The First Rule Of Radicalism.

Radical As: Māori healers recall a time when “words had power”. The words that give substance to ideas, no matter how radical, still do. If our representatives rediscover the courage to speak them out loud.

THERE ARE RULES for radicalism. Or, at least, there are rules for the presentation of radical ideas intended to become a part of our daily lives. The most important of these rules requires radical ideas to be explained and justified. Failure to make clear why radical solutions should be embraced and implemented will only ensure their rejection by a decisive majority of the population. Radical ideas and policies are only ever adopted when that same majority has been convinced that refusing to adopt them will only make matters worse.

It is difficult to imagine a more radical idea than the abolition of prisons. And yet, along with a proposal to establish a Māori Education Authority, the abolition of the New Zealand prison system is one of the key recommendations of the iwi-based group charged by the Labour Government with responding to the controversial He Puapua Report on the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Asked by Q+A’s Jack Tame whether they supported the call for prisons to be abolished, the co-leaders of Te Pāti Māori, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, both replied “absolutely”. The question now, having signalled their support for this radical policy, is whether Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer are prepared to explain and justify it to the voters of New Zealand.

On the answer to that last question will turn the broader electorate’s view of Te Pāti Māori. With the last three public opinion polls indicating that the party could well end up holding the balance of power after the 2023 general election, its ability to spell out clearly what it expects to receive in return for its support on confidence-and-supply motions – and why – has become a matter of acute political interest.

A serious response will likely generate increased support from angry and alienated tangata whenua – quite possibly at Labour’s expense. But a flippant, “we’re more radical than you are” response risks cementing in the voter’s mind an image of Te Pāti Māori as a collection of vainglorious political flakes, who should be kept as far away from power as possible.

Te Pāti Māori’s public support for the abolition of prisons cannot now avoid becoming part of the right-wing parties’ argument for giving the potential “Red-Green-Brown” coalition the widest of berths. With so many of National’s and Act’s supporters alarmed at what they see as a sharp rise in violent crime – due largely to the growth of gangs – the very idea that a party in Parliament is willing to countenance radical reforms that would see the Māori perpetrators of serious crimes escape incarceration, leaves the Right with no option but to go on the offensive against the entire He Puapua prescription.

This, in turn, will inspire all manner of fears and doubts within the ranks of Labour and the Greens. While neither party will be anxious to alienate Te Pāti Māori, the so-called “Centre-Left” will, nevertheless, be extremely loathe to endorse a policy as radical as the abolition of prisons. For most Labour and Green candidates the whole concept will appear so outlandish as to be dismissed out-of-hand as “nuts”. For Te Pāti Māori, however, such a reaction would only confirm the “colonialist” mindset of their putative partners – making the formation of a stable coalition even more problematic.

All of which makes clear why it is never enough to simply announce one’s support for a radical policy. Indeed, what the above considerations reveal is the huge potential for an electorally fatal backlash against such radical protestations.

That is not to say that radicalism should be avoided at all costs. As Simon Bridges told Parliament only last week in his valedictory address, there is little point in seeking a political career if the only forces driving you are focus groups and opinion polls. Members of Parliament should come to Wellington on the wings of ambition – not the plodding feet of caution. What the above considerations should reinforce, however, is the crucial importance of the rule about explaining and justifying radical change.

The template for successful radical reform is there for all to see in the unceasing explanations and justifications for the radical economic changes proposed by the “Free Marketeers” of the 1970s and 80s. When these latter “policy aggressors” first emerged on the scene, they, too, had to endure hearing their ideas dismissed as “extreme” and/or “nuts”.

Were they discouraged? Not a bit! As the 70s wore on, and the economic situation deteriorated across the Western World, “Free Market” explanations acquired an ever-expanding audience, and its justifications for a fundamental rearrangement of the way modern industrial economies are run began to sound increasingly reasonable.

