THOSE WHO DISMISS mass political protest as historically ephemeral, leaving nothing of significance behind it, are wrong. The Springbok Tour protests of 1981 made a huge impression on the NZ Police. So much so that, in the 40 years that have elapsed since the Tour, the policing of political protest in New Zealand has undergone a profound change. Just how vulnerable that change has left the New Zealand people was made frighteningly clear during the occupation and eventual clearing of Parliament Grounds in 2022. If the NZ Police are not conducting a root-and-branch reform of their political protest policing methods, then they are failing in their duty as protectors of the state and its citizens.
In the weeks and months that followed the Springbok Tour, the Police found themselves repeatedly humiliated in the New Zealand courts. Thousands of New Zealanders had been arrested during the Tour but only a tiny minority of them were convicted – and even fewer were jailed. In case after case it became clear that, right from the start, the Judiciary had been ill-disposed towards the Tour, would rather it had not taken place, and were not prepared to saddle those who had protested against it with a criminal record. Consequently, only those guilty of the most egregious acts of protest (especially those involving aircraft) were subjected to the full rigor of the law.
The Judiciary’s unwillingness to punish protesters conveyed a disturbing message to the Police. On some issues, the usual close co-operation between the Judiciary and the Police could not be relied upon – quite the reverse, in fact. As instanced by the famous case in which protesters pled “Not Guilty” to being illegally on a building, but without the intent of committing any other offence. Their lawyer argued that his clients had every intent of committing other offences – hence their “Not Guilty” plea. The Judge, clearly amused, acquitted the defendants. The look of dismay and bewilderment on the face of the Police Sergeant prosecuting the case is readily imagined!
It did not take the Police very long to realise that they were being told to go easy on the sort of people who participate in protests against morally indefensible systems like Apartheid, and/or the pernicious ideologies that spawn them. Regardless of the fact that they are sworn to uphold the law, while it remains the law, Police researchers were left in little doubt that, in the Tour’s aftermath, a great many members of the New Zealand public identified the Police as the Government’s enforcers and the Springboks’ protectors. More bluntly, they had made it possible for an immoral and divisive tour by a racist Rugby team to go ahead.
The research data was unequivocal: the policing of the Springbok Tour protests had resulted in a significant decline in the public’s trust and confidence in the NZ Police. Worse, the people whose trust and confidence had been dented the most were, by-and-large, members of the urban professional middle-class. This was not a social formation whose support the Police could afford to lose. Their skills, coupled with their location in the power-structure, made them indispensable mouthpieces for, and buttresses of, the state. The working-class was expected to despise the fists and boots of the Police – but not the middle-class. Henceforth, its protesting children were to be treated with kid gloves.
Winning back the trust and confidence of the urban professional middle-class wasn’t the only, or even the most daunting, of the challenges facing the NZ Police after the Springbok Tour. Police commanders were acutely aware that in policing the Tour their human and material resources had been stretched to the limit. Had someone been killed in the protests, the Police’s ability to preserve law and order without resorting to deadly force would likely have been exceeded. As it was, on the day of the Third Test between the Springboks and the All Blacks, serious violence broke out on the streets surrounding Eden Park. Armed naval personnel from HMNZS Philomel were very close to being called to the assistance of the Civil Power. Deadly force came within an ace of being used.
Senior Police and the nation’s political leaders would have been aware of just what a near-run thing they had lived through in 1981. Very few of them, if any, would have wanted to risk another highly organised challenge to government policy.
The more thoughtful among them would have considered the policing of the Springbok Tour alongside the Police operation mounted three years earlier at Bastion Point. Clearing away the Māori occupiers of the land had required an enormous number of Police officers, backed by significant logistical support from the NZ Defence Force. Politicians, public servants, police commanders and senior defence personnel, seeing the effort required to clear a few hundred protesters, operating in a single city, would have shuddered at the thought of one, two, many Bastion Points. In such circumstances, the use of deadly force would be inevitable.
But, even the possibility of the state resorting to deadly force was abhorrent to most New Zealanders – as the Police would learn the hard way in 2007 during the course of Operation Eight. The possibility of an armed terrorist cell training in the Ureweras could not be ignored by the Police – and it wasn’t. The deployment of masked police officers wearing helmets, body armour, and carrying semi-automatic rifles to the tiny settlement of Ruatoki, however, shocked and angered not only the local Tuhoe iwi, but also that same urban professional middle-class whose support for the Police had been so sorely tested 26 years before. Once again, the Judiciary and its minions were less-than-impressed. Once again the Police were humiliated.
