Giving Socialism A Human Face

Giving Socialism a human face continues on from Fighting for Modernism and the Empire.

Keith Holyoake

The Half - Gallon Jar

The National Government

1953

The Vietnam War

James Baxter

Porgy And Bess

Norman Kirk

Robert Muldoon

George Wilder

The Crewe murders And The Springbok Tour Conflicts

Colin McCahon

Peter Macintyre

Charles Goldie

Frances Hodgkins

David Lange

Keith Holyoake 1904-83. He was known both contemptuously and fondly as Kiwi Keith. He served twice as Prime Minister in 1957 and from 1960 to 1972. A relative of the nineteenth century English radical George Holyoake, Keith inherited George's booming oratory. In the television age that coincided with his second Prime Minister ship, his "plummy voice" and pompous manners resonated badly. However he partially redeemed his image when he said in a television interview, he had read Charles Dickens' Origin of the Species and had that morning rescued the railway luggage of an old lady. The former was considered a misquote that demonstrated he respected intellectuals but was not of them. The latter that the welfare of the common people was his concern. Until New Zealand's entry into the Vietnam war in 1965 that ended the political consensus, Keith's favourite past time was to introduce himself to all groups of Kiwis as "Hello I am Keith Holyoake".

Keith Holyoake's successor as Prime Minister was John Marshall who caused an international stir by walking alone through Wellington to Parliament.

After World War Two, New Zealand seemed settled into a "workers paradise". New Zealand products continued to be shipped to war ravaged Great Britain. The prices were high and the demand seemed to be insatiable. Problems in New Zealand seemed now to be existential rather than deprivation. Life seemed to be perfectly dull. Consumer goods were of low quality and usually impossible to purchase from overseas. Café society was severely restricted by licensing laws. Outside the main cities it was virtually extinct. It was said the Prime Minister knew the names of every unemployed person in New Zealand. When New Zealand's debts were becoming insurmountable, the Government with apparent ease borrowed more. When a private sector got into difficulty, the Government would bail them out. The private sector was sometimes embarrassed at the Government's generosity. Present generations are now paying for that.

By 1949, the New Zealand people except among Labour Party devotees were tired of the Labour Government. The bureaucracy weighed oppressively down on enterprise. There was a national feeling the Government especially Peter Fraser, was too doctrinaire. The Opposition Party, the National Party was getting traction as the Party that supported home ownership and employer capitalism for the national good. It was said, the Crown in Court cases always ruled out for Jury service, authors, show performers, and Maoris. They represented a mostly passive dissidence. My mother told me the Victoria University drama club in the post war era, put on a show called Peter in Bumbleland. Peter Fraser, despite his international reputation as a founder member of the United Nations, and now a stalwart champion of liberal "Democracy" against Communism, was seen to be bumbling in a morass of mindless bureaucracy. A new populist champion arose from the grass roots National Party, a real not metaphor magician, Sydney Holland. He was elected Prime Minister in 1949. My father called him, "that bloody Sydney Holland" who advocated "The sky's the limit," to any questions about public debt. However my parents were enthused with Sydney's crushing of the dock workers' union in the 1951 waterfront strike. But everyone except leftist ideologues were sick of the "wharfies". They were considered to be "lazy buggers," chronic strikers and thieves on the docks and ships. That was demonstrably true. Former Communists, the post war prosperity and apparent triumph of capitalism had left them with no cause except dog in the manger to their bosses. To leftist idealists like Ralph Fairburn, Syd Holland was Hitler bringing in the brown shirts. Sydney employed World War Two emergency Acts to crush the union. However the National Party leadership made up mostly from RSA,( returned servicemen) did not like the Nazis either. The New Zealand police, many recruited from Labour Party families, confined their oppressive tactics to arresting and breaking the heads of a few wharfies and intellectuals. The more draconian laws such as forbidding giving charity to wharfies' families, they ignored. New Zealand after 1951 settled down to a social torpor. In 1951, the Legislative Council annulled itself via its "suicide squad" of stacked National Party members. The Council members linked arms and sang, God Save The King at their last meeting. The notion of an Upper House of wise Legislators never took hold in "democratic" New Zealand. Its members were always either hack stacked politicians or honourary members. The Government in 1962 brought in the Ombudsman office to represent the citizens from martinet bureaucracy. That was at first treated skeptically. But it quickly won respect as the human face above Leviathan.

Many of the older generations looked back nostalgically to the post war years. Few of them are still alive. People made up their own entertainment. Crime scarcely existed except among a few big time criminals who were known to every policeman. Even a son of a criminal got a short shift from the police. These days they would likely be keen to recruit him. Christian morality was very strict. New Zealand was, except for denial from a few eccentrics, a white English speaking country that had absolved itself from colonial wars and now all was at peace with the Maoris. They seemed to be the greatest Royalists. The name Hori from King George became the byname for cheerful, happy go lucky Maori men. If a Maori man worked himself into a passion about his lost lands and identity, the Europeans clapped politely and didn't understand a word of what he was saying.

