The Journey: A Political Memoir - Posting No. 10

Members For The Distribution Workers Federation: By 1986, Trade unionists Larry Sutherland, Sonja Davies and Graham Kelly were moving steadily towards their parliamentary objectives. Observing their progress, the author, like so many Labour activists before him, posed the question: Why not me? The answer, as always, turned on exactly how much of his integrity he was prepared to sacrifice.

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, 16 September 1986

ST PATRICK’S HALL is filling up with members of the Timaru Labour Party. I stand nervously at the entrance, trying to recognise the faces of those I have canvassed for support. Noelene Hanifin, Mike’s mother, is still locked up with the Timaru Labour Electorate Committee (LEC). Mike, Francesca and I cast worried glances at the door separating us from the meeting. We are all hoping that Alan Aldridge, the LEC Chairperson, will be able to head-off the supporters of the Timaru Labour Establishment and its redoubtable leader, Oliver Gavigan.

Timaru, long a Labour stronghold, fell to the National Party in the 1985 by-election. The meeting in St Patrick’s Hall has been called to select the Party’s candidate for the 1987 General Election. I have decided to seek the nomination.

My three-piece suit and trim haircut belie the feelings of hostility I now harbour towards the Government that I am, quite unrealistically, attempting to join. It was not always so.

*   *   *   *   *

SINCE THE BEGINNING of the year, a new expression has crept into Labour party conversation: “constructive engagement”. It began as a Sean Fleigner witticism. Constructive Engagement was the term coined by the Reagan Administration to describe the United States’ relationship with the South African apartheid regime. Sean drew the analogy with Fran Wilde’s insistence that the left-wing of Labour’s caucus must seek to work with the cabinet and attempt to guide them towards a more acceptable set of policies. I have used the expression in my contributions to the National Business Review. Now it has become respectable.

Other influences have been at work throughout 1986. Stan Rodger’s Labour relations Bill is in the process of being drafted and nervous trade unionists are working frantically behind the scenes to ensure that their traditional rights are not legislated out of existence.

Rob Campbell has floated the concept of an Australian-style “Accord” between the FOL and the Government.

Throughout the country, left-wing activists have been pouring their energies into local body elections. In Wellington and Dunedin (the most vociferous centres of anti-Government agitation) impressive gains will be made by the Labour Party in terms of representation on their city councils.

Everywhere, the energy and intensity of 1985 has been channelled into “constructive” party work. And at the controls of the machine sits Margaret Wilson and her coterie. The influence she exercises, by virtue of her impeccable credentials with the Women’s and Affiliates’ Councils (the two most influential bodies within the party) is impressive.


The secret of her success rests upon a chameleon-like gift for blending into her environment. In front of the Women’s Council she is the very image of a 1980s socialist feminist. Speaking to the Affiliates’, she takes on the guise of a concerned lecturer in industrial law, wrestling with the awesome difficulties of the Labour Relations Bill. At the regional conferences Margaret is full of encouragement. At Annual Conference, the stern guardian of the Government’s ratings. Wilson controls the party in a way Anderton never did. The party is hers and she is the Government’s greatest asset. Colin James, Editor of the National Business Review, will dub her “Politician of the Year”.

*   *   *   *   *

I HAVE EXPERIENCED her skill at close quarters. As an office-holder in Campbell’s Distribution Workers’ Federation, I have observed the manoeuvrings of Graham Kelly, Sonja Davies and Larry Sutherland (all of whom have close connections with the DWF) as they moved steadily towards their parliamentary objectives. Why not Chris Trotter MP? It is the lure that traps the most determined of dissidents. That siren-song of power. In the office of Tony Timms, the party’s general secretary, Margaret Wilson sizes me up:

“You seem presentable enough,” she laughs, “and possess no obvious vices.”

“Those Timaru bastards are all mad.” Timms leans forward across the desk. “They write to me at least once a week! We have to have a decent candidate.”

To those reaching towards the sunlight of political office, such talk is the purest of all fertilisers. On the Third Floor of Fraser House, in the heart of the nation’s capital, I am already beginning to succumb; pretty speeches about the compatibility of Rogernomics and social-democracy trip off my tongue. Timms and Wilson beam encouragement: candidates for selection have little to gain by writing embarrassing anti-government articles for the National Business Review.

*   *   *   *   *

NOW I HAD  a selection meeting to address. There was no earthly chance of me winning: in the end I simply could not stick to the script. One foray into the Timaru electorate, one evening of reciting the party line, had been enough. My friends looked at me askance; was this really Chris Trotter talking earnestly about the need for “realism”, about inflation “tracking down”? Francesca hardly recognised me. I hardly recognised myself.

