Feature
A Nation of two halves
by Jock Phillips
Twenty-five years ago this month New Zealand was torn apart by civil conflict. It was a turning point in our history.
Thousands in the streets surging towards the park, drama and tension everywhere – this was a nation at war. We might be talking about the Springbok tour 50 years ago or, equally, the Springbok tour 25 years ago. But in 1956, the violence was all on the rugby field. New Zealand was at “war” with South Africa, the country was united in a passionate determination to defeat the old enemy. In 1981 the country was divided, and the violence was between New Zealanders in the streets.
What brought about that change in one generation? In 1956, the Springbok team was all-white, the personification of the apartheid regime. Yet no one in New Zealand protested. In 1981, the team even had some token blacks, yet thousands took to the streets. At the most obvious level, the conflict in 1981 was between those who believed that apartheid was wrong and that playing football with South Africa implicitly recognised an evil regime; and those who held to an old ideal of keeping politics out of sport. But deep-seated social changes lay behind the debates. The tour represented a crucial moment in the journey between the New Zealand of Sid Holland, Canterbury farmer, war veteran and “Britisher through and through”, and the New Zealand of Helen Clark, woman, former academic and Auckland urbanite.
There were at least five critical ways in which the 56 days of the 1981 tour represented this struggle for identity between the old and the new New Zealand. These conflicts were strikingly revealed when, at the end of the tour, some colleagues and I carried out a survey of people who had marched on the last anti-tour march in Wellington or been members of the Wellington anti-tour group, COST (Citizens Opposed to the Springbok Tour).
Baby Boomers v War Veterans
The first defining factor was that more than two-thirds of those who marched and three-fifths of those on the COST mailing list were under the age of 40, and the greatest number in both lists were aged 30-34 in 1981. These were people who had been brought up in the relatively prosperous years of the 1950s.
In the late 1960s, Tim Shadbolt had proclaimed the coming of a new generation with new values: “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” he said. This generation cut its teeth marching against the Vietnam war and French nuclear tests before moving on to other causes, such as the environment. Among those causes was sporting contact with South Africa. HART (Halt All Racist Tours), the leading anti-tour organisation, founded by young Auckland university students in 1969, brought to the 1981 tour all the techniques refined on marches and demonstrations through the late 60s and 70s. The insistence on non-violence, the banners and the chants, the eye for symbolic actions and street theatre – these typified the youth revolt of the late 60s. Shadbolt was among those who tried to storm the field at Gisborne during the first tour match on July 22.
On the other side were many New Zealanders in their fifties and sixties. Born in the 1920s or earlier, they had grown up in depression and war. Hard work and the need to save was the legacy of the slump; a belief in the British Empire and the role of New Zealand men in armed conflict was the legacy of the war. Rugby was central to that culture. The game had achieved that status during the first half of the 20th century when it was seen as perfect training for war. This generation was personified by Robert Muldoon, born in 1921, a war veteran and now Prime Minister. He had seven war veterans in his first Cabinet. When the choice came as to whether or not to stop the Springbok tour, he talked about “our kith and kin” in South Africa and their mutual war service.
The year 1981 was not just a conflict of boomers and veterans (many older people marched or gave money to HART), yet the tour represents a moment when the politics of a new generation showed itself. Before long, people who had come to political consciousness in the 60s would be ministers in David Lange’s Cabinet.
City v Country
In 1956, more New Zealanders lived in cities than in the country, but the nation’s mythology remained resolutely rural. Farmers were regarded as the “backbone of the country” and sheep farmers were among the nation’s wealthiest. The cities were heavily suburban; downtown streets were virtually deserted at night and weekends. By the 1980s, farmers were facing the consequences of Britain’s entry into the EEC and the switch away from wool to synthetics. Robert Muldoon had put sheep on the welfare rolls. The city was changing fast. Auckland had grown from some 300,000 in the 50s to more than a million and had become ethnically diverse, with rural Maori and Pacific Islanders entering in large numbers. A new urban culture emerged – the end of 10 o’clock closing and liberal liquor laws led to trendy restaurants and music in bars. There were film festivals and plays. And the young middle classes were beginning to move from their suburban gardens to inner-city apartments.
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