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Waihī strikers, 1912 (click for image credit)

In one photograph (above) a crowd of strikers gathers in a small-town street, two small boys running to join it. In another photograph strike breakers march en masse from the local gold mine. The photographs are two in a series of images of the 1912 Waihī miners’ strike in our entry on the Hauraki-Coromandel region.

The strike began in May and ended in the defeat of the Waihi miners’ union in November the same year. The miners’ union had withdrawn from the arbitration system. The refusal of its members to work with a group of the engine drivers, who had broken away and formed their own union under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894, was the immediate catalyst for the strike. The strike was, and would remain, bitterly divisive.  Waihi was a company town, dependent on the mine and its mainly British-based owners for employment and most of the local council’s revenue.

The months the strike lasted, the resulting loss of employment by others in the town, the involvement of large numbers of police and strike breakers after a fiercely anti-union government was elected, the shooting of a policeman and the death of a miner, and the forced eviction of many strikers and their families from the town all contributed to the depth of feeling for and against the strike.

Some of those who had left returned to Waihī and made it their home again. For decades after, many of those who had remained staunch and those who had returned to work or been employed to break the strike maintained separate communities within the town. Their children did not mix in the playground, their grandchildren were told whose side was whose.

In 2012 feelings about the 1912 strike remain strong, coalescing around the shooting of policeman Gerald Wade and death of miner Fred Evans. After hearing evidence that Evans had shot Wade (from police and strike breakers) and that he hadn’t (from strikers), a coronial inquiry concluded that Evans was responsible. Evans, who died after a savage beating inflicted in part by Wade, became a working-class martyr whose death was remembered each year.

On 12 November 2012, the centenary of the violent encounter between Evans and Wade, an exhibition eulogising Wade opened at the Police Museum and Shades of black, a book on the shooting, was launched.

Two days earlier a centenary seminar organised by labour history groups in Wellington and Auckland was held in Waihī. The seminar was followed by the opening of an exhibition at the Waihī Art Gallery and Museum of paintings inspired by the strike, and the launch of a book – Waiheathans – providing new evidence on the subject. It includes an interview with the son of Fred Evans’s best friend, who maintained throughout his life that Evans did not and could not have shot Constable Wade, as the police and government claimed. On 11 November a commemorative service was held on the site of the Miners’ Hall where Evans died.

Commemorative service for Fred Evans, the miner killed in the 1912 strike, 11 November 2012

The seminar heard a series of fascinating, well-written papers on:

• the 1911 Royal Commission into Mining
• new documentary evidence on the strike and wider labour movement
• the political context of the Waihī strike
• comparisons between the Waihī strike and others in Wellington and Blackball
• the activities of the women known as ‘scarlet runners’ in support of the strike.

In a moving session some descendants of those who had been involved spoke of the strike’s effects on their family, and told stories that had been passed down. Monique Cochietto, great granddaughter of Bill Parry (president of the Waihi Miners’ Union, 1909–1912) described her grandmother as a little girl leaving Waihī, surrounded by hostile strike breakers, not daring to raise her eyes from her feet as she walked to the railway station. Bob Richards, grandson of Wesley Richards (Parry’s successor as union president), also spoke of the family leaving Waihī. As they stood on the railway station platform in the baking sun, Richards had reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his forehead. One of the watching strike breakers, believing he was reaching for a gun, pulled one, jammed it in Richards’s side and ordered the family onto the train.

Te Ara has more information about Waihī’s Martha gold-mine and the 1912 strike at http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/hauraki-coromandel-region/8, and on gold mining generally at: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/gold-and-gold-mining.

Woman soldier in the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (click to read credit info)

Jacinda Baker, a 26-year-old medic in the New Zealand Defence Force’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan, Afghanistan, was killed on 20 August 2012, when an improvised bomb destroyed the Humvee in which she was riding. Two other New Zealand soldiers died with her: Corporal Luke Tamatea (31) and Private Richard Harris (21).

Described by her commanding officer as ‘the mother hen, who we would not swap for the world’, Lance Corporal Baker was known for her professionalism and courage. She was the first female New Zealand soldier to be killed in action since troops were sent to Afghanistan, and the first woman to be in killed in conflict since nurse Lesley Cowper of the New Zealand Surgical Team died in Vietnam in 1966.

New Zealand’s army, which Baker joined in 2007, is one of the few in which she would be allowed a combat role. (Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Israel, Serbia, Sweden and Switzerland are the others.) Her death provoked discussion in Australia, New Zealand’s closest military ally, where women have been allowed in combat roles since 2011. The treatment of women in the Australian military has been the subject of scandal and a damning report by that country’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner (released in August 2012).

The road to women’s inclusion in New Zealand’s defence forces was surprisingly smooth. There was a precedent for women in combat roles – Māori women had taken part in fighting in the 19th century. Most well known was Hēni Te Kiri Karamū, who fought against the British at Gate Pā in 1864, and for them against Hauhau (adherents of the Pai Mārire faith) in 1865. Pākehā women first went to war as nurses – 35 New Zealand women went to the South African War (1899–1902) as nurses. Numbers swelled during the First World War, when 640 went as nurses. Of this group, 17 died.

During the Second World War, women’s auxiliaries became part of all three branches of the military. A civilian Women’s War Service Auxiliary (1940) found women to work as clerks, cooks and waitresses in New Zealand military bases and service clubs in the Middle East. Once women were accepted into the army in 1942, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was formed, and Vida Jowett appointed chief commander. The closest WAACs got to combat was as drivers, radio operators and signallers, with some trained for coastal and anti-aircraft defence work and as part of artillery units.

Members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, led by Kitty Kain, worked in mechanical and aircraft trades, and as dental mechanics and meteorological assistants. The Women’s Royal Naval Service (New Zealand) was led by Chief Officer Ruth Herrick. Like women’s auxiliaries in the other arms of the military, the service provided clerks, drivers and mess staff.

As Te Ara’s Armed Forces entry explains, women’s roles had diversified, but no women actually fought. When women became a permanent part of New Zealand’s military after the Second World War, their numbers were small – only 4–5% in the 1950s and 1960s. Separate women’s services ended in 1977, and women were allowed to take combat roles from 2000. In 2012 women were 16% of non-civilian Defence Force personnel.