In 1981, although not a leader, I was an active participant in the massive protests against the Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand. South Africa was then under the tyrannical racist apartheid dictatorship responsible for the deny of fundamental democratic and repression of the large majority of its population. The protests were part of an international anti-apartheid campaign.
Unlike today’s country tours it was long – eight weeks with two matches each week. Twice weekly large demonstrations were organised throughout the country with a particular focus on wherever each game was being played.
The thrust of the protests was peaceful, winning as much as possible the hearts and minds of the large minority who supported the tour, and civil disobedience which included at times breaking the law.
I participated in almost all the demonstrations including civil disobedience. This included, along with others, running on the Wellington airport runway, being in a sit-in on a motorway during the scheduled Hamilton game (famously called off), and another sit-in blocking traffic going to the rugby ground. These were time limited ranging from 10-15 minutes on the airport tarmac to around 90 minutes on the motorway.
Justice trumps the law
I remain proud of my participation in these activities. The cause was impeccable. The campaign did make an important contribution to the struggle for liberation in South Africa as acknowledged by Nelson Mandela. It did involve breaking the law in order to disrupt as many games as possible. No apologies from me on this.
The law is the law but it is not the same as justice. Law and justice overlap but there are differences; sometimes a colossal gap. But for me justice trumps the law every time. The inconvenience these protests caused paled into insignificance when contrasted with the justice of the anti-apartheid struggle.
However, none of this compares with the current protest including occupation at Parliament grounds and the surroundings. Contrary to the rhetoric this is not about rights. The claimed objective is vaccine passes which restrict the access of the unvaccinated to non-essential public amenities where there is a risk to the health of others.
But vaccine passes is the camouflage for the protest, not the substantive reason (for the record I support vaccine passes). At the core is a far right hardcore (itself factionalised) linked to an international extremist movement led by Donald Trump soulmate Steve Bannon. This hardcore are seizing an opportunity to build their political influence that this moment in the sun (and rain) provides.
Strolling through Parliament grounds
On the first day of the protest (Tuesday 8 February) I happened to be in Wellington. In the afternoon I took the opportunity to stroll through the crowd at its peak in Parliament’s grounds. I was masked but encountered no hostility or invasiveness.
But it was clear from the placards and other signs that vaccine passes were not the driving issue. They were more noticeably anti-vaccine, weird conspiracies including Covid-19 being a hoax and vaccines killing children, religious, and/or intimidation (including violence and death threats). Vaccine passes felt like a ‘ship of convenience’.
As I crossed Molesworth St through the parked ‘convey’ I was struck by both the absence of trucks and the prevalence of vehicles of the affluent (utes, SUVs and campervans to be precise).
Later at the railway station there were some protesters who had left to return home with religious placards. They were peaceful, minding their own business, and looking confused about what they had left.
Borrowing from rugby: a ‘game of two parts’
Borrowing from an overused rugby expression, the protest is a ‘game of two parts’ (rather than two halves). On the first day attendance was at its peak (4,000 is the most generous claim but probably closer to 3,000). Most left before the second day with the number being in the hundreds rather than thousands (peaking at over a thousand at some points during the weekend).
Coinciding with the overall declining numbers has been the increasing influence of far right extreme activists who brought with them greater intimidation and threats. These are the kind of people who would be equally at home leading a xenophobic demonstration against Muslims.
This ‘game of two parts’ and evolution from the first to the second is well described in an excellent Dominion Post (12 February) article by journalist Charlie Mitchell: Evolution of protest towards far right leadership.
Another article this time in the NZ Herald the following day by David Fisher focusses on the increasing role of far right leader and questionable businessperson Kelvyn Alps. Note the barely disguised threat against Fisher in the final paragraph. Far right leader Kelvyn Alps.
Cutting to the chase
Let’s cut to the chase. Rights are essential to democracy but are not an abstraction. Further, responsibilities are also essential to democracy. The pursuit of rights and responsibilities can be justified, even when contrary to the law where justice support this. Justice for the oppressed of South Africa supported civil disobedience against the 1981 Springbok tour.
In respect of its far right drivers. where is the justice in the occupation of Parliament? Consider this:
- Less than 5% of the population 12 years and older are unvaccinated. Compare this with the peak occupation attendance of between 3-4,000. Compare it also with the over 100,000 people receiving the vaccine booster last weekend. It is tiny in contrast and smaller than earlier anti-vaccination demonstrations.
- Vaccine passes are a temporary health protection measure as the omicron Covid-19 variant spreads exponentially throughout the country. They constrain access to some non-essential facilities for less than 5% of the population who have chosen not to be vaccinated. Further, a big majority of New Zealanders support vaccine passes.
- But this small population subset is disproportionately contributing to much of the hospitalisations and consequential pressures on already creaking public hospitals and their already fatigued health professionals.
- As confirmed by epidemiologists the occupation by the unvaccinated is a big virus spreader thereby risking infecting not only themselves. They risk also infecting others they come into contact with including police, parliamentary staff, media and local residents (and from them to many others).