A new script would have to be written. On August 25 a letter was distributed to 500 party members throughout the Timaru electorate. In the letter I accused the Labour caucus of “riding roughshod over practically every principle the Labour Party stands for.” A surprising number of Timaru people had welcomed this broadside from the Dunedin “democratic socialist”; the local party faithful, however, were appalled.

The outrage was not restricted to Timaru. News of my attack upon the Government had been carried in all the metropolitan newspapers. Labour MPs in marginal seats were furious. I was to confront some of them at the annual conference, held in Wellington between 29 August and 1 September 1986.

*   *   *   *   *

THE AFFILIATES’ COUNCIL met prior to the conference. Peter Cullen, secretary of the Wellington Hotel and Hospital Workers’ Union, drew me aside.

“Look Chris,” he said, “we’ve put you down as our third preference for Industrial Rep’. When our delegates read that bilge you wrote in the candidate’s biographies they just about threw up. We weren’t going to vote for you at all until we read about that letter you sent out in Timaru.”

“No worries, Peter,” I reassured him, “I didn’t deserve any better for that shit. I’m just glad I came to my senses in time.”

“If Rick barker makes it on to the Exec, our votes will go to you. If he doesn’t, it’ll be him and Kelly.”

It’s a tricky situation. Campbell has sanctioned my nomination for Industrial Representative on the New Zealand Council of the party in an attempt to block the election of Pat Kelly. (Campbell and Kelly have been at daggers drawn since the partial privatisation of the Bank of New Zealand, a move Campbell facilitated.)  In my “candidate days” I had looked like a safe bet, but now, unbeknown to Campbell, and in response to his conversion to Rogernomics, I have switched my allegiance to his arch-rival.

The decision is not difficult to make. I seek out Rick Barker (National Secretary of the Hotel and Hospital Workers Union) and convey to him my determination to withdraw in his favour if he fails in his bid for the Executive. By doing this I hope to swing my votes in Kelly’s direction.

*   *   *   *   *

THE WELLINGTON Hotel and Hospital Workers Union hall in Marion Street is overflowing with what the news media are describing as “The Broad Left’. I am a little sceptical. It seems that half the delegates to conference are packed into this great cavern of a room in the heart of Wellington’s red-light district. And from the ministerial LTDs parked outside, one must draw the conclusion that the “Broad Left” is a very loose definition indeed.

Peter Cullen chairs the meeting, flanked by Jim Anderton and  Pat Kelly. We are witnessing the birth of the Economic Policy Network – a loose coalition of Labour Party dissidents, trade unionists and left-wing economists. The atmosphere is boisterous and good-humoured. Even on the Left, it seems, the energy is now controlled and “constructively engaged”. The next general election is just twelve months away and the entire party is carefully tidying away the debris of past conflicts. The conference slogan: “The Future is Ours”, is obviously being interpreted in different ways.

Rob Campbell glowers darkly over the proceedings, keeping his own counsel. There will be precious few votes for him from the Left this year, his lobbying campaign will focus on the Centre and Right of Conference. A little further down the hall stands Phil Goff. Perhaps he is recalling the days when he, too, called himself a socialist?

The PSA’s economist, Peter Harris, launches into a lengthy lecture on the failings of the Government’s economic policies. The speeches that follow are passionate but unfocused. I find it difficult to concentrate. Someone asks me to sing The Red Flag. The audience struggles through the chorus, but the verses I sing alone. The “Broad Left” has yet to learn the words.

*   *   *   *   * 

BARKER’S BID falls just short of victory. The rumour mills of the Women’s Council have done their work well and Ruth Dyson pips him at the post. I am waiting in the queue of speakers at the front of the auditorium. Barker is just behind me. “You made a deal – now stick to it!” I tell myself.

I move across the stage to Tony Timms and inform him of my withdrawal. Wilson, seated next to him, swivels round in her chair and glares at me.

“Don’t tell me, tell the returning officer!” Timms snaps back.

“Why?” Is all Wilson allows herself by way of comment.

Burly Geoff Braybrooke, is clearly enjoying the drama. As he announces my withdrawal, all hell breaks loose among the delegates from the Distribution Workers’ Federation.

“Point of Order! Point of Order!” Larry Sutherland cannot believe what he has heard. “Chris Trotter is standing for Industrial Rep!”

“Not any more,” Braybrooke chuckles, “he’s just told me he’s withdrawn.”

Campbell lunges up the aisles to the DWF delegation.

“Where’s Trotter!”, he snarls.

Francesca, feigning innocence, waves airily in the direction of the exit. Campbell, dressed like a street-fighter in leather jacket and jeans, lopes off in pursuit. Down at the front of the hall, resuming my place in the queue, I breathe a large sigh of relief.

Kelly wins the election for Industrial rep by a mere 16 votes. Campbell is livid.

