It is easy to measure the against its own vision and score points — too easy and of little use. As Stone concluded, many years ago, when the economy boomed strikes succeeded and sparked a wave of militancy; when export prices fell and unemployment rose strikes usually failed, leaving revolutionaries to choose the ‘chiliasm of despair’ or huddle beneath the ‘umbrella of the Arbitration Court’.
When unemployment soared in –, and farmers and businessmen united to attack the court for introducing rigidities into the country’s internal cost structure, the and its members clung to the Arbitration Court as a drowning man might cling to a lifeline. With the repeal of compulsory arbitration for men
in even that lifeline snapped. The strongest unions, the Watersiders and the Freezing Workers, went down in defeat, and nobody even dreamed of helping them. ‘Industrial labour’, as the New Zealand Worker said, ‘has been beaten to its knees.’ Only strikes occurred in , the lowest number since . In the jobless outnumbered union members and the Unemployed Workers’ Movement boasted more members than the largest union.
Yet even in failing, the kept the vision of a powerful industrial organisation alive; kept the syndicalist vision of the centrality of a well-organised union movement to Labour politics alive; and helped sustain the cadres of activists who would, when conditions improved again in the mid-s, finally grab the moment. Many were members of the Communist Party, for the absence of unemployment in the Soviet Union enhanced the appeal of communism.
and resisting evictions. It ought to be said, in passing, that Roberts and his executive were converted to the importance of political action more than a decade earlier than some of those who shared the syndicalist vision.
More to the point, although we still lack any decent scholarly account, during the years – the managed to create a constitutional structure that recognised the ongoing power of localism and sectionalism together with the importance of forging a powerful national organisation. Despite the bitter feud between Roberts and Walsh, which weakened the still further in –, activists on both sides remained loyal to the old syndicalist vision of One Big Union and the tactics of class warfare at the point of production that had been developed by the pre-war revolutionaries. The national leaders had also come, each along his own path, to recognise the central role of the Labour Party. The old De Leonites who now ran the Labour Party also still shared that old De Leonite dream of a labour movement consisting of a united industrial wing and a revolutionary political party.
When in Labour enacted compulsory unionism, it made inevitable the formation of the second Federation of Labour. Peter Fraser, who had retained strong links to men on all sides of the factional disputes, except for communists, called up all debts and used all his not inconsiderable skill and influence to compel the warring factions of the to join with the almost moribund Trades and Labour Councils’ Federation to form the second New Zealand Federation
LEFT Part of the crowd of 4–5000 unemployed waiting for a deputation to report back on a meeting with Gordon Coates, a senior minister in the Coalition government with responsibility for employment, 10 May 1932. Journalist Pat Lawlor described what happened next:
When the deputation came out with its message I saw the ignition of the riot rocket before it ascended and descended the city. The first speaker … seemed to appeal to the crowd that Mr Coates had at least promised something, but the mob yelled derision. “Bring Coates down here,” was the cry. The succeeding speaker, on behalf of the single men, was inflammatory. “Coates,” he said, “has promised us nothing.” And he followed up in a voice that swept the crowd that “whereas they had asked for bread, Coates had promised them a stone.”
This was the end of the temper of the mob. “Down the town” — the ominous cry rang out. A spare half dozen of police detached themselves from the force in the grounds, but they were too late. The mob, driven desperate with waiting, commenced to move towards Lambton Quay. Too late for the police, too late for specials, they surged onwards. The cry went up: “They’re wrecking the Town.” I followed in the spate of the mob. Nothing could be heard but the sounds of violence. I passed many cars upended, and, in company with two excited policemen who declared “What can we do?” viewed the wreckage. Many windows were broken and there was looting. The streets were in disorder until the specials reinforced the police. From 7 p.m. onwards, the city was in fair control of the police and the specials. As I went home, I saw many rioters in the hands of the police, a multitude of windows shattered. The tally next day: 174 windows broken valued at £2,200 [nearly $230,000 in 2011 money], much looting, 23 arrests and a few injured. (Pat Lawlor, Old Wellington Days, Wellington, 1959, pp 147–9)
Police break up a meeting of unemployed and relief workers in Cuba Street, Wellington, on 11 May 1932. Fifty mounted and foot police baton-charged the crowd of 2000. Many were injured. Margaret Thorn, a prominent Labour Party activist, said the foyer of the Wellington Trades Hall was like a battlefield casualty station.
