Saturday, May 19, 2012
Old drunk guy from Invercargill turns out to be a bigoted old fool
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Short burst of Positivity
I'm still having trouble with this bloody blog software, missing comments and all that stuff.
Anyway, nothing matters too much cos I'm having a rare burst of positivity. Went to a talk last night about workers struggles in China, and heard from a guy who has spent several years talking to workers in China and documenting strikes and rebellions there. we don't here a lot about it but there is a huge and growing radical workers movement in China. The guy who gave the talk is off to Australia next week and if by chance I have an Australian reader, here are the details.
And closer to home, things in Christchurch are heating up, this week a couple of thousand people turned up to protest against the obscene pay rise given to the town clerk Tony Marryatt. The protests became a chance for people to vent about lots of issues caused by the incompetence and arrogance of the Christchurch City Council. There is a good analysis of the protest on the Redline blog here.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
more on poetry
Sorry blogspot wont let me make comment son my own bloody blog for some reason!
So, this is what I have been trying to post for a few days as a comment in reply to maia under my previous post. (update now it won't even keep me logged in long enough to edit spelling mistakes.)
...I understand the criticism of the poetry and I have no problem with you or anyone else criticising it. I just don’t care because it is not important.
My point is that there is something seriously wrong when an anarchist publisher produces a book and then at the last minute puts in a disclaimer attacking the author as oppressive because he writes rude words about capitalists! I don’t know what went on behind the scenes (because I am not in RP and haven’t spoken to any of them since the book launch) but I imagine that some people who objected to the publication of the poetry pressured Rebel Press and they felt it necessary to put a disclaimer into the front of the book and embarrass themselves and the author. My problem is most people in the anarchist/activist scene regard this as the correct thing to do when accused of ‘being offensive’. A more useful response might have been “We put a lot of work into this book, we are going to publish it, if you don’t like it then don’t bloody read it”. If people can’t handle a few rude words then they should stay home.
It seems to me that a lot of anarchists have given up on building a mass movement and instead are trying to build a small scene free from impure/incorrect thinking. The stuff that happened around the book launch is a small symptom of that sickness.
So, this is what I have been trying to post for a few days as a comment in reply to maia under my previous post. (update now it won't even keep me logged in long enough to edit spelling mistakes.)
...I understand the criticism of the poetry and I have no problem with you or anyone else criticising it. I just don’t care because it is not important.
My point is that there is something seriously wrong when an anarchist publisher produces a book and then at the last minute puts in a disclaimer attacking the author as oppressive because he writes rude words about capitalists! I don’t know what went on behind the scenes (because I am not in RP and haven’t spoken to any of them since the book launch) but I imagine that some people who objected to the publication of the poetry pressured Rebel Press and they felt it necessary to put a disclaimer into the front of the book and embarrass themselves and the author. My problem is most people in the anarchist/activist scene regard this as the correct thing to do when accused of ‘being offensive’. A more useful response might have been “We put a lot of work into this book, we are going to publish it, if you don’t like it then don’t bloody read it”. If people can’t handle a few rude words then they should stay home.
It seems to me that a lot of anarchists have given up on building a mass movement and instead are trying to build a small scene free from impure/incorrect thinking. The stuff that happened around the book launch is a small symptom of that sickness.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Poetry, and bloody awful politics.
For the first time in my life I attended the launch of a poetry book in the weekend. When it comes to poetry readings, I am what most people call an uncultured slob. My partner is much more sophisticated than me and enjoys art and flowers and stuff. But, this book launch was for Ken Vicious, a punk poet here in Wellington, who performed poetry and music for various anarchist causes over the years including solidarity events for the Urewera defendants. Profits from the book launch would go towards their defence fund, and so we went along.
We arrived, I ate lots of hummus and got a copy of Kens new book ‘Some Justice’. Like all Rebel Press books, it is very nicely put together, with artwork donated by some of the artists who also raised money for the Urewera defendants. And of course it was full of punk poetry, including this one ‘Ureweary’, about the police anti terror raids in 2007.
Ken read some of his poetry, I ate more hummus, and when the awful punk bands started up, we went home. A good night? Well, not quite.