*   *   *   *   * 

IT IS the Labour Party’s seventieth anniversary. The social in the old Wellington Town Hall that evening is a celebration of the party’s longevity. The events of the day are beginning to take their toll. Sick at heart, I survey the revellers. Just what is the Labour Party in 1986? Certainly not the party that was formed in 1916. I feel estranged, forsaken, alone. My own union is barely speaking to me. Pat Kelly is strangely aloof. Annette King, MP for Horowhenua, bails me up and lambasts me for the Timaru letter. A deep sense of loathing congeals in the pit of my stomach. “At the Timaru selection”, I tell myself, “I will tell the truth about this party.”

*   *   *   *   * 

MINE WAS THE second-to-last speech of the evening: “Tonight,” I begin, “we will talk of what Labour was, and of what Labour has become. It is a tale of two cities: it is the story of Jerusalem, the City of Hope; and of Babylon, the City of despair.”


All nervousness falls away as I lift up the banner of dissent once more. I have passed the test, will remain myself: “I shall not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till we have built Jerusalem … in New Zealand’s green and pleasant land.”

The nomination went to Gary Clarke, a local lawyer. He lost.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.  

The Journey: A Political Memoir - Posting No. 9

Scene Of The Crime: The Labour Party met for its annual conference in the Christchurch Town Hall in August 1985. It was there that the internal party debate over GST would be won or lost. When all the cards and ballot papers had been counted it was clear that while a majority of the party wasn't yet willing to vote with the Left - it was willing to vote for them.

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.

Friday, 30 August 1985

WE HAVE BEEN SUMMONED. Mike Hanifin and I join Rob Campbell, Peter Willis, Jack Cunningham and the other delegates from unions affiliated to the Distribution Workers Federation in a tiny, smoke-filled, chamber deep in the heart of the Christchurch Town Hall. A deal is about to be done.

Campbell and Rex Jones, Secretary of the Engineers Union, have a proposition to put to us concerning Remit 56. It is our own remit, the Sunday Morning Club's. I remember distinctly writing the words that morning back in Adams House:

That this Conference register its strong objections to the present arbitrary nature of economic policy formation and calls for a return to the principle of the widest possible consultation and discussion within the NZLP prior to the formulation and implementation of economic policy.

“We simply don’t have the numbers out there,” Campbell says flatly, “we won’t win.” His argument is brutally simple. If you can’t win a vote, the best you can hope for is not to be seen to lose. “Rex and I will run the arguments on an amended version of Remit 56. Remit 62A will be lost.”

Remit 62A states simply: “That the proposed Goods & Services Tax not be implemented.”

*   *   *   *   *

Mike and I emerge from the close atmosphere of the chamber and into the wide foyer that circles the auditorium. John Stewart, former Values Party worker and now one of the Labour Party Conference organisers, waylays us. Looking us up and down with a shrewd eye, he laughs: “You two look like you could use a drink!” In no time we are seated in a room behind the stage. Faintly, the PA system can be heard relaying the earnest speeches of the delegates.

Life Saver: Former Values Party Organiser, turned Labour Party activist, John Stewart.

“What did you make of Margaret’s speech?” Someone asks. “I wasn’t sure what she meant by all those references to Right Wing Fundamentalists,” says another. “I mean who are they? Where are they?”

“That’s easy,” Stewart begins to laugh in a high-pitched, wheezing sort of way. “They’re all in the Cabinet!”

Saturday, 31 August 1985

I AM FEELING SULLIED. The night before, in the house bar of Lattimer Lodge, I dutifully relayed Campbell’s diagnosis of the conference to the Otago delegation. Our remit, like all remits to Labour Party conferences, could only have raised a brief ripple in the seamless surface of the Government’s complacency. Nevertheless, it was one of those initiatives that Wilson, Douglas and Caygill had been unable to turn back at the regional conference, and we were proud of it. Now I was telling them that the union bosses were planning to amend it. Worse still, I was imparting the bleak news that the affiliates would not be backing Remit 62A. Their eyes spoke of bitterness and disillusionment. Silently, they turned away.

I tried to reassure myself with the thought that Campbell and Jones were experienced politicians, much more accomplished than I was a reading the mood of Labour Party conferences. After all, wasn’t politics the art of the possible? Campbell and Jones were forceful speakers: in moving and seconding the amendment they would put the Government on notice that the trade unions would accept no more deviations like GST.

The Heavy Brigade: Union boss, Rob Campbell, kept the Left's "arses intact".

Campbell moves to the microphone. In stunned disbelief I hear him read out the amendment. Our cry of protest has been smothered in the bland platitudes of the union politician:

That Conference acknowledges the serious economic position facing the country after nine years of mismanagement and the desire in the community for economic reform, but also notes the real financial and other pressures facing many in the community and calls on the Government:   a) to monitor the impact of policy to ensure that living standards suffer no further decline and that improvements, particularly for low income families, occur promptly.  b) that this monitoring by Government take place in close consultation with the party, the unions and other electoral interests.