"Hori's world is not big, but it's full of fun. In addition to Hori himself, its principle characters are his wife, his mother in law, his brother in law, and 'the pakeha joker up the street,' although other lesser characters make their brief appearance." This book was published in 1962 by a commercial traveller, Norman McCallum."His admiration of 'the first New Zealanders' is unbounded. "

1953

Some child born in a marvelous year will learn the trick of standing upright here. From a 1943 poem, The Skeleton of the Great Moa in the Canterbury Museum by Allen Curnow. 1953: May 29, Edmund Hillary from New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay from Nepal become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world highest mountain. Tenzing as a native, prayed on its summit. Edmund as a good Kiwi bloke pissed on it. Edmund Hillary spent the rest of his active long life, establishing schools and medical clinics in Nepal. My mother always hated him for imprisoning the Nepali mountain children in schools, and destroying their healthy immunity in the clinics. Edmund Hillary was judged as exemplifying the British Empire, but now on its last legs. Mount Everest had been climbed by "the British". June 2, Prince Elizabeth is crowned Queen Elizabeth 11 of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon. July 27, the Korean war ends with an armistice. August 15-19 the Iranian restoration of the Shah. October 31, Halloween Day, I was born in the British colony, Gilbert Islands. December 23, Queen Elizabeth 11 and her husband Prince Philip arrive in New Zealand for a six week tour. So huge and warm were the crowds that it was said most people in New Zealand saw her. December 24, Tangiwai disaster. A railway bridge collapsed at Tangiwai New Zealand, sending a fully loaded passenger train into the Whangaehu River, 151 were drowned.

The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War Debacle as my CIA (probably) Professor with a chuckle Instructed our class to define it.

More than 3000 New Zealand military and civilians served in South Vietnam between 1963 and 1975. 37 men were killed and 187 were wounded. In 1951, the same year as the waterfront strike and in official propaganda connected, New Zealand had joined ANZUS. This anti Communist crusade was led by America with auxiliary support from fellow ANZUS Australia and New Zealand. South Vietnam and South Korea military dictatorships threw their forces in too and were notorious for their atrocities. ANZUS got a bit of a bum rap. They initially tried to support the South Vietnamese people before succumbing to drug frenzies and nihilism. When I visited Vietnam, I was surprised how little of the country showed war damage. Unlike Korea which was almost completely flattened in the 1950--53 Korean war, an ostensible United Nations war which New Zealand also participated in. Great Britain refused to join the Vietnam war to the American leadership's disgust. In that era, NATO kept to its nomenclature base, North Atlantic. At its peak in 1968, 548 New Zealanders served. New Zealand's minuscule contribution aroused dismay in Washington. Even to my eye, it sounds ridiculous. New Zealand blood would be spent to keep good terms with ANZUS.

From 1963, New Zealand had non combatant military in South Vietnam. New Zealand also had troops fighting in the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation. New Zealand was very militaristic. The New Zealand boys received military cadet training at their high schools. A ballot selected male high school leavers for annual military training. New Zealand was very regimented. A quip by a school kid could get the kid whacked or expelled from his school bus. New Zealand military contributions were only questioned by reputed Communists. When my father merely spoke of his sorrow of the impending deaths of New Zealand boys in Vietnam, he said he was under suspicion for quite some time. However everything changed after in 1965, Keith Holyoake announced that New Zealand would send a combat unit to South Vietnam.

By 1965, the British Empire had lost its most prized possessions and the rest was disappearing fast. In South Vietnam, New Zealand officially separated its forces from the British Empire for the first time. New Zealand had unofficially joined the American Empire. As in the previous foreign wars, young men joined for the next great adventure. However, this time, there was little enthusiasm outside the military. Keith Holyoake unlike in America and Australia, did not conscript to Vietnam. Keith, a stalwart Anglophile, always privately detested the Vietnam war. He boomingly supported the war effort. However, he is documented in The Pentagon Papers with a letter to President Johnson urging him to stop the bombing. It is said, every New Zealand death in South Vietnam made him distraught and his hair went white. Maori boys flocked to the war as their ancestors rushed to every war for mana. My veteran teachers at my high school were outraged when a Maori boy said he would go to Vietnam "to kill people". In 1966, the flag staff at Waitangi was blown up as were a few other public places by Vietnam war protesters. But the protesters were white University students. Young University educated white people protested against the war, and for issues once fringe such as feminism and environmentalism. They characteristically "dropped out" of society and formed communes where they drank herbal tea, took illegal drugs, and made pottery. Many waited expectantly for a doomsday nuclear war that never happened. Over the decades, some returned to society perhaps wiser, others merged with the derelicts. In that era, it seemed Maori had almost disappeared as political forces in New Zealand. They voted for the Labour Party, came to the cities to work in labouring jobs, and their young men went as cannon fodder to South Vietnam. The cheeky Maori boy in the above war protest image was an exception to prove the rule.

The war's unpopularity grew every year. Returning soldiers spread word of mouth, they shot everything that moved. When the news reported a successful New Zealand military raid that counted one dead Viet Cong, my mother said. "Some luckless peasant at the wrong place at the wrong time." The Viet Cong South Vietnamese enemy were civilians in the day time and expert irregulars at night. The North Vietnamese enemies were expert snipers. The enemy were martyrs to their cause of expelling the foreign armies. That was finally achieved in 1972, and in 1975 the South Vietnam regime fell. The New Zealand army withdrew all its forces by the end of 1972. The foreign armies came without a clear goal except for protecting themselves and loyalty to their regiments. I said to my students in China, "The Chinese army came to Korea to chase out the American army. The New Zealand army came to Korea and Vietnam to chase girls".

