Blue Collars, Brown Necks

Blue collars, brown and white necks: Bill Andersen leads 10,000 workers up Queen Street in protest at the use of injunctions in industrial disputes. In 1974, the perceived interests of Maori and Pakeha workers had yet to significantly diverge.

WHEN did the working-class turn brown? When did it stop being made up, overwhelmingly, of white people? Was it in the 1970s, 80s or 90s? And, how did we miss it? How did the poorest New Zealanders’ ethnicity end up masking the burdens of their class?

Marching up Queen Street on Monday, my ears ringing with the haka and the chanting and the insinuating bellow of the Maori trumpets, I was bothered by a sense of déjà vu. Row upon row of brown faces, all of them bearing the moko of hard living on slim pickings, called forth a half-forgotten image from another march up Queen Street where, again, the faces were mostly brown.

Then, I remembered. It was a photograph published in the NZ Herald of 3 July 1974. Bill Andersen was on his way to court, and the cream of the Auckland working-class was going with him. Ten-thousand strong they marched that day – and even then the majority of the marchers were brown.

I’m looking at the picture now: Bill and his union executive (all white) are in the front row, but behind him bob the distinctive "afro" haircuts of his Maori and Pasifika members – thousands of them, marching in defence of their union and its boss, and for their right to a place in the South Pacific sun.

The Maori renaissance was in its infancy then: the divisive effects of what would later be called "identity politics" not yet strong enough to separate Maori and Pasifika workers from their Pakeha brothers.

When the National Government of Rob Muldoon gave the order to end the Ngati Whatua people’s re-occupation of Bastion Point on 25 May 1978, it set in motion one of the largest police operations in New Zealand history. As news of the massive eviction exercise spread, trade unionists on worksites all over Auckland walked off their jobs in protest, and the Auckland Trades Council (taking a leaf out of the NSW Builders & Labourers play-book) placed a "Green Ban" on the site – effectively stymieing the Government’s "redevelopment" plans.

The divisions came later, in the years following the 1981 Springbok Tour, when a disillusioned Bill Andersen was obliged to chuck an extreme Maori nationalist group out of the Auckland Trade Union Centre.

Ever since, race has trumped class in New Zealand left-wing politics. Liberal Pakeha have simply trained themselves to ignore the glaringly obvious fact that nearly all the jobs requiring a strong arm, and an even stronger back, have fewer and fewer white faces associated with them. Look at the building sites; the road gangs; in the factories and warehouses; behind the check-out counters – and you’ll see what I mean. As my friend, Matt McCarten puts it: "In today’s workforce you’ll find that almost every blue collar is worn around a brown neck."

And with only a tiny fraction of the private-sector workforce now unionised (last count 7 percent!) those blue-collars have had to look elsewhere for the strength that collectivism provides. Certainly, since 1991, the white, middle-class membership of the mostly public-sector organisations that make up the Council of Trade Unions have not displayed a noticeable willingness to defend anyone other than their own kind. Abandoned to their own devices, the young, unorganised, brown working-class has turned to the marae, the kura, the wananga and the churches for the cultural, spiritual, and – most importantly – the political leadership their parents formerly received from the class-oriented leaders of the old labour movement.

And so, Monday’s hikoi up Queen Street was all about special Maori representation on the new Auckland "super-city". Except, of course, no one asked the obvious next question: "If John Key relents, and gives us the three seats promised by the Royal Commission, who will sit in them?

Will it be men and women from the suburbs of the working poor? People who understand the importance of public transport, local parks, free libraries, youth centres and swimming-pools? Or will they be filled by media celebrities, business entrepreneurs, and slick corporate lawyers wearing thousand-dollar suits and hefty pounamu pendants?

The Maori Party has already answered that question: hongi-ing furiously with Iwi fat cats and right-wing Pakeha politicians; leading their people up the chute and into the works.

It was moving – hearing ten thousand voices chanting "Ka mate, ka mate!"

But Solidarity Forever is a better song.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times, and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday 29 May 2009.

Fee for Parts. (A Poem from 1943)

The following poem was written by my uncle, William D. Trotter (1922-2001) while he was studying medicine at the University of Otago. It was published in the 1943 number of the Medical Digest. The subject of the poem – what remains of our humanity after death – is one which, I imagine, taxes all medical students when they first undertake the dissection of cadavers. The structure of the human body was a subject that continued to fascinate and absorb my uncle for all of his professional life, culminating in his appointment as Professor of Anatomy at the Otago Medical School. His family has found no other evidence of his talent for poetry, which, as the poem below demonstrates, was considerable. A great pity.