Campbell’s speech to the amendment is short and perfunctory. Rex Jones is nowhere to be seen. The amendment is carried. Wilson moves on briskly to Remit 57.

Furious, I lurch from my seat, elbowing my way past the delegates in the aisles, I confront Campbell:

“Where was Jones!” I hiss across the heads of the startled people seated at Campbell’s table. Campbell grins broadly, turning his palms and shrugging in a gesture of sublime indifference: “I’ve no idea.” Struggling to find I reply, I stare back at him in impotent rage. No words come. I have been used, and now my usefulness is over. Campbell resumes his conversation with the delegate to his right.

*   *   *   *   *

The opponents of GST are testing the mood of Conference. Remit 57 calls for a “planned, self-sufficient, socialist economy”. The Government’s speakers are having a field day: One by one they line up to lecture the conference on the global economy and the idiocy of “cloth cap socialism”. The question is put to the Conference. The socialists are defeated on a card vote: 323 For: 573 Against.

Remit 62A, opposing GST, is lost on the voices.

Game, Set and Match to Roger Douglas.

*   *   *   *   *

THE LABOUR PARTY is a quirky beast. Having endorsed the Goods & Services Tax, the conference goes on to elect a left-wing Policy Council. Jim Anderton tops the poll with a staggering 611 votes. Time and time again I will see this behaviour repeated by the delegates to party conferences. While unwilling to openly challenge their government by voting down key policy decisions, they will skilfully utilise the party’s electoral process to register their protest at the parliamentary wing’s conduct. The message from the ordinary branch membership is clear: “We won’t vote with the Left, but we will vote for them.”

The Saturday night celebration at Jim Anderton’s place is a crowded and noisy affair. The Left are there in strength; buoyed up by the results of the party elections and trying desperately to put a brave face on the Government’s victory over GST.

“Well, Rob, what happened to the great economic debate?” I was still smarting from the Campbell/Jones finesse of the afternoon.

Campbell pauses in mid-sip from his bottle of Steinlager: “It’s alright, Mate,” he grins, “we got out with our arses intact – that’s the main thing.”

With our arses intact! Soon the whole room is falling about with laughter as the Great One’s words are twisted into ever more obscene combinations. Francesca is acidic: “What was wrong with his arse in the first place!” She hisses, and returns to her argument with Pat Kelly.

The party warms up. Kelly sings When The Red Red Robin Goes Bob, Bob Bobbin’ Along. I follow with a re-worked version of Don Franks’s Hold Down The Wages, and my own We’re All Working For A Labour Victory:

We all used to think that the workers

Would follow our clarion call

But we’ve given up the revolution

To go canvassing door-to-door.

Not to be outdone, Jim Anderton picks up a guitar and, in a surprisingly fine baritone, gives us a West Auckland version of the talking-blues:

Oh if you get to heaven

Before I do,

Just cut a hole

And pull me through.

“If you’re going to pull David through,” Pat Kelly whispers impishly, “it’ll have to be a very big hole!”

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

The Journey: A Political Memoir - Posting No. 7

And So It Begins ... : Roger Douglas announces radical tax reform in his first Budget, November 1984. The regressive Goods & Services Tax prompted considerable opposition, both within the Labour Party organisation and from the broader labour movement. President Margaret Wilson, responding to rank-and-file alarm, announced a full-scale internal economic debate to coincide with the party's next round of regional remit conferences, scheduled for April-May 1985.

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.

Sunday, 21 April 1985 

WE ARE GATHERED in the back room of the University of Otago’s Adam’s House. Russell Taylor, an organiser for the Otago Clerical Workers’ Union, has dubbed us the Sunday Morning Club (a reference to the Sunday Club, whose rallies for the deposed leader of the National Party, Sir Robert Muldoon, have seriously weakened an already dispirited opposition). The title is apt: already a number of Parliamentary Press Gallery journalists are calling the Left Wing of the Labour Party “the real opposition”.

Our official title is the Economic Policy Group; ostensibly we are here to discuss alternative economic strategies to those of the Government we all slaved to elect barely twelve months earlier. Our true purpose, though unstated, is clear to everyone present: we must defeat GST.

The new president of the Labour Party, Margaret Wilson, has proclaimed a full-scale economic debate – to be held in conjunction with the 1985 round of regional remit conferences. It is an exercise in damage control. Roger Douglas’s first budget has shocked the party. Central to the Government’s monetary and fiscal policies is a dramatic shift from direct to indirect taxation. A ten percent Goods & Services Tax (GST) will be levied on all consumer items without exception.