Sometime between printing the book and the book launch, Rebel Press had been told that Kens poetry was offensive. Specifically, that one poem referred to fat greedy capitalists, and this was offensive to fat people (not sure of the correct inoffensive term for fat people so fat people it is. I’m proud of my fat identity myself so I think I’m allowed to say that!). So Rebel Press had inserted a little disclaimer note into every copy of the book, distancing themselves from the ‘fatphobia’ within, and also warning readers that the book contains ‘sexism, racism and homophobia’ and was therefore not compatible with anarchism! That’s a pretty heavy thing to say about a book you have just published and hugely insulting to the author, as well as being untrue (while there is a reference to fat greedy capitalists, there is nothing in any of the poems that could be construed as racist or homophobic by any definition I have ever heard of) The note ended with some recommended websites where you can educate yourself on issues of fat oppression.
Some in the Wellington ‘activist scene’ boycotted the book launch and encouraged others to do so too. There is no mention of the book on the Rebel Press website, it no longer exists(Update Feb 2012: The book is now listed on the website). It seems that for many people, their ‘anarchism’ is a very delicate thing for very delicate people who are threatened when a punk poet directs rude words at the capitalist system. The sad thing is that some in the ‘anarchist scene’ spends more time policing the thoughts and words of its own members that it does organising anything. Even sadder, most in the scene, including Rebel Press it seems, give in to this bullshit, not because they necessarily agree with it, but because of the methods used in the scene to silence debate. Any opposition to this stuff is seen as agreeing with oppression and therefore heresy. There is no middle ground. You either agree, or you are a heretic. To the outside world, the ‘activist scene’ looks like a strange thought control cult, very similar to the mainstream media stereotype of the far left as dogmatic humourless turds who hate ordinary people and can’t wait to make rules restricting their speech and thoughts.
I am sure some people may have been offended by the use of the word 'fat' in a poem. I am equally sure that most people reading it would not be offended. Destroying global capitalism and replacing it with a classless non hierarchical society may involve causing inadvertent offence to some people along the way. Luckily for the 'anarchist scene' this is not a dilemma any of us are likely to face anytime soon.
I would like it if "anarchists" could be secure enough that they are not threatened by poetry. I would also like it if “anarchists” could debate this topic (or any topic) without calling me names . . .
We arrived, I ate lots of hummus and got a copy of Kens new book ‘Some Justice’. Like all Rebel Press books, it is very nicely put together, with artwork donated by some of the artists who also raised money for the Urewera defendants. And of course it was full of punk poetry, including this one ‘Ureweary’, about the police anti terror raids in 2007.
Ken read some of his poetry, I ate more hummus, and when the awful punk bands started up, we went home. A good night? Well, not quite.
Sometime between printing the book and the book launch, Rebel Press had been told that Kens poetry was offensive. Specifically, that one poem referred to fat greedy capitalists, and this was offensive to fat people (not sure of the correct inoffensive term for fat people so fat people it is. I’m proud of my fat identity myself so I think I’m allowed to say that!). So Rebel Press had inserted a little disclaimer note into every copy of the book, distancing themselves from the ‘fatphobia’ within, and also warning readers that the book contains ‘sexism, racism and homophobia’ and was therefore not compatible with anarchism! That’s a pretty heavy thing to say about a book you have just published and hugely insulting to the author, as well as being untrue (while there is a reference to fat greedy capitalists, there is nothing in any of the poems that could be construed as racist or homophobic by any definition I have ever heard of) The note ended with some recommended websites where you can educate yourself on issues of fat oppression.
Some in the Wellington ‘activist scene’ boycotted the book launch and encouraged others to do so too. There is no mention of the book on the Rebel Press website, it no longer exists(Update Feb 2012: The book is now listed on the website). It seems that for many people, their ‘anarchism’ is a very delicate thing for very delicate people who are threatened when a punk poet directs rude words at the capitalist system. The sad thing is that some in the ‘anarchist scene’ spends more time policing the thoughts and words of its own members that it does organising anything. Even sadder, most in the scene, including Rebel Press it seems, give in to this bullshit, not because they necessarily agree with it, but because of the methods used in the scene to silence debate. Any opposition to this stuff is seen as agreeing with oppression and therefore heresy. There is no middle ground. You either agree, or you are a heretic. To the outside world, the ‘activist scene’ looks like a strange thought control cult, very similar to the mainstream media stereotype of the far left as dogmatic humourless turds who hate ordinary people and can’t wait to make rules restricting their speech and thoughts.