Fee for Parts

And when you died
There was no one,
No one who could say
To red-eyed daughters, tight-lipped sons
That you had tried
Had done your best
Had been a friend, a grand old man:
No one, when they tiptoe in and lift the shroud
To say, how beautiful
You are, with face unfevered, brow unlined,
At rest.

Yet the mystery just lately
From your cells departed
Is the same that leaves all others’ cells
Masterless, and inco-ordinate.
And we with knives and weighty tomes
Would probe, examine and dissect
This lump of clay.
Vainglorious we try to understand
Your mystery
Unpenetrated and
Impenetrable.

There were
No flowers for you, nor psalms,
Nor cool green earth;
But integers metallic; ribaldry
And young irreverence.
Injustice? Still they say:
‘No sparrow for a farthing sells
But God the Father …
And of your head each hair the Angels number.’
But even then
I wonder.

W.D.T.

The Budget of Fear

Bill English's Budget in four words: "Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt."

FEAR. That’s what Bill English’s first Budget is all about. Fear of the electorate to which John Key presented National as a reformed and reliable party of caring conservatives just seven months ago. Fear of what will happen to the Government’s popularity (and electability) if the people who so emphatically voted it into office, begin to suspect that they have been deceived.

That is why so little has been done – why so little could be done – in this Budget. English had to protect his boss, the man who, more than any other person in the National team, secured the Treasury benches for the Right. If John Key is transformed from a figure of lightness and hope, into a symbol of heavy-handed fiscal discipline and despair, the National Government won’t make it past 2011.

So, English has been forced to keep all of the safety-nets in good condition. Nothing off the pension. Nothing off Working for Families. Nothing off the unemployment and welfare entitlements. Good Lord! They didn’t even reactivate the interest payments on student loans! English offered up a believable inflation/population adjustment for health, and a not-quite-so-believable adjustment for education. There was even a feel-good (and, let’s be fair, a real-good) gesture towards home insulation.

As Key almost said, New Zealanders can sleep easy in their beds tonight – because, in the face of the worst economic conditions since 1930, all their entitlements are still in place.

But for how long? And at what cost?

The tax cuts have gone – and good riddance. But a ten-year suspension of payments to the Superannuation Fund? That undermines the expectations of the aging Baby Boom Generation, and sets up a truly vicious social conflict in the decades ahead. Because surely Generation X and Y will balk at supporting their elders with a pension that, in all likelihood, they will not be in a position to pay themselves?

And that's the real problem with Budget 2009, by allowing the voters to lie easy in their beds this year, English and Key have merely pushed out the day when something more than maintaining the status-quo will be demanded of them.

Treasury’s forecasts make it clear that New Zealand’s economic fortunes are not going to improve anytime soon. The number of people out of work is predicted to rise to 8 percent – and that’s the hopeful estimate. The nation’s indebtedness will continue to rise inexorably (the price of maintaining all those entitlements without increasing taxes) and with it the expectation of New Zealand’s creditors that, somehow, this country is going to come up with a plan for paying it back.

Aye, and there’s the rub. Where is the money in this Budget for R&D, for skills training, for apprenticeships? Where’s the "greenprint" for a revived and renovated New Zealand economy? The push for a more creative approach to marrying infrastructure development with export growth? Where’s the incentive for this country’s employers to come up with a better way of securing their profits than simply slashing the real wages of their workers?

The truth is, this Government lacks the imagination to answer any of those questions. Consequently, Bill English’s Budget can be distilled into four words: "Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt."

Still, he’s bought his boss some time – and his boss knows it.

Watching poor Phil Goff perspiring manfully at full volume, and then watching Key, relaxed and informal, cracking jokes, and beaming reassurance to the voters at full wattage: it was painful. When the networks’ news editors are through repackaging this afternoon’s verbal jousting for the 6 O’clock News, New Zealanders will be in no doubt as to which leader remained in the saddle.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof – you might say. But, the question that will be gnawing away at Key and English in the dark watches of the next 365 nights is as inescapable as it is terrifying:

What the hell do we do next?

Extra-Ordinary

Susan Boyle. Unlike the Beatles' tragic Eleanor Rigby, this "beetle-browed virgin from Blackburn" will not be "buried, along with her name".