- There is no attempt by far right leaders to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the population. Rather it is an attempt through sheer force and intimidation to get their way. This includes intimidating mask wearers, shop owners, local residents, and parliamentary, railway station and university staff, blockading a major traffic thoroughfare for at least a week, preventing staff and students from accessing a university, and delaying access to medical care. It is not an attempted insurrection except in the minds of the deluded.
- Children required to be present are at severe risk of omicron infection because they are in an unvaccinated crowd. They are also at risk of other illnesses because of unsanitary conditions. If this is not child abuse then it is certainly child neglect.
A legitimate protest
There is very little of rights in this and much less of responsibilities. As for justice it is buried in the mud. But there could have been a legitimate protest.
First, they should have stuck solely to vaccine passes. I disagree with their position but there is a right to challenge it. They should have treated this issue with respect rather than using it as camouflage.
Second, they should have acted in accordance with temporary health restrictions designed to protect the public (including them).
Third, they should not have blockaded the public’s traffic access in the city. Nor should they have abused or intimidated members of the public. Rather than trying to win support they only further alienated the much wider public.
The above is not a difficult threshold to meet. With appropriate physical distancing in an outdoors setting they could have occupied Parliament’s grounds, including overnighting in tents, even as long as the current occupation.
This would probably have broken the law but at least the objective would have been clear and it would not have alienated the public so much. I would have disagreed with them but respected their right to protest.
Where does Voltaire fit in
An 18th century French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher was famous for his wit and criticism of Christianity. He was equally famous for his advocacy of freedom of speech including for stating I disagree with what you are saying but support your right to say it.
Very few people today will know François-Marie Arouet but many will know his nom de plume Voltaire. What would he say about this current occupation by the unvaccinated. It is always hard to tell with philosophers, especially from nearly four centuries ago. But one would like to have Voltaire on your side given his advocacy of free speech.
But Voltaire was about rights for everyone, not just a self-selected group. He was also about justice. Given the complete absence of respect for rights, responsibilities and justice by the far right leaders I suspect Voltaire would say to them to “va te faire foutre”.
Ian Powell was Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the professional union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand, for over 30 years, until December 2019. He is now a health systems, labour market, and political commentator living in the small river estuary community of Otaihanga (the place by the tide). First published at Political Bytes
Neither the communist left not the capitalist right, know how to interact with the Anarchy that is the protestors societal structure.
Both the left and the right are hanging around but the protestors are not receptive to their advances hence both the left and the right have to denounce something that they cannot control. No one is in control when the crowd is based on the freedom that only Anarchy can bring.
Worth a read;
https://libcom.org/library/anarchist-vs–leninist-lorenzo-ervin
“What Anarchists are opposed to is hierarchical, power-tripping leadership which suppresses the creative urge of the bulk of those involved, and forces an agenda down their throats. Members of such groups are mere servants and worshippers of the party leadership.”
The “state” is the problem. Be that left or right wing.
“What we don’t want or need is a group of authoritarians leading the working class, then establishing themselves as a centralized decision-making command. Instead of “withering away”, Marxist-Leninist States have perpetuated authoritarian institutions (the secret police, labor bosses, and the Communist Party) to maintain their power. The apparent effectiveness of such organizations masks the way that revolutionaries who pattern themselves after Capitalist institutions become absorbed by bourgeois values, and completely isolated from the real needs and desires of ordinary people. ”
Neither left or right wing is interested in the welfare of the working classes. They both want to control the “state” and place themselves in the authoritarian executive of control over the people.
Even the most avid marxist understands that communism is but the pathway to the state “withering away”. But Lenin countered that notion. After all the “state” is the controller, not the people.
“The reluctance of Marxist-Leninists to accept revolutionary social change is, however, above all seen in Lenin’s conception of the party. It is a prescription to nakedly seize power and put it in the hands of the Communist Party. The party that Leninists create today, they believe, should become the [only] Party of the Proletariat in which that class could organize and seize power. “
So, they’re Anarchists are they Gerrit. A nice little label to describe folk that don’t like authority, who don’t like hierarchical, power-tripping leadership that forces an agenda down their throats, all to the detriment of their freedom and creativity.
I guess the punks in the late 70’s knew a thing or two about that given they were committed to individual liberty, had no time for authority, establishment nor government and were committed to action. Punks were committed to disrupting bourgeois values, in a word, to anarchy. Musically their anthems are a testament to this. But of course the folk – and their leaders – protesting outside Parliament grounds cannot be described as punks – not the least because some seem to own utes and SUV’s!
You’re on to something Gerrit, but nah, despite your argument I side with Ian Powell. The folk in Wellington – and their supporters elsewhere – are a motley crew, increasingly influenced by far right extreme activists, who, in Powell’s words, would be equally at home leading a xenophobic demonstration against Muslims as disrupting bourgeois values, as upholding personal freedom.