Hemi. Jimmy and his angels. That may be an insult to Charlie Manson who was reputedly always a gentleman to his angels. James Baxter 1926-72 was a folk poet and playwright. He is listed in this blog because his influence was more than wordsmith. In his short life work, he was a mad or at least a drugged commune prophet. In his last years, he went "native". In those full employment affluent late 1960s years until the mid 1970s oil shocks, life seemed good for the society "drop outs". The children from the post war baby boom were the flower children hippies. At least that is the legend. In the main they were University drop outs. The post war boomers were also mortgage holders and policemen. However by the early 1970s, even the most anti Communist and red neck boomer cops adopted the hippies' hedonistic amoral life style. Then the reaction started when the women found out the men were only taking advantage to enslave and screw them. The truth is more complicated as Adam and Eve found out in Eden. As the American hippies discovered the remnants of the Indian way of life and idolised them as nature's children, so did James Baxter with the Maori way of life. In 1969, he founded a commune at Hiruharama (Jerusalem) on the Wanganui river. In 1892, the French nun, Mother Aubert had established a congregation there. Mother Aubert became renowned in New Zealand for her discoveries and use of the healing properties in the bush. James considered Auckland "a great arsehole" and Wellington "a sterile whore of a thousand bureaucrats". He lamented. "How can I live in a country where the towns are made like coffins/And the rich are eating the flesh of the poor/ Without even knowing it? " I explained to my Chinese students in China, "The modern poets did not mean it literally about Western society". But maybe James in his chronic drugged haze did. James compared the health inspectors bothering Hiruharama to the invading British army in the previous century. He popularised the Maori as spiritual redemption. That idea was as old as Joseph Banks in New Zealand. James who had a Maori wife, author Jackie Sturm and Maori children took it to new heights or depths. In 1975, James would prove Shelley's saying, "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". The Waitangi Tribunal was set up in 1975 by the Norman Kirk Government.

The boomers' parent generation seemed to live unhappy materialistic lives. The depression and war had scarred them. The moral laws and prejudices pinched their lives. Recreation was severely restricted by the licensing laws. Alcoholism and social breakdown fueled by boredom was rife. At least that was what the intellectuals saw. Authors who were scarcely read in New Zealand even though often popular in Australia, such as Ronald Morrison of the novels and later movies Scarecrow and Came A Hot Friday evoked with sympathetic humour small town shenanigans.

1866. HauHau prisoners on the Napier foreshore, waiting to be transported to the Chatham Islands. Te Kooti is thought to be among them.

1965. My parents, myself, and an English lady friend drove out of Gisborne to Napier to see Porgy And Bess in Napier. I had a raging infected throat. But as long as my parents allowed it, I was going to see the show. I will never forget its high spirits and pathos. The one memorable song, Summer Time is in the first five minutes of the show. The rest of the show is a forgettable pastiche of spirituals, jazz and lyrics as imagined by a New York Jew. Crown the murderer, also had an infected throat. The English lady knew Inia Te Wiaata well from shows on British television. We drove past the Napier foreshore where ninety nine years before, the HauHau prisoners had shivered in their wait for the prison island ship. I noted but did not understand one missing song, It ain't necessarily so. This mocked the bible.

Norman Kirk, 1923-74. The jug eared obese carpenter house builder who left school at 12. Big Norm, as he was known to his supporters, loved to read, especially history. In 1972, as a silver haired statesman and powerful orator, he led the Labour Party to a landslide victory. On the night of his victory, he promised on television while gasping for breath, that this was no fly by night. Not his exact words. He was not noted for glibness. His Government would endure for many years and transform New Zealand. He saw himself as the successor of both Mickey Savage and Peter Fraser. I had a chill of fear that night he would die soon from hubris. Norman withdrew the New Zealand army from Vietnam and ended military conscription at the end of 1972. The following year he sent two navy frigates into the international zone around Mururoa to protest French atmospheric tests. Always work driven, his health collapsed and in August 1974 he died. I recall. I announced at my student youth hostel, "Kirk's dead", and everyone rushed to the television. His death shocked the country. It is the only time I recall a dignified event in New Zealand politics.

Robert Muldoon 1921-92. Rob Muldoon as his supporters called him. Piggy Muldoon as his enemies called him. In 1975, after Government big spending, New Zealand was in a balance of payments crisis. The 1973 international oil shocks had ended full employment. Great Britain's entry into the European Common Market had ended New Zealand's guaranteed market there. New Zealand was in the process of transformation but the reverse of Norman Kirk's 1972 prediction. The Vietnam war controversy had destroyed the public deference to New Zealand's leaders. Television entered the New Zealand people's lives since 1960. By the mid 1960s, it was considered almost anti-social for a household not to have television with its roof aerial. Every evening, most of the population sat glued to their one channel household television box. If it was Big Brother, Big Brother then valued educational and cultural programmes, augmented with sitcoms and skits. From the box, the Kiwis learnt the Vietnam war was a gruesome morass and the country's leaders were dishonest and usually incompetent narcissuses, or wankers to use the Kiwi colloquium. Television shows from overseas like Coronation Street inculcated that sins like alcohol and adultery might be fun and exciting. Kiwi shows like the song and dance C'mon fostered Kiwi talent. Show names from the television shows became household names more well known and talked about than the nation's leaders. Robert Muldoon was the exception to the rule. The National Party under Robert Muldoon swept to power in the 1975 election.

The compere and criminologist in the 1975 cult movie, The Rocky Horror Picture Show . 1975-1984 were the Muldoon Prime Minister years. In 1975, Richard O'Brien, a British born, raised on a North Island farm unemployed actor in London wrote the London stage musical show, The Rocky Horror Show. This light hearted romp through cinema and pulp fiction history in Richard's life has become via the movie version a monstrous global gestalt. In the movie, transvestitism, drugs and Frankenstein creation merges with the resignation speech of President Nixon as the father figure. O'Briens in 1984 and in The Rocky Horror Show torture the moral citizen that perversity is normal. A Frankenstein monster is being created that in the not so distant future will consume us all from objective moral reality. For nine years Robert Muldoon struggled with his legendary numbers wizardry to save New Zealand from economic catastrophe. In 1984, he conceded defeat in a boozy state and declared a snap election. He lost the election and gleefully handed the country over to the next Labour Government. He warned later about the catastrophic road the new Government was travelling on. He was ignored by the Government and the media. If he had stopped the 1981 Springbok tour which has scarred New Zealand, the New Zealand people would have become indulgent to him. Unlike Holyoake and O'Brien, no statue stands of Muldoon. His good is interred and his bad as Muldoonism is remembered. He worked to integrate Maori gangs into productive employment. He freed Arthur Allan Thomas, wrongly convicted for the Crewe murders. He opened the shops on Saturday in 1980 to the furious objections of the Labour Party. New Zealand's transition from a workers' paradise to a consumers' paradise began at that moment. Labours' objections were the swan song to its legacy as the workers' Party.