I am sure some people may have been offended by the use of the word 'fat' in a poem. I am equally sure that most people reading it would not be offended. Destroying global capitalism and replacing it with a classless non hierarchical society may involve causing inadvertent offence to some people along the way. Luckily for the 'anarchist scene' this is not a dilemma any of us are likely to face anytime soon.
I would like it if "anarchists" could be secure enough that they are not threatened by poetry. I would also like it if “anarchists” could debate this topic (or any topic) without calling me names . . .
Monday, November 28, 2011
Where is the opposition?
Another quick post on the election. Until the votes are counted its hard to find accurate figures on exactly how many people did not vote. The Electoral Commission has given a (new revised) figure of 74% turnout, which means 26% of enrolled voters did not bother.
It is very hard to do a statistical analysis of these non voters, and I'm not sure if any polling of non voters was done. It would be worth doing an analysis of the non turnout in each electorate seat. We know things like the ethnicities and average incomes of each seat, and we could work out how high the non vote is in each seat and have a rough idea of who the non voters are in each area. I'm guessing more than half will be left voters who are turned off by Parliamentary politics. but that is just a guess. Hopefully someone cleverer than me can do this. If not, I will have a go during my holidays in the New Year.
The main thing is the non voters were the second biggest group of voters in the election. If you include the non vote in the party result it looks a bit like this:
National 36%
non voters 26%
Labour 20%
Green 7.5%
NZ First 5%
plus a few others below 1%
So, the main (so called) opposition party vote was less than the non vote. Do the political commentators have much to say about this?
Nope. Most ignore it and a few whine about how awful it is that more and more people are apathetic. Some Green and Labour aupporters have been angrily blaming their failures on irresponsible non voters instead of their blandness.
Labour has not been the opposition for a long time. The Greens have now joined them as part of the neo-liberal consensus, leaving only NZFirst and the Mana party in opposition. In parliamentary terms that is 110+ seats for neo-liberalism and 9 opposing it.
Outside parliament there is a huge group of people who are alienated from the parliamentary system but have nowhere to go. No one in the establishment is the slightest bit interested in them and the mainstream media has nothing to say about the 1 in 4 eligible voters in this country who do not take part in politics.
There is one blog article that has intelligent things to say and its worth reading in full here: The Bored and the Disgusted by John Moore.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Election Result: Huge majority for politicians
As predicted, the politicians won. The National Party now has a majority in parliament and will be forming the next government. They have even taken over the ACT party. The Labour Party will be sorting out a new leader. Luckily for them there are plenty of slimy neoliberal hypocrites pretending to be left wing in the party so they shouldn’t have any major problems finding a replacement for Phil Goff. The Greens did very well, which will only reinforce the move towards bland middle of the road middle class professionalism that is dominating the party. I watched bits of their election party on TV and found myself wishing for scruffy hippies and bongo drums!
Despite being written off by the ‘establishment’, Winston got in again. He survives because he campaigns the old-fashioned way, with public meetings in small towns, and community halls. He appeals to the old fashioned conservative vote, and even has a youth branch now.
Hopefully the Maori party will drop dead soon. The morning after the election they are talking hopefully about asset sales. Scumbags.
Mana was the only party that talked about poverty in a serious way and for that, they got my vote. Not because of Hone Harawira. He was always going to get in again. I voted for them hoping for someone interesting and left wing to get into Parliament with him. Mana will be disappointed with their result as it looked like they could do better. I think this was partly because they were so new and lacked infrastructure and experience outside of Te Tai Tokerau. Another reason is that the political right and the media have spent years demonising the left as ‘politically correct’ control freaks who want to tell you how to live your life. A lot of working class people might otherwise see Mana policies as quite sensible, are turned off because it has been drummed into them that Hone Harawira is a hypocritical Maori nationalist who hates white people, and Sue Bradford wants the state to control how you bring up your kids. We should be thinking about how to counter this portrayal of the left as moralistic meanies, and we could start by not doing or saying stuff that gives more ammunition to the right wing. There is one area where none of the political parties have anything to say and that is the growing gap between the rich and the poor. We need to build a real leftwing mass movement against poverty and put class issues at the centre of our politics.