The trade unions are aghast. A progressive income tax has always been the cornerstone of New Zealand's welfare state. PSA economist, Peter Harris, and FOL national executive member, Rob Campbell, will lead the fight at the regional remit conferences. As Secretary of the Otago Trades Council, I am determined to build an organised resistance to the GST proposal. Sean Fleigner, Youth Representative on the New Zealand Council of the party; Mike Hanifin, former regional organiser for the party in Southland and now a trade union official based in Dunedin; Louise Rosson, an economics teacher at Moreau College; Russell, the Convenor, and myself constitute the core of the fight-back in the southern region.

Mike is the most accomplished tactician among us. He has had the foresight to acquire a full list of the delegations to the Otago-Southland regional remit conference. One by one we go through the names, ticking off our likely supporters, crossing out our opponents. When we add in the block votes of the trade union affiliates it is clear – we have the numbers.

Thursday, 25 April 1985  

THE SEMINAR ROOM is filling up with members of the Castle Street Branch of the Labour Party. Widely regarded as a branch for the University of Otago staff, Castle Street has a surprising number of working class members. Many of them are here tonight: lured by the prospect of hearing Rob Campbell address them on the GST issue. It is my sorry duty to tell them he isn’t coming.

Campbell has sent me a copy of Peter Harris’s speech to the Northern South Island regional remit conference. I don’t like the omens: it’s the evening of Anzac Day – commemorating New Zealand’s most appalling military defeat – and I am supposed to “carry the ball” with speech notes that failed to convince the delegates at Westport.

All over the country Margaret Wilson’s economic debate is proving to be an extraordinary catalyst for organisation and participation. The Northern-South Island regional remit conference, held in the Labour stronghold of Westport a few days earlier, attracts hundreds of delegates. The GST Debate is ferocious. On the speaking order Peter Harris is sandwiched between Associate Finance Ministers David Caygill and Richard Prebble. Personal attacks proliferate. Outside the hall the Communist Party mounts a picket. Anderton – an increasingly vocal critic of the Government’s policies – declares himself and his supporters to be “the only opposition the Government’s got”. The vote, when taken, is very close. The Government is saved by the 17 card-votes of the Canterbury Hotel and Hospital Workers – all of them cast by Graham Harding who, shortly afterwards, is appointed national secretary of the Police Association.

The debate at Castle Street is brief and brutal. The Left has the numbers here and the objections of the good ladies of the university are swept away by an alliance of socialist academics and ordinary workers. We take the precaution of binding our delegates to vote against GST at the remit conference on Saturday. The air after the meeting is full of snide references to “cloth caps” – the Labour Right’s sneering epithet for the union-dominated Left.

Saturday, 27 April 1985

‘THIS IS A SET UP!” Margaret Wilson hisses to Terry Scott, chairperson of the Otago-Southland regional council of the Labour Party. “Get me on the next flight out!”

Wilson’s agitation is understandable. Like some large, pre-programmed machine, the regional conference is rubber-stamping the remits of the left-wing/trade union  alliance. There is no debate. Nikki Larson, the delegate reporting back the decisions of the workshop on economic policy, is reading out the resolutions and the conference is endorsing them without discussion. I am finding it hard to believe myself. Could it be that we are actually going to win?

The GST debate begins. Roger Douglas and Rob Campbell present the arguments for and against. Campbell, a former lecturer in economics at Victoria University, sets out the sums on a blackboard. His presentation is cool and professional – almost detached. The audience listens intently, struggling to absorb the numbers and the jargon. The applause is polite.

Douglas is messianic. He scrawls figures on the blackboard with violent energy, barking out his arguments like a parade sergeant. There is an aura of absolute conviction about the man that is taking its toll on the waverers. Will they hold?

With the opening salvoes still echoing through the packed auditorium of Taieri High School, David Caygill rises to second the Finance Minister. His rhetoric is polished but strangely unmoving. Nevertheless, his argument that a failure by the Party to endorse GST can only be seen as a “No confidence motion in the Government” strikes home.

It is left to Michael Cullen, MP for St Kilda and the Government whip, to clinch the argument for the parliamentary wing. He moves an amendment to our resolution opposing the introduction of GST. The delegates must now decide whether they should make their support for the new tax conditional upon a clear demonstration that the incomes of low paid workers will be fully protected.

It is all the delegates need. Our majority melts away as the Government’s appeal to loyalty over-rides the arguments of equity. Campbell’s figures clearly show that there is simply not enough revenue to fully guarantee the incomes of the poor. But reason isn’t sufficient. Helplessly, I watch our Sunday Morning Club comrades raise their cards in support of the Government. Outraged, I see our Castle Street delegate vote against the instructions of her branch. Cullen’s amendment is carried: 75 votes in favour, 54 against.

Out in the foyer, Roger Douglas and David Caygill catch each other’s eye. Caygill sweeps his hand down from his shoulder, snapping his fingers in a triumphant gesture of domination.