Robert Muldoon with his wife Thea backstage in the 1986 production of the Rocky Horror Show. In that production, Robert appeared as the compere and criminologist.

George Wilder to the left. The source of the 1963 New Zealand song, George, the wild New Zealand boy. Here he is sort of enjoying his early notoriety before the old fashioned prisons broke his spirit.

The George Wilder saga dominated much of the early 1960s public news and discourse. He became a folk hero. In an oppressive bureaucratic State, he was the country's most well known deviant. The plethora of new commercial radio stations followed his four great escapes by the hour. He went bush which appealed to the country's frontier tradition. Farmers left food out for George. Then in 1964, he and two fellow escapees held an old lady hostage in her home. I recall seeing the newspaper headline on his final escape in my home. The public went silent.

The decade between the 1951 waterfront dispute and the start of the George Wilder saga in 1962, nothing of public excitement appeared to be going on at all. The politicians ranted and raved to public disillusionment, the militant unions caused havoc, the Queen arrived and left, there were some moral panics over delinquency, a few sensational murders. The future criminals seemed to have reformed or died heroes in the two world wars. 1914 -1965 were the five decades almost bereft of serious and chronic crime. Without the world wars, these years would have been the apprenticeships and occupations of new generations of criminals. Before 1914 and after 1965, New Zealand has had a lot of crime. In the last several decades, New Zealand at least in the media seems a return to the Wild West and in the last few years, the 1860s North Island.

My Amazon Kindle book, The Widow's Party. I wrestled with the 1970 Crewe murders and the 1981 Springbok tour in this Amazon reader‘s awarded five star book. Readers can purchase a digital copy for less than the price of a coffee and a scone. Two New Zealand nations squared against each other. Old New Zealand of farms and country towns, and new New Zealand of international travel, and University education. David Lange a prominent lawyer, once said, "Everyone recognised the Thomas people". They fought eventually successfully from 1970- 79 to free Arthur Allan Thomas from convictions for murders of the Crewes, a farming couple. The New Zealand people discovered Courts and police could be corrupted to imprison an innocent man. The public did not get to the bottom or top of this inexplicable Thomas Crown Affair. My book modestly and provocatively offers a solution. When in 1980 a movie was made of the case, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, the Thomas people were invited to re-enact their riot in the Courtroom and if possible to wear again the same clothes, many said they were still wearing them. No such sartorial and political naivety in the Nelson Mandela people. They slickly ran a media and demo campaign to drive New Zealand into close to a civil war to sabotage the 1981 South African rugby tour. No one died but many were injured. The thuggish methods used by the police and also many demonstrators shocked Kiwis who thought New Zealand was immune from mass civil discord. In other countries, such disturbances are a regular national ritual. The Maori loss of sovereignty issues that had seemed buried in the nineteenth century resurfaced. However, Kiwis preferred their materialistic pleasures than consider their implications. The 1976 Montreal Olympic games were ruined by the boycott of African nations because of the New Zealand same year All Black national rugby tour of South Africa. At the time I was astonished. The All Blacks were a private club. But international politics cared nothing about old fashioned liberalism. Robert Muldoon put enormous and mostly successful pressure to stop New Zealand's participation at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. So clearly, Robert by allowing the 1981 ruby tour was acting not on a liberal principle but to save his political skin in the 1981 election. It worked, but Robert's reputation as a statesman was ruined. The issue of rugby games with South Africa had been festering since after World War Two when the South African Apartheid Government refused to allow Maori players to enter South Africa. The issue climaxed in 1981 when the South African rugby game was cancelled in Hamilton in the Waikato region, ostensibly to stop mass casualties. The Crewe murders' saga and the issue of rugby games with the Springboks, the All Blacks' greatest foe, dominated New Zealand news headlines all through the 1970s as the Vietnam war dominated New Zealand headlines since the 1960s. Families were divided, and friendships lost. However New Zealand won world redemption from the Montreal boycott. The world has forgotten about that. Nelson Mandela and Arthur Thomas were released from prison. Nelson got the South African Presidency, Arthur got a million dollars compensation money. Both the Crewe murders and the Waikato game happened on the banks of the Waikato river. Robert Muldoon and his supporters were the heroes of the Thomas case and the villains of the Springbok tour. The left wing progressives engaged in organised emotional protests against the tour. Conservatives were sedate and averse to organised campaigns. The Thomas people were the exception. Part of their outrage against the Crewe murder convictions was they had to organise and petition instead of relying on the justice of the institutions. Many people of their background disliked them as doubting Thomases. The Thomas people were an harbinger of the middle New Zealand revolt in the 2000s. The hostility of middle New Zealand to the Springbok tour protestors startled and alienated the big city liberals. They may as old fashioned liberals have opposed the protestors. But they did not take kindly to thuggish actions and threats against them. After the 1984 election, middle New Zealand discovered the boot would now be brutally lodged on them. When I consider my own history in New Zealand, I immediately divide the years pre 1981 and post 1981. Pre 1981, as what appeared normal, I judged people on their perceived merits. I perceived Maoris as good natured, macho and materialistically devoted to the Labour Party. There were a few irritating Maori University people I took as a fringe. To give an example, I once turned off a faucet that a Maori was shaving from at a distance. I hadn't seen him. He said not a word but turned it back on to run while he shaved. I had grown up in the country. After the tour, I would fear him to shout out obscenities and hit me. The tour media propaganda had made them aggrieved nativists and us the wicked colonists. This new public aggressiveness was not confined to Maoris. The Kiwis metaphorically had tasted blood. The white Kiwis vented their spiel at anyone who thought life was more than the latest material prize. I recall my sister screaming at me because I hurriedly turned off the television ads. She also waved her hand disdainfully at the family swimming pool when I tried to tell her Maori sovereignty issues. She also said how much she enjoyed the Maori children performing their culture. When I asked did she enjoy Shelley and Keats, she snapped that they were "boring." In 1985, I stood on a road side, and watched the motorists speeding by in total incomprehension, that that day under the Waitangi Tribunal Act they lost their Parliamentary control over Maori land dealings back to 1840! The Waitangi Tribunal Act was passed by the Lange Labour Government to bribe their Maori Parliamentary members to vote for the State Owned Enterprises Act. This SOE Act transferred New Zealand's public institutions established for over a century into commercial initially Crown owned entities. To be run down and eventually sold to international corporations. The Act was sneaked through the Cabinet in dry legalese. Attorney General David Lange later said. "Walk into the central office of The Bank of New Zealand and treat it like you own the place, and see what happens." The Bank of New Zealand was sold to an Australian corporation. It over the years has earned huge profits outside New Zealand by screwing its customers. Its earned public image as "banksters," it has since 2008 dispelled by no longer billing its customers at every transaction.