The Depression saw the worst riots in New Zealand’s history. Hunger, poverty and the loss of hope triggered violent clashes between the unemployed and police. The first riot took place in Dunedin in January 1932. The next, and most serious, riots were in Auckland on 14–15 April. Twenty thousand public servants and unemployed marched to the town hall for a meeting organised by the postal workers’ union. Thousands were unable to get in and there was a confrontation with police. After the unemployed leader Jim Edwards, who was trying to calm the protestors, was batoned by police, the crowd went berserk. Thousands moved down Queen Street, smashing shop windows and looting goods. The following night there was a second riot in Karangahape Road. Two weeks later further violence broke out in Christchurch during the tramways strike. There were fierce clashes between union members, scabs, police and special constables before a return to work was negotiated.
of Labour. Fraser opened the conference and Paddy Webb, founding president of the first Federation and now Minister of Labour, chaired every session. As a result, as Roberts said — as president of the Labour Party — the unions became ‘a branch of the Socialist movement with its working-clothes on.’
In adopting the symbol of De Leon’s — a workman’s forearm swinging a hammer — as the new Federation’s logo (front cover), they signalled their ongoing revolutionary resolve to insiders. The origins of the Federation of Labour cannot
be separated from the history of industrial unionism in New Zealand, which in turn can not be separated from the history of socialism. Nor, for that matter, can the history of socialism be understood without recognising the importance of industrial unionism and the quest to create a Federation of Labour.
Notes
Michael Bassett and Michael King, Tomorrow
Comes the Song: A Life of Peter Fraser,
Auckland, Penguin, .
For the Red Federation’s history see Olssen,
The Red Feds: Revolutionary Industrial Unionism and the New Zealand Federation of Labour –, Auckland, Oxford
University Press, .
The six-month strike by the Waihi Trade Union of Workers over the formation of a company-inspired breakaway union ended in November with violent attacks on the strikers and their families, including the death of Frederick Evans, one of the strikers. I discuss Fraser’s experience in the Red
Fed period in short compass in ‘Fraser and Lee’, in Margaret Clark (ed), Peter
Fraser: Master Politician, Palmerston North,
Dunmore Press, , pp –. For De Leon’s position see L G Seretan, Daniel De
Leon: The Odyssey of an American Marxist,
Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, ; for De Leon’s expulsion from the and Hayward’s see Melvyn Dubofsky,
We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World, Chicago, Quadrangle,
. For the background in London see C Tsuzuki, ‘The “Impossibilist” Revolt in Britain’, International Review of Social
History, vol (), pp –.
For the th-century background see J D Salmond, New Zealand Labour’s Pioneering
Days, Desmond Crowley (ed), Auckland,
Forward Press, and G D H Cole, ‘New Zealand’, in his History of Socialist
Thought, vol , Pt , The Second International,
–, London, Macmillan, ,
pp – (based largely on Desmond Crowley’s thesis). For the Knights see Robert E Weir, ‘Whose Left/Who’s Left? The Knights of Labour and “Radical Progressivism” ’, in Pat Moloney and Kerry Taylor (eds), On the Left: Essays on Socialism
in New Zealand, Dunedin, Otago University
Press, , pp – and Robert E Weir,
The Knights Down Under: The Knights of Labour in New Zealand, Newcastle upon
Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, . For the Blackball strike see Brian Wood, The
Great : Blackball Coal Miners’ Strike February – May , Blackball, B. Wood, .
See Olssen, Red Feds, ch (for Blackball) and ch (for the events of –). Len Richardson, Coal, Class, and Community: The
United Mineworkers of New Zealand – , Auckland, Auckland University Press,
, ch , provides an evocative account of the triumph of industrial unionism in the coal-mining industry. For the shifting views of an affiliate of the s see Peter Franks, Print & Politics: A History of Trade
Unions in the New Zealand Printing Industry, –, Wellington, Victoria University
Press, , ch .
There are only two surveys: Bert Roth,
Trade Unions in New Zealand: Past and Present, Wellington, Reed Education, ,
especially chs and ; and two essays by Olssen, the first of which was co-authored with Len Richardson, ‘The New Zealand Labour Movement, –’ and ‘The
New Zealand Labour Movement, –’, in Eric Fry (ed), Common Cause: Essays in
Australian and New Zealand Labour History,
Wellington and Sydney, Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, , chs and . See Olssen, ‘W.T. Mills, E.J.B. Allen and
John A. Lee and Socialism in New Zealand’,
New Zealand Journal of History, vol
(October ), pp – (Mills was organiser for the ) and Barry Gustafson,
Labour’s Path to Political Independence: The Origins and Establishment of the New Zealand Labour Party –, Auckland, ,
Auckland University Press, ch .
See Melanie Nolan (ed), Revolution: The
Great Strike in New Zealand, Christchurch,
Canterbury University Press, . Olssen, Red Feds, discusses the national
events. See Richardson, Coal, Class and
Community, ch , for the new sectionalism
that prevailed among the miners. The negative view largely reflected the
work of left-wing historians who accepted uncritically the views of the contemporary left: see Roth, Trade Unions in New Zealand, pp – and Conrad Bollinger, Against the
Wind: The Story of the New Zealand Seamen’s Union, Wellington, NZ Seamen’s Union,
, ch .