And I ask myself what is the point of having a Minister Of Children, Kelvin Davis, if he is maintains a silence on the plight of the young children being wetted on by order of his Speaker, with those sprinklers, I believe, still sprinkling away yesterday.
The Minister of Health should be concerned that ambulances and fire engines cannot traverse the Wellington CBD speedily and unimpeded, and that the rights of the vulnerable and at-risk are being superseded by the rights of the protestors.
Kia ora Ian
People on the left (Chris Trotter excluded) often begin their condemnation of the “Rights and Freedoms” protest at Parliament by saying that they protested the Springbok tour (“unlawfully” in most cases) but “that was different”. It was a justified protest they say, and I tend to agree.
But that justification of other unlawful protests shows that the anger of the government and the left centers on the reason for the protest, and the class of person protesting, rather than the mode of protest as such.
These same leftists claim that the protesters are only “a small but vocal minority”. That claim was just as true of the campaigns against the Vietnam war, nuclear ships, and apartheid sport in their early days. The level of public support says something, but not everything about the merits of a cause, and public support for the protesters is much greater than most on the left can bring themselves to admit. The editor of the “Dominion” newspaper suggested 1%, a number plucked out of the air because it sounded good to her. You suggest 5% based on the fallacious notion that all who are vaccinated support the vaccine mandate. Wrong. I am “fully vaccinated” (whatever that means) and boosted, yet I consider the “vaccine pass” and the “no jab, no job” policies of the government to be a gross unjustified abuse of power. There are thousands like me out there. Then there are those who complied with the mandates out of fear of the consequences for their careers, incomes, home and family if the refused. Hard to tell how many, but perhaps up to 15% of the population based on surveys of “vaccine reluctance”.
So you are dealing with a bigger social problem, and a deeper social division, than you care to admit.
What caused this division to go so deep? The end of the elimination strategy, the abandonment of the “team of five million” and the institution of the “vaccine pass” system. While the “vaccine pass” may have done something to protect non-vaccinated population it probably did more to help the spread of Covid in the vaccinated population than to contain it. The reason why is simple enough. “Vaccine passes” are designed to allow the very activities which spread Covid. So Covid is spreading among the legitimate holders of vaccine passes in bars, restaurants, nightclubs and music festivals.
The vaccine pass is just silly. It isn’t even evidence of vaccination, let alone immunity to transmission. You might be exempt, and still have a vaccine pass. Your immunity might have declined to negligible levels since vaccination and the issuing of your pass. You might never have had immunity because your immune system was not robust enough to respond to the vaccine.
So the “vaccine pass” is a ridiculous and counter-productive abuse of rights, and sooner or later it will be quietly dropped, protest or no protest.
The “no jab no job” policy is also iniquitous and ineffective. Covid is spreading in the schools where non-vaccinated teachers have been sacked. You will meet non-vaccinated people in the supermarket and the doctors waiting room and on the bus. So why not in the surgery or in schools or hospitals?
You may say that “no jab no job” marginally lowers the public health risk, and that may be the case. But the benefit is so marginal, and the cost to those left jobless (and their families) is so immense, that the policy fails the test of proportionality.
Finally, you express concern for the children of the non-vaccinated. Yet in a petty act of blind spite the New Zealand state decides to use sprinklers to keep these same children wet and cold through day and night. A measure which was designed to compromise their health, and could have exposed them to serious illness.
Frankly Ian, you could better use you knowledge and your standing to expose sins of state rather than joining in the chorus of disapproval of what a bunch of misguided but very ordinary New Zealanders who have been badly treated and are now trying to do something about it.
@Geoff Fischer.
Great comments Geoff, and hear hear to your last paragraph particularly.
Reacting against the gummint turning sprinklers on them doesn’t mean that it’s okay for he protesters to then funnel their anger and aggravation on to other ordinary NZs. That isn’t showing the solidarity and maturity that is needed to get change from the government; the protests are just an exercise in showing militancy and ability to disrupt, and take power when it suits. I don’t like that behaviour any more than the gummint’s.
Are you commenting on the above article? You use the same names but have taken your own view about what Ian wrote that misses the point of the article.
Kia ora “Bonnie”
Yes, my comment was in relation to Ian’s article. Can you explain why you think I have missed the point?
Ian, thank you for a balanced review. Interesting comments about your venture into the protestors group with a mask in place; seems others have not been so fortunate.
I can’t agree about your clear conscience re Wellington Airport & Molsworth Street – both put others lives at risk, so in my mind can not be justified; just as the actions of the current protestors in blocking roads is totally unacceptable and demonstrates their total lack of community responsibilty.
It seems today many people can’t accept that decisions have consequences. They have the freedom to not be vaccinated, for that some the consequence is the lose of their job for the safety of the community at large. As unfortunate as that is public health must take priority.
The fact that some very questionable people have initiated (funded?) this protest is of real concern; but of more concern is that so many are prepared to, seemingly unquestioning of the organisers motives, do their bidding.