A journalist wrote later ruefully about the Waitangi Tribunal Act. "No journalist reached for a telephone, how did we miss that one?" Some Opposition Parliamentarians expressed disquiet. A Maori Parliamentarian Winston Peters warned it would restart the Maori wars. But the Labour Government was completely beguiled by Maori petitions. The New Zealand Government had in the early 1900s set up tribal legal entities, called Iwis mostly named after Maori ancestors. Iwis means bones, the bones of the ancestors. The Iwis have no territorial existence, except ancestral and cultural memory. Maori elders as iwi leaders dress up in traditional feather cloaks, and through artful cultural emotional performance make the normally stingy politicians putty in their hands. The politicians are only used to abuse from everyone else. The political leaders only knew Maori from media sentimental images. Maori aggressive and greedy tribalism was not known about and anyone who tried to speak publicly about it was silenced as "racist". Attorney General Geoffrey Palmer called The Waitangi Tribunal "window dressing". David Lange said he would "be relying on the dignity of the Maori people" not to ask for more than the country could afford. George Orwell wrote. "A fat man turns every tragic scene into a comedy." Later to the Government's horror, the Maori tribes took the Government to court on Treaty issues and always won. Over the years, the Maori petitions would appear increasingly threatening. Iwis now lay claim to most of New Zealand. The Kiwis might reduce themselves eventually to the status of the Indians in Fiji. They certainly were not going to listen to me with my old fashioned University and literary education. Indeed they told me "not to bother". In the same year, 1985, the Kiwis moved ruthlessly and triumphantly to catch French State terrorists who bombed the Green Peace yacht, the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. The Rainbow Warrior was going to sail out into the Mururoa nuclear testing site. That was about life and property not about the above their heads issues of sovereignty.

The Mount Erebus disaster happened on 28 November 1979, when the national New Zealand air carrier, Air New Zealand, crashed into Mount Erebus in Antarctica. All two hundred and fifty seven passengers and crew, mostly Kiwis, lost their lives. This was the biggest single disaster in New Zealand history. The Maori wars may have brought about bigger disasters. But tribal wars are never listed in New Zealand official statistics. Kiwis regard them as romances or nightmares This was a sightseeing flight. The initial investigation concluded the accident was caused primarily by pilot error. Public outcry led to the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry into the crash. The presiding Judge Peter Mahon blamed the computer coordinates of the flight path. That was the first time most people learnt commercial aircraft were run by computers. Justice Mahon's report accused Air New Zealand of presenting "an orchestrated litany of lies". The Court surprisingly taking the side of the pilot instead of the corporation seems a curious echo of the Commission of Inquiry in same year 1980 into the convictions of Arthur Allan Thomas. That Inquiry the Auckland "off duty" police. had tried to sabotage. The embattled presiding Australian Judge Taylor accused two policemen of planting evidence, and called the police misconduct, "An unspeakable outrage". The two Judges Mahon and Taylor made a great dog and pony show of justice in 1980.

In the same year 1980, I met the artist Colin McCahon. I was doing a casual job for the Auckland city Council. We debated later if we had created more order than confusion. I noticed a householder's name was Colin McCahon. I asked if he was the famous artist. He said yes. Robert Muldoon had mocked his 1970 artwork donated to the Australian Parliament in 1978, I AM, as a reference to one AM. That had shocked, including Colin, the intellectual and art scene in New Zealand. In 1979, Robert said he didn't understand modern art as he was "a simple person". I shared the Philistine view. Colin had dyslexia and his art seemed out of focus. Later his art works would send shivers up my spine, like Beethoven and his deafness. While inspecting his artwork in the Auckland gallery I was stopped by a curator for nearly crashing backwards into the gallery wall.

1972. Monuments To Te Whiti and To Tohu. Colin McCahon. In same year my mother and I gazed out the glass door of our Manutuke citrus farm, near the birthplace of Te Kooti, and sighed that in New Zealand, everyone lived prosaic peaceful lives. Unlike other less fortunate nations, we had no history.

While Colin McCahon was doing manual labour in New Zealand, fellow South Island artist Peter Macintyre as an official artist was painting artworks of the New Zealand army in war operations.