After the conference the coal miners formed their own federation, although John Dowgray, the gritty Scot who combined ideological vision with canniness, remained president of both the Miners Federation and the ; Richardson, Coal, Class &
Community, pp –. For the Seamen’s
separatism see Bollinger, Against the Wind, chs –; and for an overview Roth, Trade
Unions, ch . Olssen, Red Feds, pp –,
demonstrates the success of the strikers in rebuilding their control and their unions. e.g. Maoriland Worker, and July . Railway Review, July , p . Maoriland Worker, July . This was scarcely surprising, but it was
inaccurate. See Olssen, ‘Towards a Reassessment of W.F. Massey: One of New Zealand’s Greatest Prime Ministers (Arguably)’, in James Watson and Lachy Paterson (eds), Massey Re-appraised:
Proceedings of a Conference on W.F. Massey November , forthcoming from Otago
University Press, .
The longevity of the party has increased the importance of the founding conference,
obviously, but what is obvious in retrospect was certainly not obvious in prospect; there are many accounts of the founding meeting but Gustafson, Labour’s Path to Political
Independence, ch , remains the most
thorough.
For the significance of one variant of these ideas, guild socialism, see Jack Vowles, ‘Ideology and the Formation of the New Zealand Labour Party: Some New Evidence’,
New Zealand Journal of History, vol (April
), pp –.
P J O’Farrell, Harry Holland: Militant
Socialist, Canberra, Australian National
University, , ch .
For the Shearers’ fate see D T McNaughton, ‘The New Zealand Shearers’ Union and the Crisis in the Shearing Industry, –’,
Auckland University Historical Society Annual
(). The best study of a particular ideological faction in this period is Kerry Taylor, ‘ “Our Motto, No Compromise”: The Ideological Origins and Foundation of the Communist Party of New Zealand, New
Zealand Journal of History, vol (October
), pp –.
‘Report of Transport Workers’ Conference, ’, pp –, Roberts Mss. Beaglehole Room, Victoria University Library, Wellington. The were also suspicious of the ’s proposal to unite the railway unions; see , ‘Report on Conference with Engine-drivers, Firemen and Cleaners Association, April – May ’, pp –, Roberts Mss. Railway Review, the official journal of the , published full accounts of both meetings as a supplement to the issue of June , p .
Tom Young (nat. sec. ) to Tom Anderson (Auckland branch sec.), December , Auckland branch mss, Auckland University Library, Box. .
The fullest discussion of this organisation remains Michelle Slade, ‘Industrial Unionism in New Zealand, –: A Study of the Transport Workers’ Advisory Board and the Alliance of Labour’, thesis, University of Auckland, .
Maoriland Worker, July . Ibid.
For the impact of the Whitney Report see Slade, ‘Industrial Unionism’, p . See also Jack Vowles, ‘From Syndicalism to Guild Socialism: Some Neglected Aspects of the Ideology of the Labour Movement –
’, in John E Martin and Kerry Taylor (eds), Culture and the Labour Movement:
Essays in New Zealand Labour History
Palmerston North, Dunmore Press, , pp –.
I have explored the complex political strategies of workers, including non-union ones, in Erik Olssen and Bruce Scates, ‘Class Formation and Political Change: A Trans-Tasman Dialogue’, Labour History no , November , pp –. See also Miles Fairburn, ‘Why Did the New Zealand Labour Party Fail to Win Office until ?’, Political Science, vol (December ), pp –. For revisionism see Peter Gay, The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism:
Eduard Bernstein’s Challenge to Marx,
New York, Octagon Books, , and for constructivism Olssen’s discussion of Mills in ‘W.T. Mills, E.J.B. Allen, J.A. Lee and Socialism in New Zealand’, New Zealand
Journal of History, vol (October ),
pp –.
Olssen, Red Feds, pp , and , and Richardson, Coal, Class & Community, pp , , .
For events in the United States see Dubofsky,
We Shall Be All and Dona Torr, Tom Mann in Australasia –, London, History Group
of the Communist Party, .
Social Democrat, March and November .
This was Tom Barker’s view; Barker became a revolutionary thanks to Bennett. Tom Barker
and the I.W.W., recorded and edited by
E C Fry, Canberra, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, , pp –. Revolutionary Unionism, London,
and Auckland, . For King see Olssen,
Red Feds, pp –, –, – and
; and for Allen see Olssen, ‘W.T. Mills, E.J.B. Allen, J.A. Lee and Socialism in New Zealand’, New Zealand Journal of History, vol (October ), pp –.
R M Burdon, New Dominion: A Social and
Political History of New Zealand –,
Wellington, A.H. & A.W. Reed, , p . Cited by Bruce Brown, The Rise of
New Zealand Labour: A History of the New Zealand Labour Party, Wellington, Price
Milburn, , p .