IT’S the ordinariness of Blackburn, West Lothian, that strikes you. Its rows upon rows of non-descript houses, all set back the standard thirty feet from miles upon miles of non-descript streets. It’s not an ugly town exactly, but neither is it a pretty one. It’s just ordinary. The sort of ordinary that can bury lives and smother souls.

Susan Boyle grew up in this little town. Her stock, two-storied house, grey roughcast like her neighbours’, stands in a block of dreary repetitions. Windows, doors, roofs: straight and level as a town planner’s ruler. And endless asphalt: grey and heavy as West Lothian’s leaden skies.

The people of Blackburn, too, have a sameness. They’re squat and solid like their houses, with square florid faces chafed raw by the North Wind’s relentless friction. Like their little town, they’re not exactly ugly, but neither are they pretty. You’d pass them in the street without noticing. Default-setting human shapes: ordinary and unremarkable.

You’d be wrong about Susan Boyle though, as she clumped past you on her way to the Fauldhouse Miners Welfare Club. But then, how could you possibly know that this dumpy woman, strutting fiercely up the street, with her head down, her arms swinging and her fists clenched, had a voice to match Elaine Paige’s? Or that five times before she’d entered the Club’s annual singing contest, made it to the finals, but failed to clinch first prize? Or that this, her sixth and last attempt, will end exactly the same way?

Unless, of course, you came from Blackburn, or Bathgate, or Armadale. In which case you would know that Susan Boyle was just one of many outstanding singers living in the grey sub-divisions of West Lothian.

"Britain’s Got Talent" is the name of the show, and it’s well-named. The neglected streets of Britain’s towns and cities are awash with talent: singers, musicians, songwriters, dancers, painters, novelists, poets, preachers, teachers, political leaders. More talent than any production company could ever cram into a commercial hour of television – or would want to.

Because, when the producers of "Britain’s Got Talent" received Susan Boyle’s application, and looked at her photograph, and heard her sing, "talent" would have been the last thing on their minds. And when they learned of her mother’s dying wish that Susan "do something with her life", it wasn’t the remorseful words of a mother whose lingering illness had utterly consumed her daughter’s youth that they heard, it was the promise of "fantastic television".

The very idea that a "beetle-browed virgin from Blackburn" might actually be able to sing was so preposterous, so absurd, that the producers were supremely confident that no "Britain’s Got Talent" audience would believe it. They knew that people’s eyes would roll; that they would exchange knowing glances with their neighbours; that the auditorium would be filled with guffaws and titters; and that, in millions of sitting rooms across Britain, the show’s viewers would be doing the same – right up until the moment Susan opened her mouth.

And then, of course, the audience, and the viewers, and (thanks to You-Tube) the whole world, gasped in wonder.

Because, into Fantine’s aria from Les Miserables, Susan Boyle poured out all of her 47 years of loneliness, lovelessness, and longing. With an inspiring, and at the same time truly thrilling singleness of purpose, this thwarted flower had struggled out of the darkness and into the light. And as her voice rose to meet the song’s crescendo, her audience, too, was carried upward. No longer sniggering, no longer colluding in the vicious lie that only the beautiful, the wealthy, and the powerful have a right to feel the sunlight of fulfilment and success upon their faces.

And all around the world people wept. Not just in response to the poignancy and precision of Susan’s performance. Not simply with relief that she had escaped the cruel theatricality of her contrived circumstances. But because, for a few transcendent seconds, this woman from West Lothian had become a symbol of the equality so many of us have stopped believing in. By her triumph, our faith in the worth of the common people of this earth was emphatically reaffirmed.

There are no dreams that cannot be, no storms we cannot weather, so long as we, like Susan, understand that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 24 April 2009.

Truly Dickensian

After Housing Minister, Phil Heatley's, new "prior permission" rule for state house tenants, one is tempted to ask: 'What's next - workhouses?!"

THE performance of Housing New Zealand’s Chief Operating Officer, Stephen McArthur, on this morning’s edition of Morning Report was deeply disturbing. Defending HNZ’s new policy of requiring state house tenants to acquire prior permission from their landlord before offering shelter to a person, or persons, released on bail, he managed to sound both cruel and condescending.

Access to state housing is supposed to be determined strictly on the basis of need, but McArthur and his masters – presumably with the full sanction of Housing Minister, Phil Heatly – have decided to insert this entirely new contractual obligation in HNZ’s standard tenancy agreement.

The effect is to introduce into the State’s landlord-tenant relationship a truly Dickensian level of paternalism. It was quite clear from McArthur’s tone that he regards state tenants as a lesser-breed of human-being.

