Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Mervyn Thompson on the cover of the script of Coaltown blues (click for image credit)

Last week saw the welcome return to Wellington of Mervyn Thompson’s play Coaltown blues. The play, a one-person musical, was brilliantly performed by Chris Green, under the direction of Lindsey Rusling, with piano accompaniment by Sue Windsor.

Coaltown blues is a semi-autobiographical play following the birth, childhood and youth of a character called Mervyn Thompson in Blacktown, a small West Coast mining town. While the lead character bears the name of the playwright, the town of Blacktown is fictional. It is, however, largely based on the town of Rūnanga, where Thompson spent much of his childhood. Coaltown blues focuses on the economic and physical hardships endured by West Coast mining families, along with their socialist visions of a better world arising from those hardships.

In the play, each stage of the young Thompson’s life is set against wider historical events that make their mark on his family and town. His birth in 1935 is set against the election of the first Labour government, while further life stages are marked by the war in 1942, the end of the war on VJ Day in 1945, the defeat of the Labour government in 1949 and the miners’ strike in sympathy with the 1951 waterfront lockout.

A strong theme running through the play is that of the dangers and hardships of the miners’ lives. One section centres on the mining death of Stu Kennedy, a friend of Thompson’s father. Kennedy’s Roman Catholic funeral highlights the differences between the children of the ‘Mickey Doos’ (aka Mickey Doolans, meaning Catholics) and ‘Proddies’ (Protestants), but also emphasises the solidarity of the local union.

Thompson’s father, a staunch union man, has dreamed of a new utopia under the Labour government, but is instead disillusioned that Labour has led the country into war and has failed to prevent mining accidents. Thompson senior, who admires the Soviet Union’s war effort despite being a pacifist, is further disillusioned when Labour Prime Minister Peter Fraser supports compulsory military training in 1949.

Despite his socialist idealism and supposed pacifism, Thompson’s father is dictatorial to his family and occasionally violent to both his wife and son. The struggle of women in mining families to cope with poverty, while bringing up large families and dealing with the everyday sexism of their men, is another theme running through the play. Unequal power struggles are as evident between Thompson’s mother and father as they are between the miners’ union and the state coal management.

Coaltown blues is not all grim social realism. Some aspects of Thompson’s childhood are presented as great fun, such as the VJ Day parade. There are also obvious times of family affection and closeness, but the abiding theme is the degrading nature of poverty, despite constant hard work. The vision of the past presented in Coaltown blues has no aspect of romance or nostalgia for the ‘good old days’. Small-town life is shown in its narrowness, with the school bullies persecuting anyone who shows signs of difference or weakness.

The fact that Blacktown is in some ways an atypical New Zealand town is only revealed to Thompson when he goes to work in Christchurch during the 1951 dispute. He is surprised to learn that, unlike Blacktown where people solidly support the unions, most Christchurch people appear to see the ‘strikers’ as Communist stirrers who should be crushed.

Thompson is portrayed as the sensitive youth who wants to escape from the confines of Blacktown and a future of life down the pit. He nevertheless gives in to his father’s insistence and becomes a miner. The irony is that Thompson finds he enjoys the miner’s life and the camaraderie he finds in the mines. The joys and struggles of the miner’s work, the strength of the union and the Blacktown way of life are all brought to an end, however, with the closing of the mine.

Coaltown blues was first performed in 1984 by the playwright himself, but the play soon became overshadowed by a controversy that arose around Thompson. The playwright was subjected to a vigilante attack after allegations of sexual assault were made against him. No legal case over the allegations was ever brought against Thompson, but performances of his plays, including Coaltown blues, became the subject of protest and bitter debate.

In a modern performance of Coaltown blues the play can be seen on its own merits, rather than as a framework to discuss the playwright’s personal behaviour. As Chris Green points out in the play’s programme, recent events such as the Pike River disaster have shown that the issues that Coaltown blues deals with continue to have strong relevance in the modern world.

Peter Conway of the CTU speaks at Workers' Memorial Day

On Sunday 28 April I attended a ceremony at KiwiRail’s Lower Hutt railway workshops in Moera to mark Workers’ Memorial Day. The day is an international event to commemorate workers killed and injured on the job. While New Zealanders are reminded on Anzac Day of the heavy price our people have paid in war, many are unaware of the casualties resulting from simply earning a living. The release of the Report of the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety on Tuesday 30 April has brought the issue of workplace safety sharply into focus.

According to the report, ‘there were on average 102 fatal work-related deaths [each year] between 2008 and 2010′. Each year around one in 10 New Zealand workers are harmed through an accident or work related activity. Between 500 to 800 people die prematurely each year through illnesses directly related to the workplace. These rates are high in comparison to those in many other OECD countries. (The report also acknowledges there are some problems with the reliability of data for workplace injuries in New Zealand.)

Five high-risk industries account for over half of workplace injuries and occupational illnesses: manufacturing, construction, agriculture, forestry and fisheries. These high-risk industries are notable for having high proportions of Māori and Pacific workers, and for often having higher numbers of males in their workforces.