For one interesting and significant example see Graeme Hunt, Black Prince:
The Biography of Fintan Patrick Walsh,
Auckland, Penguin, , chs – and
for the wider movement Seán Brosnahan, ‘ “Shaming the Shoneens”: The Green Ray and the Maoriland Irish Society in Dunedin’, –, in Lyndon Fraser (ed), A Distant
Shore: Irish Migration & New Zealand Settlement, Dunedin, Otago University Press,
, pp –. See also O’Farrell, Harry
Holland, pp –.
There is still no sound history of that party and the best study remains H O Roth, ‘The New Zealand Socialist Party’, Political
Science, vol (March ), pp –.
For some of the main ideological currents on the left in this period see P J O’Farrell, ‘The Russian Revolution and the Labour Movements in Australia and New Zealand, –’, International Review of Social
History, vol (), pp –, and Harry Holland, chs and ; Taylor, ‘ “Our Motto, No Compromise” ’, pp –; and Richardson, Coal, Class & Community, ch . Minutes of the Petone Marxian Club,
October , H O Roth mss, – /, , Wellington.
An anonymous writer for Scott Bennett’s
Social Democrat coined the phrase, cited
Olssen, Red Feds, p .
In a letter March , Downie Stewart mss, Hocken Library, Dunedin.
e.g. ‘Report of the Conference’, pp –.
Roth, Trade Unions, pp –, provides a good over-view. See also Slade, ‘Industrial Unionism’, pp – and Richardson, Coal,
Class & Community, pp –.
His papers, held by the Hocken Library, are particularly rich for this period. See the short biography of him in Gustafson, Labour’s Path
to Political Independence, p and Richard
V Tubbs’s essay in DNZB, vol , pp –. The ‘Report’, Mark Silverstone mss, Hocken
Library.
Michelle Slade, ‘Industrial Unionism’, pp –.
Maoriland Worker, July , p , for the endorsement by the ’s conference. E J (Ted) Howard, ex-Red Fed, was president of the in .
‘Report of Executive … January .’ His papers, held in the Beaglehole Room,
have often been ignored by labour historians working on the inter-war period.
R C J Stone, ‘A History of Trades Unionism in New Zealand, –’, thesis, University of Auckland, and ‘The
Unions and the Arbitration System, –’, in Robert Chapman and Keith Sinclair (eds), Studies of a Small Democracy, Blackwood and Janet Paul, Hamilton, , pp –.
Slade, ‘Industrial Unionism in New Zealand, –’.
Burdon, New Dominion, remains the best overall discussion of the post-war slump. See also Richardson, Coal, Class & Community, pp – and for the Seamens Union, Bollinger, Against the Wind, ch and Hunt,
Black Prince, ch . See also Roth, Trade Unions, pp –. For relations between the
and the Labour Party see Brown, Rise of
New Zealand Labour, ch .
Kerry Taylor, ‘Worker’s Vanguard or people’s voice: the Communist Party of New Zealand from origins to ’, PhD thesis, , and Len Richardson, ‘Class, Community and Conflict: The Blackball Miners’ Union, –’, in Len Richardson and W David McIntyre (eds), Provincial
Perspectives: Essays in Honour of W.J. Gardner,
Christchurch, University of Canterbury, , pp –, for a discussion of the CP in the West Coast mines. Blackball was the party’s headquarters.
For a summary of Slade’s argument see ‘Industrial Unionism in New Zealand’, pp –.
Roth, Trade Unions, p .
Apart from the works by Stone, cited in note above, the main accounts are those by Roth, Trade Unions, pp – and Olssen, ‘New Zealand –’, in Fry (ed),
Common Cause, pp –.
The first had actually been held in . See Report of proceedings of the open conference
convened by the N.Z. Alliance of Labour … Wellington, November … , Wellington
[].
See Roth, Along the Line: Years of Post
Office Unionism, Wellington, NZ Post Office
Union, , pp – and – and for the secession of the tradesmen from the in one city see Olssen, Building
the New World: Work, politics and society in Caversham s–s, Auckland, Auckland
University Press, , pp –. Brown, Rise of New Zealand Labour,
pp –, , – and . Bert Roth, A Century of Struggle: The
Auckland Trades Council –,
Auckland, Institute Press, [], pp –.
Kath Clark’s thesis — ‘A History of the Christchurch Trades and Labour Council –’, thesis, University of Canterbury, — is the only other history of a post-. For municipal socialism, see Sheldon Stromquist, ‘Making Space: Municipal Socialists’ Challenge to Elite Rule in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, –’, in Gregory Patmore, John Shields and Nikola Balnave (eds),
The Past is Before Us, Sydney, Australian