Bill Pearson wrote in Fretful Sleepers. "Once in a hotel lavatory an art student and I were talking of Peter McIntyre's drawings when a little man piped up that he was a returned man from the first war and he knew that we knew what we were talking about but there was no need to let the whole lavatory know about it. We explained that the place had been empty when we entered, we hadn't seen him come in, and we left with his blessing. I know I hate talking anything but gossip in a bus or train or in the pictures: otherwise you sense the rest of the bus listening united in one unspoken sneer at half-cock." I know that feeling. In 1976, I returned to my student lodging with my visiting parents after a movie. To my horror they gave my flat mate an enthusiastic run down of the entire movie. I later gave them a humorous dressing down about that. I explained the fault was not what they said but that they said it. But note Bill's class words, "A little man piped up." The little man maybe got flashbacks of the war. But in the end he appreciated their words. Peter McIntyre's war paintings have since World War Two graced war veteran clubs throughout New Zealand. My father told me a man told him he lost two sons within a few days of each other at Mount Cassino. I used to be very rude about world war veterans. My father joined the RAF in World War Two. He said the war were the best years in his life. He joined to avoid cows and the army, and to fly. He said he and fellow RAF didn't believe a word of the war propaganda. Their monuments that they fought for "freedom" however humbug, has changed my mind in the Covid regime. We owe them that respect.

In the late 1970s, I had an artist girlfriend in Auckland, Jenny. She settled my sexual frustrations. We visited an artist studio. They were all taking drugs. The splurges of their art works plastering the walls showed that. One of them held a teaching position at the Auckland University art school. He said he did his own art work in class and would tell his students to paint anything they liked. He said, "They don't know how to hold a paint brush". Modern artist Colin and naïve artist Peter received little art training, but enough to hold a brush and attract laymen appreciation. I thought Jenny was an art genius although perhaps desultory. Her art works transcended both traditional and modern art. I have googled her name in vain. The art curators would impatiently thrust her art works away. Even the Nazis permitted occasional exhibitions of modern art. They were autocrats. Modern art curators are totalitarians, now woke.

Charles Goldie

Charles Goldie was Auckland born. He was educated at Auckland Grammar School. Auckland Grammar was founded by George Grey to educate the sons of the Auckland elite. In New Zealand it is pro formula that you are educated at Grammar schools and attend the other schools. Grammar schools prepare you for the elite class with Latin, the others are holding pens it seems. He studied at art classes. Sir George Grey in 1891 persuaded his father to allow Charles to study art at the famous Académie Julian in Paris. According to Wikipedia, he received a strong grounding in drawing and painting. Paris at the end of the nineteenth century was the capital of the art world. Académie Julian was at the apex of art education. All schools of art both traditional and modern were fostered. Charles' artistic talent went to realistic still-life. Charles returned to New Zealand in 1898 and set up an artist studio. I looked at Goldie paintings and immediately concluded they must originate from photographs. In that he resembles Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. That was a common accusation against Charles and was always denied. Charles is most famous for his portraits of high lineage Maori elders. Their traditional facial tattoos marked their lineage. I recall seeing at least one elderly facially tattooed Maori lady in the early 1960s on a bus.

The elderly Maori subjects of Charles would attend for a fee his studio in Auckland. He would dress them in traditional clothing and paint them. Their Goldie portraits have been non woke described by a curator, as "like a lot of old people sitting around in the sun waiting for pension day".

Early 1500s Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. Again, this beautiful painting seems to originate from a photographer's studio. Could any artist paint such realistic hypnotic eyes? Leonardo, a scientist also, lived in danger of an accusation of witch craft. Leonardo took the painting in his private collection to France.

The negative image of Crucified Christ shroud of Turin first exhibited in 1578 in Turin Cathedral. In 1988, radio carbon dating identified the shroud was from the Middle Ages, not from first century A.D. Judaea. The image is Byzantine iconic, not a Galilean Jew. The shroud shows a burst of radiation. Sixteenth century primitive photography by a pupil of Leonardo?

Composer Alfred Hill regularly visited Charles Goldie's Auckland studio. He acquired Maori songs from Charles' studio guests. In 1904, in Goldie's studio, he composed this international hit song of a Maori singing and dancing maiden. I recall singing Waiata Poi in the choir at Intermediate school.

This international hit song has been erroneously called a Maori song. It almost became obligatory to be sung and recorded by the greatest American and British pop singers from 1948 to the 1960s. The song originated in 1913 in Australia. According to legend, British music critic Clement Scott wrote the tune after a visit to New Zealand. The song has the characteristic melody of a Maori lamentation (waiata).

Frances Hodgkins, Dunedin born. Her reputation as a landscape and still life artist comes mostly from her working life in England. Frances was inspired in all modern art styles until the end of World War Two. This is Still Life with Eggs and Mushrooms painted in about 1929.

In 2017, I visited the Auckland City Art Gallery. In earlier years, the Gallery was open free to everyone. Now I was annoyed to find, a surcharge to enter was required for all non New Zealand citizens. Then having entered, I found the Francis Hodgkins exhibition required a further surcharge, and this time for everyone. There was also a free exhibition of women artists who had been denied art exhibitions because of "sexism". I concluded they weren't talented enough. Frances' female gender did not hinder her exhibition and fame. I mused at the thought, no longer too bizarre, one day the Paralympics will be included with the Olympics, thereby generating hostility where there used to be only mutual respect.

The national anthem song, God Defend New Zealand was first performed in Dunedin in 1876. It was immediately popular. The words had been written as a patriotic poem by Thomas Bracken. The melody was composed by John Woods in a music competition in 1876. In 1939, Prime Minister Peter Fraser declared God Defend New Zealand as the National Song of New Zealand for the Centennial Year celebration. My father said, everyone was astonished that the Treaty of Waitangi was only a hundred years old. In one hundred years, the New Zealand people had made a history that took England several thousand years. The anthem was first performed at the 1972 Olympic games, displacing God Save The Queen as the national anthem. In 1878, at the request of Premier Governor Grey, a Maori translation was provided. The haka, Kamate, Kamate , Kaora, Kaora is reserved for contact international sports, and God Defend New Zealand for all other international events. As with every other public event in New Zealand from the late twentieth century, the Maori version of God Defend New Zealand is pushing out the English version. Perhaps one day the white people will insist, Kamate Kamate be performed in English. I would be the first to turn my nose.