They expected to lose in Dunedin: they have won again.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

The Journey: A Political Memoir - Posting No. 6

Anderton's Party, Lange's Government: By September 1984 power had shifted from Labour's left-leaning, 85,000-strong party organisation, to the 56 members of the parliamentary caucus. Fiercely (and successfully) protective of it anti-nuclear policy, the party could not halt the "Rogernomics" juggernaut.

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.

Saturday, 8 September 1984

WELLINGTON’S MICHAEL FOWLER CENTRE has become a vast political celebration. Nine hundred delegates fill the auditorium – upstairs and down. “Labour is back! This is the Victory Conference!”

The stage management is masterful. Never before has the Labour Party’s touch been so assured. The platform gleams in the television lights; cool whites reflecting a Nordic efficiency. The party’s worship of the Scandinavian social democrats is reflected in the furniture of power. The cantilevered podiums rear up effortlessly from the floor, everything is smooth, all the corners are rounded.

Jim Anderton is triumphant. More than any other’s this is his victory. He presides over the party with an unquestioned authority.

But the party is not the government.

The days of crisis  that followed the general election have consolidated the leadership of David Lange and Roger Douglas. Overnight the balance of power has shifted. The party, vast and energetic though it may be, no longer has anything to trade with. The election has been won. The Parliamentary Wing is secure. The process of transformation can now begin.

It is begun with great subtlety. The delegates are invited to the Beehive. “We are your government. If you have any questions, come and ask your Cabinet Ministers.”

A sense of misgiving prevents me from joining the throngs of proud delegates who traipse up the hill to stand open-mouthed amid the pomp and circumstance of executive power. The parliamentarians do not need to speak; their environment speaks for them:

“We are the masters now.”

Power Shift: Following the Snap Election of July 1984, the Labour Party organisation no longer had anything to trade with. "Rogernomics" - the process of neoliberal economic transformation - could not be stopped.

Back on the conference floor, however, the parliamentary leadership’s control falters. During the debate on international affairs, Lange and Frank O’Flynn make a bid to soften Labour’s anti-nuclear policy. Anderton is outraged. Passing over the chair to his vice-president, he vaults off the stage into the body of the hall, and pausing only to roll up his shirt-sleeves, strides towards the speakers’ podium. The atmosphere is electric. In a few taut sentences he demolishes the parliamentary leadership’s arguments. The conference is ecstatic. The lesson is clear. In matters anti-nuclear, the party is not for turning.

The debate on the economic policy remits follows. In stark contrast to the earlier encounter, the arguments are all with the Government. Out in the lobbies delegates drink coffee and chatter away unconcerned as the parliamentarians demolish the rank-and-file’s programme of state-led investment, capital gains taxes and protectionism.

“We’re getting slaughtered in there!” Dunedin delegates Emily and Dick stare back at me blankly over their coffee cups. I return to the auditorium.

Rob Campbell, widely tipped to succeed Jim Knox as leader of the industrial wing of the labour movement, is addressing the conference. “I am frankly horrified at some of the statements of the Government.” Campbell’s delivery is slow and measured. By the sheer force of his personality he compels the conference to concentrate on the palatable facts of the Government’s conduct of economic affairs. “To go ahead without planning and controls, or to reject interventionism, is economic lunacy.”

Pat Kelly follows Campbell in the speaking order. Where Campbell dissected with the scalpel of reason, Kelly wields a broadsword of passionate rhetoric. Like some Old Testament prophet, he lays bare the economic pathway Douglas, Caygill and Prebble have chosen for New Zealand. His peroration falls like cold rain on the heads of the delegates: “These policies are an outright betrayal of everything this party stands for!”

Jonathan Hunt, the newly appointed Minister of Broadcasting, leaps to his government’s defence. “Mr Chairman, I believe Pat Kelly owes this conference an apology.”

Kelly’s reply has become part of Labour folklore: “Mr Chairman, if, in a year’s time, I am proved to be mistaken, I shall gladly tender to the conference my apologies … but I do not think you’ll be asking me.”

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

The Journey: A Political Memoir - Posting No. 5

Victory! Naomi and David Lange (and an extraordinarily youthful Fran O'Sullivan!) arrive at the Mangere Election Night headquarters to celebrate the election of the Fourth Labour Government on Bastille Day 1984.

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.

Saturday, 14 July 1984

THE QUEEN’S ROOM of the Dunedin YWCA is buzzing. From all over the Dunedin North electorate Election Day workers are arriving to await the results of the Snap Election. Stan and Anne Rodger moved amiably from one knot of excited party supporters to the next, greeting everyone by their first names and reassuring them that: “Yes, this time I think we’ve got them.”

As the first results began to trickle through there’s the usual furrowing of brows. Country booths mainly, with few votes to count, and almost always favouring the National Party, are traditionally the first results to be posted. It never makes for a promising start to Labour Party gatherings on Election Night.

