The Voice Of Outraged Reasonableness: Labour Leader, Bill Rowling, opened his party's 1978 election campaign with a speech that both delighted and surprised his electoral base. The man property-tycoon, Bob Jones, called "The Mouse", had roared.
It was supposed to be a book about the birth of the
NewLabour Party, but somewhere along the way it became the story of what led me
into, and out of, the old Labour Party. In hopes of providing future political
studies students with a glimpse of what it was like to be a left-wing Labour
activist in the days of David Lange and Roger Douglas I am publishing The Journey on Bowalley Road as a series
of occasional postings. L.P. Hartley wrote: “The past is a foreign country,
they do things differently there.” May these memoirs, written in 1989, serve,
however poorly, as my personal passport.
Tuesday, 31 October 1978
WE WERE ALL VETERANS of one sort or another. Three years of
Muldoon had seen to that. Gathered together in that weatherboard slum, we
talked of little else but politics. The ordinary Otago students who flatted
with us laughed at our intensity – by the late 70s radical politics were on the
verge of becoming unfashionable.
Dunedin, hugging its windswept hills, was giving birth to
new diversions. Wild enragés like Chris Knox and The Enemy spoke to a generation grown wary of promises. Life was
moving to machine-gun rhythms. There were precious few jobs and precious little
enthusiasm for brave new worlds. Old and young alike responded to the maniacal
Knox’s chorus: “Pull down the shades!”
We were gathered around a black-and-white set; nervously
awaiting the televised opening of Labour’s election campaign. I was sceptical
about Bill Rowling’s ability to rouse any enthusiasm for a party that had spent
the best part of three years stabbing each other between the shoulder blades.
My mind went back to the Moyle Affair, the O’Brien Debacle. Could he do it? I
was doubtful.
And then Rowling began to speak. The room fell silent. The
veterans of anti-apartheid protests, anti-SIS protests, anti-nuclear protests
were listening. The little man grasped the podium with both hands, staring
calmly out over the heads of his huge and enthusiastic audience. Rowling’s was
a serious passion: he spoke with the voice of outraged reasonableness. I
recalled his concession speech three years before. “New Zealand will have need
of Labour again, and when she does Labour will be ready.”
Somehow he had reached that part of us that still believed
in New Zealand. He argued convincingly that what we had all experienced since
1975 represented the worst and not the best of our national character. Labour
was the guardian of the best of our political traditions: the tradition of
egalitarianism; the tradition of compassion; the tradition of co-operation; the
tradition of peace and justice for all humanity.
“There has never been a time in the history of this country
when we have been so divided with bitterness and sourness,” declaimed Rowling, “when
New Zealander has been turned against New Zealander, when each person tries to
keep his place by kicking the other fellow down … the path to recovery will not
be easy, but I pledge to you that tomorrow will be brighter … Together, we can
make it. Together, New Zealand can make it.” The audience was delighted. The
man property-tycoon Bob Jones called “The Mouse”, had roared.
The following day I made my way down to the Labour Party’s
North Dunedin office. A chain-smoking young woman, wrapped up against the
chill, pushed a membership book in my direction. As I emerged from the office,
into the pale spring sunlight, I chuckled to myself. In my hand was a tiny slip
of yellow cardboard telling me that I was now a member of the New Zealand
Labour Party. I stuffed the card into my wallet and walked on down the street.
This posting is
exclusive to the Bowalley Road
blogsite.