The cumulative effect of these lessons in how far the Police’s “social licence” might be stretched was on display in February-March 2022 when Parliament Grounds were occupied by hundreds of New Zealanders protesting against the Labour Government’s handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic – most particularly its coercive vaccination mandates.
Over and over again, New Zealanders heard the Police Commissioner, Andrew Coster, reiterate the citizen’s “Right to Protest”.
Confronted by protesters who refused to play by the rules, however, Coster and his commanders were at a loss. Their confusion grew when the all-important urban professional middle-class began insisting that the Police clear the grounds – by any means necessary. The same people who had objected to 81’s riot squads, and the gun-toting “ninjas” at Ruatoki, were now insisting that Coster’s officers start cracking heads.
Except that more than 40 years of affirming New Zealanders’ Right to Protest had left the NZ Police without the training or the equipment to “move on” hundreds of determined protesters (many of whom were working-class battlers and not at all averse to mixing-it-up with the cops). The Police’s first attempt to enforce the law ended in ignominious retreat, and it took weeks to assemble the person-power necessary to clear the protesters’ encampment. Even then, the operation ended in fire and fury of a sort not seen in this country for 90 years.
Horrified New Zealanders, looking at the extraordinary photograph of Police officers with their backs to a granite wall, huddled together and cowering behind their Perspex shields, as all manner of missiles are hurled at them by furious protesters, suddenly realised that their state was no longer equal to the task of protecting its citizens from serious political violence.
What was (just) possible in 1978 and 1981, had ceased to be a sure-thing by 2022. And, on all three occasions, it was political protest that provided the critical test of what New Zealanders were – and were not – prepared to tolerate from the forces of the state.
I dunno, this sounds like a call to beef up the police. An under prepared police against a protest movement not worthy of the cause, sounds like the name of this game.
From my point of view, what happened was allowed to happen until the powers-that-be said no more and whoosh, it was over with in a flash. Hardly unequal to the task. And the NZ public at large, will their views, as per usual, were shaped by the mainstream media coverage, thus they were kept in check, easily enough.
Such unrest would have to have a level of mass support, were it to ever escalate beyond a mere rowdy protest.
Political terror by a tiny minority is another question, but it’s hard to believe the cops would be unable to deal with something so small.
It’s also difficult to believe that they would not severely crush any major threat to the U.S. neo-liberal order. Surely such protesters would be off to jail for “insurrection”, “sedition” etc. — and, if the government itself was breaking away from U.S. control, the N.E.D. funded N.G.O. groups would be launching another Langley-directed Color Revolution (i.e. a coup).
Well said…pretty much said everything else I contemplated saying.
I wasn’t in New Zealand in ’81. Ironically, I had just arrived in South Africa after 4 years in Zambia. I was rather bemused at the idea of the protest in NZ because I found that blacks in South Africa were generally FAR better off than those I worked with in Zambia and several other post-independence nations to the north of SA. Zambia was a one-party state under Kenneth Kaunda. and he had literally wiped the Lumpa tribe off the map. Total genocide. My Zambian workers were starving when I left because of a collectivist socialist induced famine. President Mugabe in Zimbabwe was killing the Matabele in that country, leaving mass graves in his wake. Tanzania had also turned into a one-party Marxist state under President Nyerere and its citizens were starving too, despite it being an exporter of food under British rule. Just like Zambia. Zaire under Mobutu was just a despotic hellhole of thuggery. Both Mocambique and Angola were at war with themselves whilst also starving. Africans were pouring into Apartheid South Africa to escape all of that! The black refugee Rhodesian who lived next door to me in Joburg said “My Brothers at home are crying for Smith!”
I suppose the message I got at the time was not to protest about something you know nothing about. I think the same would apply today about Israel. How many of you have actually been there? If you wish to destroy that country because in your mind some aspect of it ‘isn’t fair’, what’s your alternative? The Muslim thug state and theocracies that surround it? Really?
Well certainly South Africa is now a complete disaster; dysfunctional and corrupt with the highest inequality (GINI coefficient) and third highest crime rate in the world – just behind socialist paradise Venezuela and tribal madhouse Papua New Guinea. Agree Andrew, the “know it all” Minto type obsession with Israel is deeply and dangerously unbalanced. Motivated by hate not love?