New Zealand has a sombre history of industrial accidents. The most recent large-scale event was the Pike River disaster, with 29 workers dying in the mine explosion of 19 November 2010. Other major disasters have included:

• The Brunner mine disaster, 26 March 1896, with 65 deaths from gas following an explosion.
• Ralph’s mine explosion at Huntly, 12 September 1914, where 43 miners were killed.
• The Strongman mine disaster, 19 January 1967, with the deaths of 19 miners.
• The Christchurch Ballantyne’s fire, 18 November 1947. Forty-one dressmakers, milliners and clerical staff died, partly a result of inadequate fire-safety provisions.
• The many ship wrecks where crew have died on the job. These include the sinking of HMS Orpheus at the Manukau bar, Auckland, on 7 February 1863, with 189 naval personnel drowning.

The majority of New Zealand’s industrial deaths and injuries have been less dramatic, though equally tragic, involving individual workers going about their tasks. Workers in jobs such as demolition and sawmill work have developed illnesses from hazardous substances, including asbestos and dioxins. Historically, jobs such as labouring, factory and cleaning work have involved injuries from occupational over-use syndrome (OOS). In recent times the increase in keyboard-based computer work has brought further risks from OOS.

Workers’ Memorial Day is an international event held annually to remember the people behind the statistics. It commemorates those killed and injured at work, along with the families who must deal with the after effects. Memorial Day also draws attention to ongoing health and safety issues. The day was first held in Canada in 1984 and has since spread to many other countries. The date of 28 April was chosen as on that day in 1914 Ontario became the first province in Canada to introduce a workers’ compensation law.

In New Zealand Workers’ Memorial Day events are generally organised by unions, in particular the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) and the Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU). This year memorial services were held at Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga/Mt Maunganui, Napier, Lower Hutt, Christchurch and Dunedin. The service in Auckland, organised by the CTU, focused on the 28 forestry workers who have been killed at work in the years since 2008.

A memorial to Jack Neha, a railway worker who was killed on the job in 1995

The ceremony at the Lower Hutt railway workshops included prayers, a moment of silence, and wreath-laying. There were addresses by speakers from the CTU and RMTU, a KiwiRail representative and by the local MP Chris Hipkins. Hazel Armstrong, a lawyer who has been involved for many years in workplace safety issues, spoke and launched her new book Your life for the job: New Zealand rail safety 1974–2000. Armstrong’s book looks closely at the period from 1995 to 2000, the years when 11 railway workers were killed. Armstrong argues that these casualties resulted from the extreme deregulation of the railways. It was appropriate that a highlight of the ceremony was the unveiling of a memorial to Jack Neha, a worker killed at the Gracefield shunting yards in 1995.

Drought in Wairarapa (click for image credit)

Despite the appearance of a bit of cloud and rain across the country over the last week or so, the drought is still carrying on. The dry weather that has been dominant since late January has led to ‘the big dry’, described as the worst drought in 70 years. To break the drought will require days of consistent, moderate rain rather than a massive downpour. A short burst of heavy rain could lead to flooding or simply to the ground turning to mud, which won’t help our parched farms.

Droughts are a fairly regular event during New Zealand summers and also occasionally in winter. The most common pattern is drought on the dry eastern sides of the islands, while the west remains relatively green. The current drought has been different in that the whole of the North Island has been dry. On 22 March the normally wet areas of the Buller and Grey districts on the South Island’s west coast were also declared drought zones. Anticyclones dominated the weather from January through to March, while the low pressure fronts that have crossed the country have not brought enough moisture to counter the drought.

While not as spectacular as earthquakes or floods, droughts are perhaps New Zealand’s most economically costly natural phenomena. The combined losses from the 1997-98 drought on the east coasts of the North and South islands and the 1998–99 drought in Otago added up to over $1 billion. The nationwide drought of 2007–8 is estimated to have cost New Zealand primary industries around $2.8 billion. The principal costs were the reduced quality of breeding stock on farms, a reduction in the amount of milk produced, and the extra money farmers had to pay out for supplementary food for their animals.

Farmers are not the only ones to feel the impact of droughts. The drought in the summer of 1972–73 led to nationwide electricity rationing the following winter, due to low water levels in the hydro-electric lakes. Winter droughts in 1992 and 2001 also severely reduced the water available for electricity generation. A drought in 1993–94 had such an impact on Auckland city’s water supplies that in subsequent years a pipeline, costing over $170 million, was built to supply water from the Waikato River. The droughts of 1997–99 exacerbated the impacts of the Asian financial crisis on the New Zealand economy, while the 2008 drought had a severe impact on the dairy industry at a time of international financial chaos.

A look at some of the nationwide droughts that have hit the country in the past puts the current ‘big dry’ into historical perspective. The drought that gripped the colony in the summer of 1885–86 brought with it massive bush fires. In the South Island there were fires in Canterbury, Marlborough, Nelson, and even places on the ‘wet’ West Coast where settlers had not witnessed bush fires before. Dramatic tales abounded, such as the dash for safety made by the Newmans mail coach, as it was scorched by blazing forests surrounding the Nelson to Reefton road through the Motupiko Valley. In the North Island there were huge fires, particularly in Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay and Manawatū. There were so many fires around Wellington that at one point the city was reported to be ‘smoke dried.’