By 8:30pm it’s beginning to look unstoppable. I think back over the past four weeks. ‘Herculean’ barely describes the enormous effort the party has put into the struggle for power. As Stan’s publicity officer, I have been at it non-stop: thousands of pamphlets, flyers, bumper-stickers, newspaper advertisements – all the standard paraphernalia of electioneering – have had to be designed, approved, printed and distributed, and all in under 14 days.

But, we have done it. All of us. The Labour Party has never been stronger or larger. Nearly 100,000 New Zealanders have acquired those little yellow membership cards. Anti-Apartheid veterans of the ’81 Tour; peace activists from the myriad groups and organisations that comprise the most successful anti-nuclear movement in the world; trade unionists in their thousands, desperate to put an end to the two-year wage freeze that has seen the value of their real wages plummet; the unemployed, organised to a degree not seen since the 1930s; feminists, hoping fervently for a genuine political response to the needs of their sisters; Maori, emerging into the light after a century-and-a-half of repression and assimilation: a gorgeous, shimmering, rainbow-coalition of the angry, the alienated, the outraged and the dispossessed people of Aotearoa. We have done it.

Muldoon concedes defeat, and I break into a grin. It seems a very long time since that November night in 1975, but we are back. Labour is back! I shake Stan’s hand with genuine affection. The room is reverberating with noisy celebration.

Francesca and I drive out to the Fairfield Community Hall where Clive Matthewson – darling of the Dunedin Left – is celebrating with his supporters. As we come through the main entrance I am greeted by Brian. Former flatmates, we had both joined the party after that crucial television address by Rowling in 1978, and now we are laughing and whooping like a couple of sand-boys. I recognise Clive further down the hall. “Victory!”, I cry, and we hug each other. Brothers. “Victory!”

Eighteen hours later I’m standing with my father on a windswept Waverley balcony, overlooking Otago Harbour. The freezing air is bracing, Dunedin can be cold in July.

“The winds of change are blowing, Dad,” I laugh into the teeth of the gale. “The winds of change are blowing!”

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

The Journey: A Political Memoir - Posting No. 4

Leading from The Front: HART's Otago-Southland Regional Organiser, Francesca Holloway, is arrested at a sit-down protest during the 1981 Springbok Tour of New Zealand. The Tour may have besmirched New Zealand's international reputation, but it secured something much more important - the re-election of Rob Muldoon's National Government.

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, 11 August 1981.

IT WAS A TUESDAY AFTERNOON in August and I was supposed to be in court. As it was, I was facing a more daunting trial. A thousand Dunedin citizens were massing beneath the whitestone memorial to the dead of the South African War. As I pushed the crash helmet over my head and pulled on my gloves, I thought of my Grandfather. He had been a Captain in the Otago Mounted Rifles. In the wide expanses of the Natal he had fought the Boers. As a child I had grown familiar with is trophies: a Mauser rifle with Van Der Staad carved into the butt, had always fascinated me.

Lest We Forget.

I was in the front row. Why was I in the front row! My arms were tightly linked with those of the comrades on either side of me. Through the visor of my helmet I could see the thin blue line of police three hundred yards up the motorway – barring our passage to Carisbrook and the hated Springboks.

“Amandla! Amandla! Amandla Ngewhetu! Power! Power! Power to the People!” The demonstration was a single organism now. The tread of a two thousand feet keeping rhythm with the battle cry of the ANC. “Amandla! Amandla! Amandla Ngewhetu!”

Francesca Holloway, HART’s Otago-Southland regional organiser, ordered the column to halt. Nothing could now be heard except the steady breathing of the marchers. Twenty yards separated us from the line of police.

“Front row, ten paces forward!” Francesca gave the command.

We moved, the people behind followed, counting off the paces.

“Halt!”

Less than thirty feet from me a young constable stared fixedly at the beast with a thousand heads. There was fear in his eyes. He had good reason; one hundred yards further up the motorway the Blue Squad were waiting in full riot gear.

These cops in front of me are the bait. I thought to myself. They want us to break through.

“Front row, ten paces forward!” Francesca was playing chicken.

Machine-like, the line of constables drew their long batons. The marchers counted off the paces.

“Halt!”

Less than twelve inches separated us from the ends of the constables’ batons. There was hatred in their eyes now; I watched the knuckles of the man in front of me turn white. He wants to hurt me. I thought. He wants to hurt me very badly.

“Front row, five paces forward!”

“Get fucked Francesca!” It was my voice. I had no desire to have my ribcage shattered or my jaw broken. The front row did not move.

Human Buffers: Withdrawing ten paces, the protest demonstration of 11 August 1981 sent its marshalls forward to act as a human buffer between the line of police constables, batons drawn, and the demonstrators.