These unfortunates, along with their wayward friends and family, cannot be relied upon to act responsibly towards their neighbours. So, unlike other adult members of the community, their decision-making must be augmented and refined by the altogether more responsible and informed judgement of HNZ staff. And, while "normal" home-owners are perfectly at liberty to designate their own homes as places to which family-members and/or friends in trouble with the authorities may be bailed, state tenants must apply for and receive their landlord’s "permission" before offering such refuge.

Leaving aside HNZ’s rejection of the long-established common-law principle that a person is deemed innocent until proven guilty, this new "prior permission" rule cannot help but dangerously stigmatise state house tenants. Whenever citizens are required to divest themselves of rights enjoyed by other members of the community – in this case the right to offer safe haven for a person or persons in distress – they are diminished as citizens, and demeaned as human-beings.

HNZ’s new rule, by undermining the equality of all citizens, strikes at the very heart of New Zealand’s egalitarian traditions. It is objectionable from virtually every reasonable perspective, but most particularly because it constitutes a form of "prior restraint".

What HNZ – and the National-led Government – are saying with this new rule is that state tenants are essentially children, whose judgement cannot be relied upon, and whose rights and freedoms must be rigorously circumscribed in the name of protecting the rights and freedoms of their neighbours and the local community.

It's a telling insight into the ethics of this Government, that it sees HNZ’s new rule as being both fair and reasonable. What in God’s name is fair and reasonable about requiring parents to secure the prior permission of some faceless bureaucrat before they’re allowed to bring their son or daughter, niece or nephew, home from the Police lock-up?

What’s next: workhouses?

We Can't Make it Here Anymore

While Bill English submits his first Budget to the international credit-rating agencies for their approval, here's an oldie-but-a-goodie about the joys of globalisation from American singer-songwriter, James McMurtry.

Making the Protest Count

Auckland's last really big political demonstration, the 2003 protest against the Iraq War. The march stretched the full length of lower Queen Street, and was estimated at 20-25,000 strong. Today's hikoi (no pics available as yet) was the same size - but the mainstream news media put its strength at between 2,000 and 7,000. Why?

I’VE JUST RETURNED from the Auckland hikoi to discover that the mainstream news media are downplaying the significance of the demonstration by citing absurdly low estimates of the turnout.

Radio New Zealand is the worst offender, running for the past two hours with a figure of 2,000 (barely enough people to fill a city block).

The NZ Herald at least quotes a police officer, whose (wildly inaccurate) estimate was 5,000-7,000 marchers.

Now, let’s get real.

The march extended the full length of lower Queen Street – i.e. from the assembly-point in QEII Square to the Town Hall.

Just so we’re clear: that means that as the front ranks were arriving at the Town Hall, the last ranks were leaving the Square.

What’s more, the marchers occupied the full width of the carriageway – i.e. they stretched right across the road, from pavement to pavement.

This makes the calculation of the demonstration’s size very simple – if you know your history.

Since the late-1960s there have been several demonstrations that occupied the whole of lower Queen Street. There was the 1971 "Mobe" (mobilisation) against the Vietnam War. Ten years later there was the May 1st "Mobilsation Against the Tour" march up Queen Street. In 1983 there was a big union protest against Muldoon’s Wage-Price Freeze. In 1991 there was an even bigger union protest against the Employment Contracts Bill. In 2002 there was the Anti-GE March, and in 2003, Auckland’s last really big demonstration – until today – against the Iraq War.

Contemporary media cited those protests at between 20,000 and 30,000 strong.

Have human-beings doubled or tripled in size since 2003? Of course not! So where do these absurd figures of 2,000, 5,000 and 7,000 come from?

Is it because the reporters on the spot (and the policemen) have so little experience of large political demonstrations that they simply have no idea how to estimate their true size? I hope so, because the alternative – that reporters and the Police are deliberately underestimating the size of the protest for political/ideological reasons – is just too upsetting to contemplate.

Something historic happened on the streets of Auckland today. It would be nice if the news media could report it accurately.

FOOTNOTE: If we assume lower Queen Street to be roughly a kilometre in length and about 30 metres wide we get an area of 30,000 square metres. Now, if every protester is assumed to occupy just one square metre of space as he or she moves up Queen Street – that’s a maximum of 30,000 protesters, or, allowing for the odd gap, a minimum of 20,000. Basic arithmetic, really. What’s the matter with all our journalists!