The way forward for Te Pāti Māori is clear. It has to demonstrate that the regime of crime and punishment that has grown up in New Zealand over the past 180 years is no longer fit for purpose. The recidivism rate, alone, offers proof that the experience of incarceration is anything but rehabilitating. Similarly, the disproportionate number of Māori behind bars points to there being a great many more factors at work in our justice and corrections systems than straightforward criminality. All of the scientific evidence confirms the proposition that criminals are made not born.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer observed to Jack Tame that there were no prisons in pre-colonial Aotearoa. A cheap point, some might say, but one worth following up. Obviously, in the centuries prior to European settlement, Māori who offended against the customs and practices of their tribal and sub-tribal communities were required to atone and/or make recompense for their “crimes”. Explaining to Pakeha how that worked would be a good place for Te Pāti Māori to start in its quest to reform fundamentally this country’s treatment of offenders.

Those Pakeha convinced that Te Pāti Māori’s support for the abolition of prisons confirms it as being “soft on crime” might be very surprised to discover the fate of those who breached the norms of Māori society before the arrival of the Europeans. The concept of “utu” – the making of proper restitution for harms done – was manifested in many ways. “Soft” wasn’t one of them!

A more courageous Labour Party might also feel inspired by Te Pāti Māori’s advocacy for fundamental penal reform to interrogate its own history.

There was a time when Labour leaders were not unacquainted with the interiors of prison cells. When the working-class people whose votes they solicited did not universally condemn such familiarity. On the contrary, it made Labour’s claims to represent them all the more authentic. When Jack Lee wrote Children of the Poor, he was speaking from bitter personal experience.

There were times, too, when a Labour Shadow Attorney-General, all-too-well-acquainted with the bleak and soulless quality of Her majesty’s prisons argued that no jail should be escape-proof. The urge to be free, said Dr Martyn Finlay, was what made us human. To render that urge impossible of fulfilment was, accordingly, to make the state complicit in the crushing of the human spirit.

Māori healers recall a time when “words had power”. The words that give substance to ideas, no matter how radical, still do.

If our representatives rediscover the courage to speak them out loud.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 9 May 2022.

When Conservatives Are The Only True Radicals.

Restoration, Not Revolution: Throughout history, the popular call for change has been motivated overwhelmingly by a fervent desire to restore the status-quo ante: to make things the way they were before they went wrong. Only very seldom are masses of human-beings moved to demand a shift towards an entirely new and unfamiliar order of things. 

 

DR BRYCE EDWARDS, of Victoria University, has proclaimed New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, a “conservative”. Writing in The Guardian, Edwards declares: “Ardern’s instincts have been to protect and conserve. She has trodden cautiously throughout the pandemic, providing reassurance and the promise of normality to those in fear of the worst.”

The key concepts in Edwards’ first sentence are, of course, “protect” and “conserve”. He bolsters these, in the next, with “caution”, “reassurance” and “normality”. Though he does not say so explicitly, Edwards clearly regards these concepts as irreconcilable with any genuinely radical purpose.

Radicalism and left-wing politics are generally held to be inseparable: to describe someone as a left-winger presupposes their possession of a radical disposition – and programme. It is not, however, permissible to argue that the reverse is true: one can be a radical and yet have not the slightest respect for left-wing ideas. Indeed, these days there are arguably many more radicals on the Right, than on the Left.

That being the case, Edwards’ generally negative framing of Ardern’s “conservatism” is more than a little problematic. To be a radical, or, to use Edwards’ own words, “a pioneering progressive or socialist” is not always to be, more-or-less by definition, on the side of the angels. (Or, for that matter, the Proletariat!)

In honour of the season, let us take as our example the “radical” measures adopted by the puritan supporters of the “Commonwealth” – the republican political arrangement held in place by Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army (think: the Taliban in breastplates!) between 1649 and 1660.

By the puritans’ radical reading of Christianity, festivals such as Christmas were altogether too close to pagan revelry for the comfort of God-fearing men and women. Even before the execution of King Charles I in 1649, the radical protestants who dominated the House of Commons had thought it best to encourage his subjects to treat the mid-winter period “with the more solemn humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights’.”