It shouldn’t be too hard, it’s not like anyone else is doing it.Despite the election result, the majority of New Zealanders despise the National Party (only 35% of voters supported National) and there is much more to politics than five minutes in a ballot box every three years.
Anyway, the best part of my election day had nothing to do with voting. I joined a very nice bunch of people down at Occupy Pomare. They are state housing tenants who have been evicted, lied to and treated like shit by Housing New Zealand and have now set up a tent protest camp on the site of their old houses. We talked about politics all afternoon, not politicians, and that made me more hopeful about politics than anything else that happened yesterday.
that’s it, short and sweet. And now the usual apology for being too busy to put stuff on here. How do real bloggers manage to find the time?
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Anarchist History: The unemployed movement 1990-1993
The unemployed rights movement was at the forefront of resistance to the welfare cuts of the 1990-1993 National Government. Many anarchists were involved in this struggle and for the first time in decades played a leading role in a mass movement. It didn’t last long, a struggle for control of the Auckland movement led to the collapse of the national unemployed movement in 1993.
Jane Stevens and others in the Wellington Unemployed Workers Union (WUWU) called a national meeting in 1983, which led to the formation of Te Roopu Rawakore, the national group representing unemployed and beneficiaries. Within a year, the fourth Labour government was in power, and unlike many in the leadership of the Union Movement, Te Roopu Rawakore was not afraid to criticise the policies of the government. The leaders of the unemployed movement were mostly women and many were Maori. The unemployed movement was made up of local groups run as non-hierarchical collectives. Many of the leading activists were influenced by their involvement in the 1970s women’s movement and Maori activism.
In 1988 Te Roopu Rawakore organized a march against unemployment, where people in local groups would march from each end of the country and meet in Wellington to protest at Parliament. The national coordinator of Te Roopu was Sue Bradford, who had been active in the Maoist workers communist league and other political groups for a long time
In the North Island the weeks of marching saw a conflict develop between the unemployed groups and the Communist Party of New Zealand, which tried to dominate and control the growing movement. Each night, the marchers would stay at a different marae as they progressed down the North Island. And each night there would be a huge argument between the CPNZ and the leaders of Te Roopu Rawakore. The march ended with a rally of two thousand people at Parliament. After the march, Sue Bradford resigned as spokesperson and leader of Te Roopu and focused on building up the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Centre (AUWRC). This led to the founding of the Auckland Peoples Center, which provided accessible health care and other services for beneficiaries, as well as a secure financial base for the leading activists who were employed to run the centre.
Some anarchists were involved in the unemployed movement at the time but not in central roles. As far as I can tell without doing a thesis on it, some of the younger punks I mentioned in the previous post were involved in unemployed rights groups, but they were young and on the fringes, and also had a different attitude to work. They tended to be involved in organising gigs and other entertainment for unemployed youth, who were young single and faced with a choice between low paid pointless factory jobs and living on the dole, and playing in a punk band, the dole looked pretty good. In contrast, the leadership of the unemployed movement were older, had families, and were suffering from long-term poverty. These people had no choice.
By 1990 the unemployed movement in Auckland had a base at the Auckland Peoples center and was involved in regular and demonstrations against the national Government. The leadership was made up of veterans of the 1988 march and earlier campaigns but a new generation of younger activists were becoming involved. Some of these were the anarchists who had become radicalised by their involvement in anti gulf war and other campaigns and who were also involved in The State Adversary magazine. The State Adversary’s of the time contain a mix of Bruce Grenvilles rambling conspiracy rants, and the radical politics of the young politically active punks.
In 1991 the National Government announced the employment contracts act and the most severe welfare cuts in decades. The Auckland anarchists and the AUWRC were at the forefront of the resistance to these policies. Protesters occupied the National Party offices in Auckland, trespassed at millionaire Michael Fays house, going for a swim in his pool, and confronting
In May 1991 protesters organised a march up Queen St, Auckland, against the benefit cuts. A group of AUWRC supporters charged into the national Party offices and blockaded themselves in. The Police smashed their way in with batons and arrested everyone inside plus a few onlookers too.