IT WAS NOW TUESDAY NIGHT. The crowd was smaller but more determined. We had blocked the street in front of the Southern Cross Hotel. The Springboks were inside.

“Right!” It was Francesca, and she was angry. “We’ve been well behaved all day. The time for good behaviour is over!”

The crowd cheered. They were angry too. The promise of the District Police Commander to allow the protesters within sight of the ground had been broken. They had turned us back on the motorway half a mile from Carisbrook. The crowd sat down on the wet roadway.

The Blue Squad were grinning as they formed-up in front of us. This was going to be fun. Their Commander ordered us to clear the road.

Nobody moved.

Somewhere back in the crowd a woman began very softly to sing the National Anthem.

In the bonds of love we meet

Francesca sat at the front of the crowd; legs crossed, arms folded, looking for all the world like a child at school. She was staring up defiantly at the line of police.

The Commander of the Blue Squad looked out over the crowd. There were grandmothers sitting there in the fine Dunedin drizzle; doctors, lawyers, university teachers, all of them singing their country’s hymn:

From dissension, envy, hate

and corruption guard out state

The Blue Squad moved back from the crowd. Their numbers were reduced. They retired to the hotel car park.

“Amandla! Amandla! Amandla Ngewhetu! Power! Power! Power to the People!”

I fell in love with Francesca that night.

A GREAT CROWD of onlookers had gathered as the drama on High Street unfolded. I looked at their faces. There were no doctors, no lawyers, no university teachers; they were the faces of ordinary working people. They jeered at the protesters, occasionally chanting “Rug –bee! Rug – bee!” What did we represent to them? Why were we on different sides?

You clever bastard, Muldoon. I muttered to myself. You’re going to win again.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

The Journey: A Political Memoir - Posting No. 3

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.

The Journey: A Political Memoir. Posting No. 1

A Ring Around The Moon: Saturday, 31 August 1974. The day New Zealand's luck ran out.

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. With one eye on posterity, I have decided to publish The Journey: A Political Memoir on Bowalley Road as a series of occasional postings. My hope is that it will provide my readers and 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. 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 to the New Zealand of thirty years ago.

Saturday, 31 August 1974

ON THE NIGHT of 31 August 1974 my brother and I were on the final stretch of a long journey to Motueka, a small coastal town on the north-west corner of the South Island of New Zealand. As we flashed into the headlights of the motorists who sped past on that narrow stretch of country road we must have presented the classic hitch-hiker stereotype. Long-haired and jean-clad; carrying heavy packs and the indispensable guitars; Hippies on the road to some far-flung commune; and light-years beyond the ken of these hard-bitten cockies in their dusty Holdens and Ford utilities.

I was just eighteen and the world was a beautiful place. Life was easy in the early Seventies. Wages were good and jobs were everywhere. It seems inconceivable now, from the perspective of a decade-and-a-half of rising unemployment, but all that thousands of young people like me had to do was buy a newspaper, pick up a phone, and there was a job for as long as you wanted it. We would work for a few weeks in factory, warehouse or office, until the bank balance recovered, or the boredom began to get to us, and then leave – just like that. It must have driven the employers crazy, but it was heaven for the young.

My brother and I had talked of many things as we wound our way up the South Island from Dunedin. The possibilities offered by the future seemed endless. Just days before, Richard Nixon, the bête noire of radical students and itinerant songwriters (as I liked to think of myself) had been forced to resign his office. Nothing seemed impossible. There was magic in the air; a Labour Government in Wellington; Bob Dylan’s Desire on the stereo: what could possibly go wrong?

The weather over our journey had been fitful. All along the West Coast we had seen rainstorms ahead of us, blown out of the moist air currents that swept eastward from the Tasman Sea to condense upon the heights of the Southern Alps, but somehow we had remained dry. Just when we thought the dark curtains of water were about to sweep over us, the wind would blow them somewhere to the north or south of our position. We began to think we were protected by a special providence, that we were untouchable.

As the number of passing cars dwindled and the night thickened around us, we began to walk. The surrounding countryside was silent and our voices carried far into the fields and windbreaks that flanked the road. A little way ahead of me my brother halted; staring skyward. Above us, shimmering balefully around the moon, was a perfect circle of light. My brother, a student of anthropology at the University of Otago, was intensely interested in Amerindian folklore.

“It’s an omen”, he said.

“But of what?”, I replied.

“Something bad.”

The cars had stopped completely now and it was clear that we would not reach Motueka that night. Reluctantly, we pitched our tent under the pines and settled down to sleep. At nine o’clock precisely it began to rain. Our luck had run out.

One hundred miles to the north, in the capital city’s Mater Hospital, at nine o’clock precisely, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Norman Kirk, was pronounced dead.

Our luck had run out indeed.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.