David Lange

God defend New Zealand indeed from these gentlemen

The Fish and Chip Brigade. Fish'n' chips have been since European settlement a favourite New Zealand light meal and take away. A newspaper photographer snapped in a Parliamentary office the five co-conspirators who had just failed a 1980 coup against the Leader of the Opposition. One managed to dodge the photograph in his characteristic dodger style. I recall the obese one in 1975 regularly strolling down central Auckland streets. He was one of Auckland's sights. That was David Lange. David was a cross between Norman Kirk and Nero. Like Norman, he groomed himself for the Prime Minister office by slimming down. Norman slimmed by careful dieting and exercise, David by a stomach stapling medical operation. Norman was a great reader. David complained bitterly his law degree required him to study Norse literature. He didn't see the relevance. Robert Muldoon didn't see the relevance of studying French at school. But Rob's public image was an ignoramus outside balancing money accounts. His wife Thea always insisted Rob was a well read man. If so, he kept that quiet so as not to disturb his public anti- intellectual image. Everyone knew Rob was a frequent cultivator of roses. But that was forgivenn even admired as a quirky hobby. Ever since Keith Holyoake's tongue slip between Dickens and Darwin, New Zealand political leaders have been careful to confine their public discourse to anecdotes. New Zealand has gone a long way since the nineteenth century when New Zealand Premiers were scholars and even a poet. The anti intellectual cult mulled over in Fretful Sleepers, grew out of the world war experiences. What had civilisation done for the world asked the Kiwis if they considered it amidst the ruins of Europe and fascist atrocity reports. Much more likely, they evaded such thoughts but felt it. They came back to New Zealand to buy a ballot farm or home from their war pensions. They cultivated their humble but well kept homes and gardens, They raised children well thrashed to keep them in order. They followed the national sports, in particular the rugby All Blacks, drank copious alcohol and gambled on the horses. They died in suitable time, got a decent funeral and after a week or two were generally forgotten about. As they might say. "What else real is there?" University (Varsity as they called it) was for a better paid more prestigious job. Professors and students who studied non vocational subjects were idle parasites, fit if at all only for the classroom. When Robert Morley called lawyers and accountants who played rugby, buffoons, the New Zealand British television host failed to reprimand him. The television host was run out of the country. Despite this dreary common philistinism, a small minority in every town and district kept the cultivated arts thriving. The Kiwis would watch appreciatively their shows, and respect their children's cultural education. Then depressingly, they would return to their philistinism as if it was not real, an idle dream. Allowance however was made for Maori culture as indigenous New Zealand culture and Maori performers were indulged. Until Barry Crump won a best seller readership in the early 1960s, the Kiwis rarely read New Zealand books by New Zealand authors. Those authors were stuck up. The tales of Me And Gus and Hori were read as yarns. Barry succeeded because the Kiwis thought he was his literary character, a good keen man and a vagabond. Prior to World War Two, there was a popular left wing New Zealand book genre. As New Zealand settled down into middle class Philistine torpor, that was forgotten about, except among a circle of effete intellectuals surviving on teachers'' salaries and discreet Government grants. That anti- intellectualism had diminished somewhat by 1984 with overseas travel. But the consequences were the Fish And Chip Brigade new Government elected in 1984, in a splendid co-incidence with Orwell's prophetic novel. They were as ignorant and naïve as they appeared. They had among them an historian, Michael Bassett, to the left of David Lange in the image. But Michael Bassett had been educated in New Zealand Universities' magpie history curriculum. That is the ebbs of history not the flow of international and national history. At least that is an explanation for his somnolence on historical issues. In 1984 and 1985 under his watch, the new Government put New Zealand onto treacherous rocks. There was no one left in an influential position to advise the Government. The skills of reflection and comprehension of New Zealand history had been shut out of the New Zealand discourse. The fretful sleepers slept walked into disaster. In the televised debate between Robert Muldoon and David Lange in the 1984 election, David gave a spiel full of pat phrases. Robert's sardonic reply was. "I love you Mr Lange." It was said. "If you were guilty, the lawyer to go to was David Lange." David said he left the legal profession after his Court pleading put an alcoholic driver back on the road. He retired from politics for a parallel reason.

