The Spirit Of Progressivism: The Czech-born writer, Milan Kundera, wrote that: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. In a curious way, the Labour Party was founded to keep the memory of the Liberal Party’s achievements, and of its vision of an economically just and socially progressive New Zealand, alive.
IT WAS 99 YEARS AGO, this week, that the principal elements
of the New Zealand Left began arriving in Wellington. At a time of
extraordinary social stress, they were gathering in search of unity and a clear
way forward. Yes, the trade unions were well represented, but they were by no
means the only progressive voices present. The New Zealand Labour Party, which
was born 99 years ago, in July 1916, saw itself, rather, as a vehicle for the
“democratic public” – that fraction of New Zealand society for whom political
participation has always meant more than simply endorsing the decisions of the
powerful.
The trade unionists and journalists, clergymen and
temperance campaigners who came together that July were both alarmed and
appalled at the imminent introduction of military conscription. They saw it as
evidence of just how completely the war was swallowing New Zealanders’ civil
liberty. The ruthless brutality of Bill Massey’s government; it’s willingness
to deploy deadly force against its opponents; was raising doubts about the true
purposes of the war.
What, exactly, were so many young men dying to defend? What
had become of progressive New Zealand? Of “God’s Own Country”? The relentless
din of wartime propaganda made it difficult to remember the 20-year-long
Liberal Era of John Ballance and Richard Seddon. Censorship and sedition trials
made it difficult – even dangerous – to object to what had taken its place. War
mania had rendered rational argument impossible. The “democratic public” of New
Zealand felt themselves to be (and, almost certainly, were) a beleaguered
minority.
Over the course of the next twelve months much will be
written and spoken about the formation of the New Zealand Labour Party. The
celebration of the party’s centenary will be used, as all such occasions are,
to bolster the authority of those currently in command of both the party and
the wider labour movement. Every effort will be made to convince the Labour Party
members and trade unionists of today that their present leaders are worthy
successors to the men and women of 1916.
That is why it is so important that New Zealand’s left-wing
historians spend the next twelve months acquainting today’s progressives with
the facts of Labour’s history. They must loudly give the lie to those who
attempt to deny the radicalism of Labour’s past; and who argue that moderation
and compromise have always been the party’s watchwords. The blatantly political
purpose of such historical revisionism is to promote the idea that the extreme
timidity and ideological conservatism of today’s Labour Party is nothing out of
the ordinary; that Labour has always been timid and conservative.
Nothing is more likely to ensure Labour’s demise than the
triumph of this right-wing revisionist account of its history. Labour’s future
depends upon how truthfully her struggle on behalf of the “democratic public”
is retold. The progressives of today deserve to know how a beleaguered
minority, in spite of vicious government persecution and constant media
vilification, eventually transformed itself into a radical majority, and how
that radical majority changed this country forever – and for the better.
The Czech-born writer, Milan Kundera, wrote that: “The struggle
of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. In a
curious way, the Labour Party was founded to keep the memory of the Liberal
Party’s achievements, and of its vision of an economically just and socially
progressive New Zealand, alive. Over the course of the next year the struggle
to prevent Labour’s huge contribution to the history of New Zealand from being
forgotten, or, worse still, misrepresented, must be waged unceasingly.
If the “democratic public” is ever again to become a radical
majority, then the memory of how it fought – and won – the battles of the past
needs to be kept alive in the hearts and minds of every progressive New
Zealander.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 10 July 2015.