In November 1991 AUWRC activists held a demonstration on the front lawn of millionaire and dodgy dealer Micheal Fay, who, with his partner David Richwhite (yes that is his real name!) had made half a billion dollars profiting from the privatisation of public services while the benefits were being slashed. While waiting for the police several activists took a swim in his private pool. Everyone ended up arrested for trespass and Sue Bradford was given a bail conditions preventing her from attending any protests. Fay was later given a knighthood.
Other smaller actions took place around the country. Jenny Shipley was Minister of Social Welfare at the time and when she announced that anyone who had a problem with the benefit cuts was free to come and see her, we decided that was exactly what we would do. On December 19th 1991, an assortment of activists including the Christchurch Unemployed Rights Group (which I was part of) turned up at her house in Ashburton with copies of our power bills and grocery bills, which we proceeded to paste up around the walls of her very nice house. We also discovered she had a flagpole in her garden. The NZ flag was removed and replaced with a black flag instead (which made the cover of TSA#20). Police arrived and two men were arrested. One arrest was for spray-painting slogans on the street outside (The green paint on his fingers was a bit of a giveaway!). The other was for ‘wilful damage to a flower plant’. It turned out he had picked a flower from Shipley’s garden and put it in his hair! (see photo- flower in hair upper left))He was eventually convicted of this very serious crime.
In February 1992 Te Roopu Rawakore held its annual meeting in Porirua and followed up with a day of protests at the Prime Ministers house, the Reserve bank and the Treasury offices. In April 1992 the government hosted a conference at Auckland’s Pan Pacific Hotel to promote overseas investment in recently privatised public assets. The AUWRC organised three days of protests against what it called the ‘Sale of the Century’. By this time the police had decided it was time to attack the movement in a big way. Undercover police and paid informants had been used to gather information for some time, and many arrests had been made, but the police decided that more repression was necessary. As activists met after the protests plain-clothes detectives ran into the Auckland Unemployed Rights Center and started searching the premises without identifying themselves. The occupants (who included hairdressers, doctors, dentists, and their assorted customers) objected to this and scuffles broke out. Uniformed police arrived and charged into the building batoning anyone they could find. Wellington anarchist Sam Buchanan was hit in the eye with a PR24 long baton and collapsed, suffering convulsions. Police injured several others. Sam ended up in hospital, and over the next few days’ police arrested another 8-9 people, mostly witnesses to the assault on Sam. Police later produced a search warrant and claimed they were looking for explosives! Everyone was cleared of all charges and the Police were forced to pay a bit of money to Sam in compensation for permanent eye injuries.
Underlying tension between the leadership of AUWRC and some of the younger activists developed into conflict, ultimately causing the collapse of Te Roopu Rawakore as a national movement at a national meeting in Christchurch.
At the time I was a member of the Christchurch Unemployed Rights Group and was looking forward to having lots of unemployed activists in town for the national meeting. I had visited Auckland in October 1991 and stayed at a warehouse in College Hill where I met lots of anarchists involved in the unemployed rights movement, but hadn’t been to any meetings or protests in Auckland. In Christchurch we had taken part in various protests against the National Party since the benefit cuts were announced in. Some of the bigger protests were attended by hundreds of people but arrests were uncommon. So I was pretty in awe of the Aucklanders who had a very high profile a the time, getting arrested a lot, always on TV, and organising big full on protests. So, when it was announced that a national meeting of Te Roopu Rawakore was to be held in Christchurch, I was pretty excited.
I had no idea that the Auckland movement had just been through a nasty split. At the AGM I was baffled when Sue Bradford and her supporters were totally determined to prevent a new Auckland group from affiliating to Te Roopu Rawakore. The new group was called ARM (and noone seemed to know what the letters stood for) and they were anarchists. They were not punks, they were a fairly scruffy mixture of Maori (including future Green party leader Meteria Turei) and Pakeha anarchists in their early to late twenties. We south island folks couldn’t see what the problem was; Auckland was a big place so why not have more than one group there. So, after much discussion the movement voted to allow ARM to join as an affiliate member as a compromise (Affiliate members had no voting rights but could come to our meetings and receive a newsletter. If I remember rightly the affiliate members at the time included the Labour Party and the Salvation Army). This was too much for Bradford who burst into tears and along with her allies in the leadership of the national movement, resigned and walked out of the meeting.
