But for a couple of issues.
One is the way Labour was complicit in tolerating the traitor ‘sir ‘ Roger Douglas and his ‘fish and chips ‘ brigade. And that small ‘sir ‘ is there for a reason, by the way.
Without going into a tirade about neo liberalism I recall also that the public service union sold out the private sector unions when it came to a general strike against the Employment Contracts Act in an article you once wrote.
Traitorous.
And now that neo liberalism is fully entrenched , and that even the media has been affected by the neo liberal virus….such that in essence…..we no longer have freedom of speech by the very act of omission and duplicitous reporting of events….which favours the neo liberal narrative…
We now also have a situation whereby the very party that originally stood up for the lone individual in the workplace …in particular….no longer truly represents those interests.
Seeing it as in the ‘ too hard basket ‘ because of the fragmentation of the workforce into private ‘ contracts ‘ , with its casualisation , detoothed unionism ,…..the breakup and sell off of large state owned enterprises which employed sufficient numbers of workers to form collectives with enough punch to advocate for the individual…
And coupled with the desperation to walk a tightrope between a union base and the big corporate’s …
It tolerates an almost schizophrenic attitude between the two camps…inasmuch as it tolerates to this day the old guard from the mid 1980’s neo liberal originals.
Thusly , because of this , Labour continuously consigns itself to being an impotent shadow of the former ‘ left’ .
The only real way forwards for Labour to return to its former status would be to expel and relegate these neo liberals to where they should rightly belong – either Act or National.
It would need a major purge and a strong ultimatum.
Nothing more , nothing less.
And if you think this cannot be done – hear the words of Norman Kirk when – ‘sir ‘ Roger Douglas wanted to introduce these neo liberal policies back in the 1970’s….
” If you ever mention those policy’s again I will have you removed from the Labour party altogether ”.
If you truly want to see a REAL Labour again….it would take a person of the caliber of Norman Kirk to institute those changes…
Cunliffe was close to it…. but as we know…. he was hamstrung and set up by those very neo liberal elements from within his party – in collusion with a media that all too often has proven themselves to be pro right wing , pro neo liberal , anti union – and willing to work in with National in the sort of dirty politics smear campaigns ,which ,…. incidentally… was ran from the highest office in this country.
That …is what this Labour party is up against ….
Such conditions that never even existed back in the days of Norman Kirk.
The secret perhaps to finding the answer is twofold…analyzing just what was it…that culminated in the formation of the original Labour movement…
What social conditions were prevalent…to which we could say…many of the conditions we have today…
And why…in this age of electronic mass communication …were our forefathers more adept in recognizing the issues and mobilizing into a crystallized movement that became the Labour party?
While we are not…
Was it simply because peoples moral compass was more true ?
Or was it more perhaps that in that era of ideas and experimentation …that ideas being fresh and new – and the lack of a mass ,fast communication link via the internet – encouraged more of a kind of uniform ‘ group think ‘ ?
Is it that the internet has aided in the atomisation of group think ?…a kind of media ‘ clutter ‘ and division of society?
There was not a huge difference between conditions that led up to the Great Depression than there were during 2008 except electronic media..
And the American Laizze Faire model was not that different from the neo liberalism we have now…in fact both have their origins in Hayeks Austrian school of economics…
Perhaps it would be best to backtrack on the methods used decades ago by the original Labour party to see just what they did …in the absence of a ‘ Keynes ‘ riding up and presenting a workable alternative…they still seemed to overcome those right wing conditions imposed on them at that time , and…. emerge triumphant.
Spot on Wild Katipo! Was getting worried that I always agree with what you post but this time I do have something to disagree with! sir with a small sir. I thought the title for Douglas should be Cur not sir.
Keep up the good comments!
That is so damned right. Normal Kirk’s government brought in a truck load of legislation because it was good for the people. Wikipedia lists it all. And it was he who first challenged the French about their nuclear testing. Yet Lange gets the credit. Although he was an amusing, clever chap and a great orator he wasn’t half the politician Kirk was. It was under Lange’s guidance that the Labour party went feral.
Roger was in the Labour Party because of his father Norman who was a great man – well he was when I was 6 and he spent more time with the kids showing them how he lit matches with only one arm. I do not see how anyone in their right mind would think that Cunnliffe was a successor to the Labour of Micky Savage or Norm Kirk. He was destroyed by his own ego as much as by the right. Labour does have a past both good and bad but it needs to own it properly.
You said it Lucy!
On that same basis, what do you think of his replacement? 😉
Well said Lucy. Any one can contribute to the Labour Centenial celebration, all they have to do is join the Party. And that’s not a pun. Pay your sub and you get to decide how it should be celebrated. A Somewhat democratic process, I would have thought.
I have 4 question for any political party:
1. Is New Zealand still a colony?
2. If I turn my attention across the ditch: how can Australia be a free, independent and sovereign nation state if Australia’s Federal and State Parliaments can’t pass laws without the vice-regal signature of an unelected Governor-General or State Governors, all of whom are appointed by a Queen, herself appointed by the Parliament at Westminster.
3. Is New Zealand owned by The City of London, itself a corporation?
4. Would it be unreasonable to assume that irrespective of which party is in power, he who holds the purse strings controls the nation?
(For anyone’s who’s interested: National Debt 2008 …. 10 billion
National Debt today…. 98 billion +
I agree: the Labour Party of 2015 bears little resemblance to that of 1916. Before dismissing the current caucus as a bunch of careerist apparatchiks, however, I think it is worth considering whether they behave the way they do because the grassroots of the Labour movement have withered and died. To put it another way: is the modern NZLP top-driven and hierarchical, or does it actually reflect the politically disengaged mood of its base?
Chris leaves out a lot.
The early Labour Party was thoroughly racist against the Chinese and championed the White New Zealand policy.
The first Labour government was extremely repressive during WW2.
At the end of the first Labour government the rich had a larger share of national income than at the start.
The first Labour government introduced peacetime conscription and deregistered the Auckland carpenters union.
The second Labour government supported sporting contact with apartheid South Africa and foisted the ‘black budget’ on workers.
The third Labour government began the dawn raids on Pacific Islands ‘overstayers’ and deregistered the Kawerau boilermakers union.
And we needn’t say anything about the fourth one!!!
And on and on and on.
Murray Horton, The secret history of WW2 in NZ: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/the-secret-history-of-ww2/
Daphna Whitmore and Philip Ferguson, Labour: a bosses party: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/the-truth-about-labour-a-bosses-party/
Murray Horton, Labour’s introduction of peacetime conscription and the fight against it: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/labours-introduction-of-peacetime-conscription-and-the-fight-against-it/
Philip Ferguson, 1949 Auckland carpenters’ disoute: Labour & bosses versus the workers: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2015/06/02/1949-auckland-carpenters-dispute-labour-bosses-versus-the-workers/
Philip Ferguson, Behind the 1951 waterfront lockout: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/behind-the-1951-waterfront-lockout/
Philip Ferguson, Anti-working class to its core – the third Labour government: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/anti-working-class-to-its-core-the-third-labour-government/
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