Pretty Ugly, Pretty Quickly: That the demographic and cultural divide between rural and urban New Zealand remains a source of deep unease to farmers cannot be doubted. Equally indisputable, historically-speaking, has been the militant, even violent, character of rural New Zealand’s response. In New Zealand history, when the country comes to town, things tend to get pretty ugly, pretty quickly. Morrinsville, New Zealand, 18 September 2017.
YESTERDAY IN MORRINSVILLE farmers rallied against Labour’s
proposed “Water Tax”. Why Morrinsville? Because that was the little country
town in which Jacinda Ardern grew up. Just think about that for a moment. Think
about what it says about the mindset of a distressingly large percentage of New
Zealand’s farming community.
The president of the Waikato branch of Federated Farmers,
Andrew McGiven, told the NZ Farmer
newspaper that farmers were tired of being scapegoated by politicians. Another
protest organiser, local farmer Lloyd Downing, complained to the same
publication in similar fashion:
“The lack of fairness and consistency in some of the
proposed policies, and the laying of blame solely at the feet of rural New
Zealand for all of our environmental challenges is what is frustrating farmers
– particularly when it is well known that the most polluted waterways are in
urban catchments. The water quality issues are a challenge for all New
Zealanders. Farmers recognise that, and are spending tens of thousands of
dollars each on reducing their environmental impact.”
It was in response to these “continued attacks” on “rural
New Zealand” that farmers rallied in their hundreds under Morrinsville’s giant
cow statue.
New Zealanders like to think of themselves as people with
strong ties to the land. It’s a fallacy which perhaps explains the enduring
popularity of the television programme, Country
Calendar. Except that, for most of its history, New Zealand has been an
urban nation. Certainly, by the early years of the twentieth century most Kiwis
resided and worked in towns and cities. In terms of their jobs, lifestyle and
political outlook, these “townies” were a very different breed.
That this demographic and cultural divide between rural and
urban New Zealand was a source of deep unease to farmers cannot be doubted.
Equally indisputable, historically-speaking, has been the militant, even
violent, character of rural New Zealand’s response. In New Zealand history,
when the country comes to town, things tend to get pretty ugly, pretty quickly.
In 1913, for example, hundreds of armed farmers on horseback
(known forever after as “Massey’s Cossacks” after the farmer-friendly Reform
Party prime minister, William Massey) were brought into New Zealand’s major
cities to crush what would come to be known as “The Great Strike”. According to
New Zealand historian, James Belich, exchanges of gunfire between Massey’s
Cossacks and the “Red Fed” strikers were common. Many of the trade unionists
involved in the Great Strike later became MPs and Ministers in the First Labour
Government.
One of those unionists was Peter Fraser. In 1945, as Prime
Minister and Labour Party Leader, Fraser presided over the abolition of the
infamous “Country Quota”. This was the section of New Zealand’s Electoral Act
which, ever since 1881, had added a 25 percent weighting to votes cast in rural
electorates.
The reaction of the farming community to Fraser’s
long-overdue rectification of what can only be described as a democratic
outrage is instructive. In his book, The
Quest For Security In New Zealand 1840-1966, W B Sutch describes how
Labour’s plans to abolish the Country Quota were met with “country-wide
protests from farmers’ organisations, an appeal to the Governor-General asking
him to intervene, and threats of direct action.” Quite what the cockies meant
by “direct action” remains unclear, but the Dominion Executive of the Farmers’
Union (forerunner of Federated Farmers) was prepared to raise the then quite
considerable sum of £250,000 to fund it!
The sort of thing the cockies had in mind only became clear
in 1951, when the first farmers’ government since 1935 was willing to shut down
New Zealand’s democracy for the 151 days it took Sid Holland’s National Party
to replicate its Reform Party predecessor’s success in ruthlessly suppressing
militant trade-unionism in the nation’s ports, coal mines, railways and
freezing works.
Thirty years later, the reactionary cultural instincts of
rural New Zealand were, once again, pitched into a prolonged and violent
confrontation with the progressive values of metropolitan New Zealanders. The
1981 Springbok Tour not only bore testimony to the tenacity of rural
conservatism, but also to its steady migration into the upper-middle-class
suburbs of the largest cities.
When Mike Hosking challenged National’s current leader to
name something he would march for, Dipton’s favourite son was at a loss. This was curious, since the photographs of a placard-carrying Bill English,
seated jauntily on ‘Myrtle the Tractor’, at the 2003 Federated Farmers’ protest
against the so-called “Fart Tax”, in Parliament Grounds, were still in the
archives – and easily retrieved.
When Andrew McGiven and Lloyd Downing encouraged their rural
brethren to gather under Morrinsville’s giant cow yesterday, they were simply
adding another chapter to an already lengthy story of rural antagonism
towards the needs and aspirations of New Zealand’s urban majority. The latter
looked on, appalled, at the selfishness and ignorance which unfailingly follow
the country into town.
This essay was
originally published in The Press of
Tuesday, 19 September 2017.