I remember at the time being totally confused. How the hell did one weekend in Christchurch turn into a disaster for the entire movement? There must have been more to it than anyone at the meeting was telling us. Since then, Sue Bradford’s side of the split has been written about a few times, including interviews with Sue Bradford in magazines and newspapers, and in academic histories of Te Roopu Rawakore written by Cybele Locke. They say the anarchists were determined to take over the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Centre and change the policy of NUBM into an anti work, ‘welfare for all’ type campaign.
Some of the younger people involved in AUWRC had been involved in anarchist groups for a few years, but many became interested in anarchism independently and had no previous connection to the “anarchist scene”. For example Meteria Turei had been involved in a local unemployed rights group in Palmerston North and became Maori coordinator of Te Roopu Rawakore in 1990 and moved to Auckland. She and other young people, who were not punks, became involved in AUWRC and through them, the wider anarchist scene in Auckland, which was growing at the time.
According to Sam Buchanan, who was involved at the time and often took part in Auckland actions “The schism in Auckland arose from two things… one was a growing feeling that anarchists were doing a lot of work and never getting the benefits, particularly paid jobs, that Sue's old Marxist mates were getting. Which led to people drifting away on an individual basis. Second was Sue and Bill Bradford and their factions antagonism to various other people in the movement, leading to things like Metiria being banned from the Auckland People's centre, which led to Richard Arachnid, Metiria, and a couple of others forming ARM (which was like the punk band MDC - the acronym standing for all sorts of things such as 'Angry Rhinoceros Militia' "Aotearoa Rights Movement' etc. - Sue didn't get this at all and cited the various names as a sign of disorganisation. This was part of a general culture clash - Sue and her mates were mostly from the old Worker's Communist League and liked to project an image of being working class, serious 'revolutionaries' - they didn't get the playful, satirical punk/McGillicuddy stuff at all”.
Another version I heard (from the founder of ARM) a few years ago was that quite a few of the younger members of the movement developed an interest in anarchism totally independently of each other, and when they discovered that quite a few of them were interested in anarchism, the decided to have a meeting. Bradford and others wrongly assumed this was a plot against the leadership of AUWRC and decided to remove the threat. The dispute was pretty nasty and personal, and the details are probably pretty boring and irrelevant twenty years later. The important bit is that the high point of the unemployed rights movement in the 1990s led to a lot of young anarchists gaining experience and confidence and this led to the formation of the modern anarchist movement in NZ.
Anarchist groups have been active in New Zealand since 1990, and have a continuous history and membership going back to those unemployed rights groups. Some of the problems with anarchist politics in NZ also go back to those days too. Many of the older activists came out of the unemployed rights scene and became very experienced at small group protest actions but had no background in workplace struggles and this has been a weakness for the anarchist movement until very recently. The other related problem is that many anarchists came out of the punk and McGillicuddy subcultures. How to relate to this subculture stuff was a big topic of debate among anarchists in the 1990s and will be the subject of my next history rant.
next time: the rest of the nineties, Crazy Bruce gives up the State Adversary, proper anarchist conferences, and the Committee for the Establishment of Civilisation . .
Jane Stevens and others in the Wellington Unemployed Workers Union (WUWU) called a national meeting in 1983, which led to the formation of Te Roopu Rawakore, the national group representing unemployed and beneficiaries. Within a year, the fourth Labour government was in power, and unlike many in the leadership of the Union Movement, Te Roopu Rawakore was not afraid to criticise the policies of the government. The leaders of the unemployed movement were mostly women and many were Maori. The unemployed movement was made up of local groups run as non-hierarchical collectives. Many of the leading activists were influenced by their involvement in the 1970s women’s movement and Maori activism.