Legislation confirming this puritanical rejection of the sinfully joyous yuletide season soon followed. The feasts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun were simply removed from the Christian calendar. From 1644 until the Restoration in 1660, celebrating Christmas was illegal. As C.S. Lewis, that devout Christian, keen royalist, Oxford scholar and children’s author puts it in The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe: “Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”

Leaving Narnia behind, and returning to this considerably less enchanting world, we might further consider the actions of other radical puritans – like those belonging to the now thankfully defunct Islamic State. Or, the radical “Tea Party” Republicans, who saw moderation as treason and prepared the way for the radically disruptive Donald J. Trump. Thirty years on, a great many New Zealanders still resent deeply the radical reforms of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson. Even more Kiwis, in 2020, are profoundly grateful that their Prime Minister did not adopt the radically unsuccessful Swedish approach to fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.

Perhaps the strangest observation in Edwards’ Guardian article argues that Ardern’s “self-declared ‘politics of kindness’ isn’t particularly revolutionary, nor very tangible”. In a world where the very idea of kindness has been out of fashion for so long, the Prime Minister’s use of the word generated a public response that was as physical in its consequences as it was revolutionary in its intent. It was kindness that bound together “The Team of Five Million”, and it was their unforced solidarity and unity of purpose that made New Zealand the envy of the world. Tell all those young New Zealanders dancing at this summer’s music festivals; tell all the grandparents who hugged their grandchildren on Christmas Day; that the “politics of kindness” has produced no tangible effect!

Edwards also notes that: “The political left is […] increasingly bristling at the conservatism of Ardern.” To many New Zealanders, however, that will not be interpreted as a bad thing – quite the reverse, in fact. When they think of the political left, the images called to mind are not of Cabinet ministers carrying furniture into the first state house. No, their thoughts are all about the excoriating tweets, outlandish claims and bitter recriminations of “Cancel Culture”; and the equally distressing diatribes against “colonisation”, “hate speech” and “white privilege”. If the Prime Minister has made it her mission to “protect” people like themselves – ordinary Kiwis – from such excesses, and to “conserve” a measure of decency in their country’s political discourse, then they won’t be “bristling” – they’ll be cheering.

Just like the hundreds-of-thousands of Englishmen and women who lined country roads and filled city streets from Dover to London to welcome home Charles Stuart – King Charles II – in the very merry month of May 1660.

The dour regime of the Commonwealth; of Cromwell’s “Protectorate”; may have been radical (certainly they were the only successful republicans in 1,500 years of English history) but they were also dictatorial and joyless. For centuries after the rule of the New Model Army’s “Major-Generals”, Englishmen resisted the idea of a large standing army as a threat to their “ancient liberties”. The restoration of the monarchy (and Christmas!) was indisputably the wish and will of the overwhelming majority of the English people. If they had been given a vote on it in 1660, Charles would have won by a landslide.

If its “conservative” to give the people what they want, then Jacinda Ardern is a conservative. If protecting them from Covid-19 and political extremism is “conservative” then she stands guilty-as-charged. If offering people caution, reassurance, and a semblance of normality as the rest of the world plunges deeper into chaos, makes our Prime Minister a “conservative”, then that’s a badge-of-honour she can wear with pride.

Dr Edwards favours radical change, but he does not appear to be aware of what motivates people to seek change. Throughout history, the popular call for change has been motivated overwhelmingly by a fervent desire to restore the status-quo ante: to make things the way they were before they went wrong. Only very seldom are masses of human-beings moved to demand a shift towards an entirely new and unfamiliar order of things. Certainly, history is studded with minorities who were absolutely certain about the proper ordering of paradise. Most people, however, hanker after the good times they remember – and not for H.G. Wells’ “Things To Come”. Radicals would do well to remember that the winning slogan in the 2016 Brexit Referendum was “Take Back Control”. It was the back wot won it!

Which leaves me wondering whether, in these peculiar times, the only true radicals are conservatives. If the only way to ensure that the voters’ lives remain the same, is for everything to be changed, then I strongly suspect that Jacinda Ardern is the ideal politician for the job.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 28 December 2020.