Bill Pearson wrote in Fretful Sleepers. "The puritanism in Littledene (a prototype of a New Zealand small town) is not all debit. With the concern for our neighbours' morals goes a concern for their welfare. The gossips are at least interested in other people, they help them in sickness, help with another's ploughing and shearing and harvesting. But when the puritan shell is cast there is nothing to replace it except perhaps a dimly expectant hedonism inspired by radio-serials and films. ...When puritanism goes the New Zealander is left with that "ugly" realty: he begins to look after number one. ... shallow and sneering hedonism."..."It is possible in Auckland for a South Islander to feel uprooted in the indifference and hostility of the people." The pushy shallow Kiwis, a common type, took over the public institutions after the destruction of their very dull but dutiful State bureaucracy, and ran them as their fiefdoms to show their contempt of both the intellectuals and everyone else. In 1985, the Lange Government proceeded to transfer the public institutions to commercial enterprises or sell them outright to foreign owners. The public institutions became monsters gorging out profits to the shareholders, both private and the Government, and reducing services to do so. In the circles of policy making, cult thinking, commercial good, Government bad, replaced historical awareness and reflection. Noam Chomsky said in New Zealand. "New Zealand is the only country that chose to be third world." One might unkindly say. "The New Zealand people in their anti intellectualism hoisted themselves on their own petard." When the public complained there were too many advertisements on television, a television executive responded. "The same people complained about shopping on Saturday. The public will get used to it." The real issue that there were too many advertisements on television, the suits inculcated with commercial or public relations degrees, could not grasp. The public stopped watching television except mostly for news and reality television. Watching television was turned from a pleasant recreation into a purgatory. Television once the centre of households' lives, became a distraction. That was not entirely a bad thing. The suits eventually ran all the public institutions into the ground or sold them to foreign owners to screw the public. People grumbled but what could be done except retreat into their private spaces or vent their rage in letters to their newspapers? Capitalistic England did not take over New Zealand in the nineteenth century. The New Zealand Governments turned capitalistic instead. Was this just folly or a diabolical conspiracy? My History professor remarked in class in 1984. "There is a bubble of capital floating around the world. It reaches countries, brings short term wealth and then bankrupts the country. It has now reached New Zealand." I recall an inward shudder. New Zealand after the 1984 election was broke as much as a country can be broke but have its citizenry in first world affluence. Robert Muldoon was keeping the country going by doling out subsidies and borrowing. Irregular employment was replacing employment for life even in the Government bureaucracy. When the books were opened, the new Government realised a crisis was at hand. The Labour Party politicians, as has happened globally with left wing Governments, threw in the economic towel and handed the country's institutions over to the Chicago school "free market" boys. As my History professor predicted, there was a three year boom of cheap imports and a share market casino. Then there was the global 1987 stock market crash. Instead of taking emergency measures as did the rest of the world, The New Zealand policy makers appeared to believe their own "free market" religion. The rest of the world forgot about the 1987 crash. New Zealand with many thousands financially ruined has never recovered. In 1990, David Lange, who had retired from the Prime Minister office, virtually admitted on television the "free market" reforms was a money making scam. He recanted from that the next day. Still, as David might have said. "We had to do something to save the country and we destroyed the reputation of the Labour Party to do so." But unlike the more mature educated first world countries that preserved their most valuable State institutions, New Zealand corporatised or sold almost the lot. New Zealand threw out the baby with the bath water. There were no Sir Humphrey Applebys in New Zealand to whisper in the Ministers' ears, the catastrophic roads they might be going down. The Kiwis' hatred of intellectualism and snobbery had seen to their demise. The country became poorer but it remained first world. The people no longer trusted to their politicians to make a utopia or give them instant riches from the share market. Private initiative and personal endeavour replaced political solutions. New industries sprung up. Saturday shopping closed, since 1945 reopened in 1980. In 1990, trading became legal on Sunday. New polyglot immigrants teaching Kiwis new hospitality experiences and food flavours ended the historical sterility of New Zealand urban life. Trading on Sunday marked the final demise of Christianity except for its small minority of devotees. Its smallness is not so small as not to be noticed in society. The Kiwifruit industry originated from the humble gooseberry to grow into a globally exported salad fruit. Women abandoned their subordinate positions in society and employment. They now more or less make the laws and run the institutions and the media. They liberated themselves and made themselves a pain for men. However, many hard working women fully deserved the new property rights laws that gave them half share of their husbands' properties. They would no longer be called farmers' wives, and their husbands have the conjugal right to rape them. Maori culture was revived, and resistance to further Maori land loss grew. Kiwis took all in their stride. They were their wives, sisters, daughters and Maori relations. From their pioneering heritage, they would celebrate a fair go for everyone except the snobs.

In his first year as Prime Minister, David Lange stopped American nuclear powered ships entering New Zealand territory. David's German family had been victims of war hysteria. When he was accused by an American of free loading on defence alliances with America, David replied. "I can smell the plutonium on your breath". That fatuous reply earned him international accolades. David admitted in 1990, the Americans had a point. Days later, David resigned the Prime Ministership. The ban on American nuclear war ships has been so popular that it has remained ever since. In Washington, it appears to have been treated as an eccentricity by an American vassal State that otherwise has handed itself over to global corporatism. "The sheep that roared" as one American pundit put it. However in New Zealand military circles, David's untimely death from leukaemia is attributed to the CIA.

In 1993, the New Zealand people disgusted with politicians not just as Parties but the occupation itself, voted in favour in a referendum for MMP (mixed member proportional) in Parliament. The New Zealand version of MMP, followed the model of NATO occupied Germany. Only half the MPs would now be elected by the electorates. The other half would be appointed by their Parties. A populist Party as in the Liberal and Labour Parties of old would not have been able to transform the country because of their need to compromise with small Parties elected not by electorates but by their proportion of the national vote being over five percent. The most hated corporate chief executive in the country was chosen to lead the campaign against MMP. MMP was brought in in the next election in 1996. Since 1987, the populace had been employment downsized and their services and entitlements reduced. At the same time, taxation via a new tax on goods got higher. David Lange had promised a bonanza after the pain. Rogernomics named after the "money wizard" Minister of Finance would deliver it. Instead the stock market collapsed in 1987 as Robert Muldoon had predicted. But no one except "Rob's mob" listened to Robert, the former "money wizard". David resigned after bitterly sacking the "neoliberals" in his cabinet. Many workers received redundancies that gave them small fortunes. However, the next generation of workers returned to the employment conditions of the pre union era. Cell phone messages calling in work replaced hanging around work places. There was not much public opposition. The new workers had no historical memory. They preferred a cheap hedonism to sitting in draughty halls at union meetings. This had all been inflicted on them by a class traitorous Labour Government. So who was there to champion them except discredited old unionists apparently only interested in union dues? The National Party was voted back into power in 1990.

To be continued in my blog: The End of The Golden Weather