In 1988 Te Roopu Rawakore organized a march against unemployment, where people in local groups would march from each end of the country and meet in Wellington to protest at Parliament. The national coordinator of Te Roopu was Sue Bradford, who had been active in the Maoist workers communist league and other political groups for a long time
In the North Island the weeks of marching saw a conflict develop between the unemployed groups and the Communist Party of New Zealand, which tried to dominate and control the growing movement. Each night, the marchers would stay at a different marae as they progressed down the North Island. And each night there would be a huge argument between the CPNZ and the leaders of Te Roopu Rawakore. The march ended with a rally of two thousand people at Parliament. After the march, Sue Bradford resigned as spokesperson and leader of Te Roopu and focused on building up the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Centre (AUWRC). This led to the founding of the Auckland Peoples Center, which provided accessible health care and other services for beneficiaries, as well as a secure financial base for the leading activists who were employed to run the centre.
Some anarchists were involved in the unemployed movement at the time but not in central roles. As far as I can tell without doing a thesis on it, some of the younger punks I mentioned in the previous post were involved in unemployed rights groups, but they were young and on the fringes, and also had a different attitude to work. They tended to be involved in organising gigs and other entertainment for unemployed youth, who were young single and faced with a choice between low paid pointless factory jobs and living on the dole, and playing in a punk band, the dole looked pretty good. In contrast, the leadership of the unemployed movement were older, had families, and were suffering from long-term poverty. These people had no choice.
In 1991 the National Government announced the employment contracts act and the most severe welfare cuts in decades. The Auckland anarchists and the AUWRC were at the forefront of the resistance to these policies. Protesters occupied the National Party offices in Auckland, trespassed at millionaire Michael Fays house, going for a swim in his pool, and confronting
In May 1991 protesters organised a march up Queen St, Auckland, against the benefit cuts. A group of AUWRC supporters charged into the national Party offices and blockaded themselves in. The Police smashed their way in with batons and arrested everyone inside plus a few onlookers too.
In November 1991 AUWRC activists held a demonstration on the front lawn of millionaire and dodgy dealer Micheal Fay, who, with his partner David Richwhite (yes that is his real name!) had made half a billion dollars profiting from the privatisation of public services while the benefits were being slashed. While waiting for the police several activists took a swim in his private pool. Everyone ended up arrested for trespass and Sue Bradford was given a bail conditions preventing her from attending any protests. Fay was later given a knighthood.
In February 1992 Te Roopu Rawakore held its annual meeting in Porirua and followed up with a day of protests at the Prime Ministers house, the Reserve bank and the Treasury offices. In April 1992 the government hosted a conference at Auckland’s Pan Pacific Hotel to promote overseas investment in recently privatised public assets. The AUWRC organised three days of protests against what it called the ‘Sale of the Century’. By this time the police had decided it was time to attack the movement in a big way. Undercover police and paid informants had been used to gather information for some time, and many arrests had been made, but the police decided that more repression was necessary. As activists met after the protests plain-clothes detectives ran into the Auckland Unemployed Rights Center and started searching the premises without identifying themselves. The occupants (who included hairdressers, doctors, dentists, and their assorted customers) objected to this and scuffles broke out. Uniformed police arrived and charged into the building batoning anyone they could find. Wellington anarchist Sam Buchanan was hit in the eye with a PR24 long baton and collapsed, suffering convulsions. Police injured several others. Sam ended up in hospital, and over the next few days’ police arrested another 8-9 people, mostly witnesses to the assault on Sam. Police later produced a search warrant and claimed they were looking for explosives! Everyone was cleared of all charges and the Police were forced to pay a bit of money to Sam in compensation for permanent eye injuries.
Underlying tension between the leadership of AUWRC and some of the younger activists developed into conflict, ultimately causing the collapse of Te Roopu Rawakore as a national movement at a national meeting in Christchurch.
At the time I was a member of the Christchurch Unemployed Rights Group and was looking forward to having lots of unemployed activists in town for the national meeting. I had visited Auckland in October 1991 and stayed at a warehouse in College Hill where I met lots of anarchists involved in the unemployed rights movement, but hadn’t been to any meetings or protests in Auckland. In Christchurch we had taken part in various protests against the National Party since the benefit cuts were announced in. Some of the bigger protests were attended by hundreds of people but arrests were uncommon. So I was pretty in awe of the Aucklanders who had a very high profile a the time, getting arrested a lot, always on TV, and organising big full on protests. So, when it was announced that a national meeting of Te Roopu Rawakore was to be held in Christchurch, I was pretty excited.