Note: African countries take out nine of the top ten most unequal societies in the world, so it’s not just a SA issue.
Is decolonising NZ to Aotearoa NZ destroying it?
Same for the Israeli colonisation apartheid and occupation.
I mean, if you are for israeli impunity and the dropping of missiles on a population without recourse to a military or justice, I’m sure just the latest murder of shooting of a 2 year old in the head is just bread and choose to you. cos they deserved it. Cos “since we let it happen, it must be all right.”
We know that power corrupts, the question is how do we stop it & not our corruption is better than yours as an excuse to do nothing.
The Police failure at Albert Park leaves a lot of unanswered (or even unasked) questions. It was obvious there would be a large contingent of protestors blatantly broadcasting their intention to “stomp the Terfs”. Why such a half arsed effort to ensure peace and legitimate assembly?
Thank you David George. I wondered when someone was going to mention Albert Park.
No. It was the blatant hypocrisy of the Left who think the right to protest only applies to them.
100% Robbie
100% Robbie. I couldn;t believe the squells from the professional middle class in Wellington about how much more worthy their protests were compared to the anti mandate crowd
The attitude was also similar about Albert Park where many lefties denied, distorted or rationalized the violence against women there. It made me realise that many of those “feminist ” leftie men had been full of shit and really had no idea about women’s issues whatsoever
The ’81 protestors got old, and we knows what that does to your outlook on life.
A few can openings here. What’s really to learn? How about we focus on an election coming?
Most interesting thing here is how much influence the professional middle classes have always had in this country. I had been deluding myself that we were all largely working class despite our life successes and personal progress.
Quite frightening to understand that this self protective cadre are in a sense, the true enemies of democracy. it’s like a giant python which squeezes the life out of NZ while feeding on it and growing ever more powerful. It probably numbers about 30% of the population but its fingers on the levers of power give it so much more weight.
These are the architects of co governance, electoral reform (gerrymandering etc) etc and despite their supposed independence almost always seem to favour the government of the day (along with their own financial or political aspirations). NZ today with its dramatic inequalities is a direct result of their influence in all the corridors of power.
Time for Swiss style representation or something similarly democratic. Time to dislodge the ticks from the animal and restore it to full health.
Nice analysis Piwakawaka, the PMC are a major issue in a bureaucratic economy, both public and private. Their inclination is to utilise technocratic method to seize control on “behalf” of the owners and populace. Tariq Ali warned us of this in the Extreme Centre. I’d describe it as Gramsci meets Machiaveli to deliver velvet glove despotism, delivered by MBA bearing corporate Jesuits.
Thanks for that Nick, I wasnt aware of that book, will certainly check it out
@Thomas Do you think you are better looking now?
Fascinating commentary, especially the people from South Africa on the mess that was post colonial Africa at the front line of the Cold War. I don’t know enough to comment.
I protested in 81, so for the benefit of those who weren’t there or weren’t yet born, it was NOT all about apartheid in South Africa. That was the focus but not everything. We had racism to address in NZ, still have. We had paternalism and authoritarianism that was becoming an intergenerational fight.
One thing stood out. We the protesters were going to have our say and be heard, not shut down by the powers that be. We will be heard was the spirit of 81.
Bringing us to last year’s protests at parliament it would seem that the lesson of 81 was forgotten by our government. They refused to hear the protests, whatever the protesters had to say, however whacky, was not just ignored. It was delegitimised, binned. With the refusal to engage a new precedent was set, protest did not need to be heard or addressed in our “democracy”. The spirit of 81 was put to bed, binned.
Nice analysis Piwakawaka, the PMC are a major issue in a bureaucratic economy, both public and private. Their inclination is to utilise technocratic method to seize control on “behalf” of the owners and populace. Tariq Ali warned us of this in the Extreme Centre. I’d describe it as Gramsci meets Machiaveli to deliver velvet glove despotism, delivered by MBA bearing corporate Jesuits.
Johan, Gramsci theorised Marxisms long march through the institutions, Machiaveli the ultimate amoral pragmatist.
Today’s Masters of Business Administration are the direct inheritors of Loyola Jesuits who developed managerial methods.
Hope that helps.
The Covid vaccine is neither safe nor effective and should never have been mandated
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