I had no idea that the Auckland movement had just been through a nasty split. At the AGM I was baffled when Sue Bradford and her supporters were totally determined to prevent a new Auckland group from affiliating to Te Roopu Rawakore. The new group was called ARM (and noone seemed to know what the letters stood for) and they were anarchists. They were not punks, they were a fairly scruffy mixture of Maori (including future Green party leader Meteria Turei) and Pakeha anarchists in their early to late twenties. We south island folks couldn’t see what the problem was; Auckland was a big place so why not have more than one group there. So, after much discussion the movement voted to allow ARM to join as an affiliate member as a compromise (Affiliate members had no voting rights but could come to our meetings and receive a newsletter. If I remember rightly the affiliate members at the time included the Labour Party and the Salvation Army). This was too much for Bradford who burst into tears and along with her allies in the leadership of the national movement, resigned and walked out of the meeting.
I remember at the time being totally confused. How the hell did one weekend in Christchurch turn into a disaster for the entire movement? There must have been more to it than anyone at the meeting was telling us. Since then, Sue Bradford’s side of the split has been written about a few times, including interviews with Sue Bradford in magazines and newspapers, and in academic histories of Te Roopu Rawakore written by Cybele Locke. They say the anarchists were determined to take over the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Centre and change the policy of NUBM into an anti work, ‘welfare for all’ type campaign.
Some of the younger people involved in AUWRC had been involved in anarchist groups for a few years, but many became interested in anarchism independently and had no previous connection to the “anarchist scene”. For example Meteria Turei had been involved in a local unemployed rights group in Palmerston North and became Maori coordinator of Te Roopu Rawakore in 1990 and moved to Auckland. She and other young people, who were not punks, became involved in AUWRC and through them, the wider anarchist scene in Auckland, which was growing at the time.
According to Sam Buchanan, who was involved at the time and often took part in Auckland actions “The schism in Auckland arose from two things… one was a growing feeling that anarchists were doing a lot of work and never getting the benefits, particularly paid jobs, that Sue's old Marxist mates were getting. Which led to people drifting away on an individual basis. Second was Sue and Bill Bradford and their factions antagonism to various other people in the movement, leading to things like Metiria being banned from the Auckland People's centre, which led to Richard Arachnid, Metiria, and a couple of others forming ARM (which was like the punk band MDC - the acronym standing for all sorts of things such as 'Angry Rhinoceros Militia' "Aotearoa Rights Movement' etc. - Sue didn't get this at all and cited the various names as a sign of disorganisation. This was part of a general culture clash - Sue and her mates were mostly from the old Worker's Communist League and liked to project an image of being working class, serious 'revolutionaries' - they didn't get the playful, satirical punk/McGillicuddy stuff at all”.
Another version I heard (from the founder of ARM) a few years ago was that quite a few of the younger members of the movement developed an interest in anarchism totally independently of each other, and when they discovered that quite a few of them were interested in anarchism, the decided to have a meeting. Bradford and others wrongly assumed this was a plot against the leadership of AUWRC and decided to remove the threat. The dispute was pretty nasty and personal, and the details are probably pretty boring and irrelevant twenty years later. The important bit is that the high point of the unemployed rights movement in the 1990s led to a lot of young anarchists gaining experience and confidence and this led to the formation of the modern anarchist movement in NZ.
Anarchist groups have been active in New Zealand since 1990, and have a continuous history and membership going back to those unemployed rights groups. Some of the problems with anarchist politics in NZ also go back to those days too. Many of the older activists came out of the unemployed rights scene and became very experienced at small group protest actions but had no background in workplace struggles and this has been a weakness for the anarchist movement until very recently. The other related problem is that many anarchists came out of the punk and McGillicuddy subcultures. How to relate to this subculture stuff was a big topic of debate among anarchists in the 1990s and will be the subject of my next history rant.
next time: the rest of the nineties, Crazy Bruce gives up the State Adversary, proper anarchist conferences, and the Committee for the Establishment of Civilisation . .
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