In the summer of 1907-8 the young dominion suffered a similar drought across the whole country. The government moved to assist farmers by providing grass seed on easy terms. Wild fires were once again common, with sparks from traction engines seen as a particular incendiary danger. As always in times of natural disaster, some people drew a divine lesson from a natural event. The Reverend W. Hain, preaching at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Ashburton, took as his text Isaiah, chapter 5, verse 6: ‘I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.’ Hain saw the drought as a sign of God’s wrath, as ‘there was nothing wrong with accumulating wealth, but the sin came when it was improperly distributed.’

Droughts have clearly always been a factor of the New Zealand environment. If climate change predictions prove accurate, they may well become a standard seasonal feature of life on these islands.

The Wanganui Computer Centre after it was bombed by Neil Roberts in 1982 (click for image credit)

November has just passed and New Zealand once again had its regular celebration of Guy Fawkes, marking the English gunpowder plot of 1605. Passing by almost unnoticed this November was the 30th anniversary of an event that may have been the nearest New Zealand equivalent to the gunpowder plot. At 12.35 a.m. on 18 November 1982, punk anarchist Neil Roberts blew himself up in an attack on the Wanganui Computer Centre, the building that held the national police computer.

A number of people who knew 22-year-old Roberts maintained that his death in the blast was intentional rather than accidental. The foyer of the computer centre was seriously damaged, but the computer itself was not affected and security guards on site were unharmed. Roberts left graffiti on a nearby toilet block: ‘We have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity’. This was a quote from the revolutionary Junta Tuitiva, of La Paz, which fought against the Spanish for the freedom of Bolivia in 1809.

Neil Roberts was part of the punk sub-culture that emerged in late-1970s New Zealand. Punk in New Zealand was a response to music and styles developing in the UK and the USA as bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Ramones redrew the cultural map. It incorporated an attitude of rebellion against authority, with a reaction against the ‘bad disco’ and  ‘boring hippy’ music of the early 1970s. Punk music relied on noise, attitude and just doing it, with little regard for any sort of musical ability. In New Zealand bands such as the Suburban Reptiles, the Scavengers, Flesh D-Vice and Proud Scum sprang into existence. While most punk bands did not last long, the DIY approach they promoted was to have an indelible influence on the New Zealand music scene. The punk scene provided an introduction for such great musicians and songwriters as the Enemy’s Chris Knox and the Plague’s Don McGlashan.

Most young people were simply interested in punk for the music, the styles, a bit of rebellion and, for many, a chance to drink or take drugs. It also provided many young people with a sense of community they felt lacking in wider society. A more sinister element was provided by some of the skinheads and bootboys, who brought a violent racist element to the scene. On the other hand, some punks took a more serious political view of the idea of anarchy, adopting the left wing anti-racist stance of bands like the Clash. Neil Roberts himself came to left-wing anarchist ideas through reading the 19th-century Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, rather than through listening to the Sex Pistols’ Never mind the bollocks.

For many young people, especially young Māori and Polynesians, reggae music was fulfilling a similar role to punk in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Musicians such as Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Bob Marley called on people to ‘Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.’ Marley’s concert in Auckland in 1979 literally changed the appearance of the country, as dreadlocks spread across the nation. Bands such as Herbs, Dread Beat and Blood, and Aotearoa sang anthems of pride, unity and resistance.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s many young people felt they had something to resist. New Zealand society under Robert Muldoon’s administration seemed to them stultified, conformist, racist and authoritarian. The dawn raids against Polynesian overstayers were followed by the Bastion Point occupation and the subsequent police crackdown. There were protests against the increasing power of the SIS (the Security Intelligence Service) and against Muldoon’s attempts to fast track his Think Big projects with the National Development Act 1979. A government that talked about freedom maintained laws that outlawed male homosexuality. Visits by nuclear ships became more frequent, while atomic war looked like a distinct possibility with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s fingers on the button. The Springbok Tour of 1981 brought home to New Zealanders just how much power a modern state could use against its own citizens. Neil Roberts protested against the Springbok Tour and marched at Waitangi to support Māori rights. He was also well known for his ‘Drug takers against the bomb’ badges.

For many young punks and rastas (Rastafarians) police harassment on the streets was a fact of life at that time. The Wanganui police computer, the central base for police records, was seen by Neil Roberts and other dissidents as a symbol of police oppression. In an age before computer hacking, Roberts decided to target the computer with gelignite and to kill himself in the process. Such an action was deeply ironic given that Roberts basically saw himself as a pacifist.

Thirty years on the death of Neil Roberts can be seen as both tragic and futile. In the years since 1982, New Zealand society has undergone dramatic changes, both positive and negative. The cultural and political ferment in late 1970s and early 1980s youth culture was a small but significant factor in this change. It can now be seen as fortunate that New Zealanders largely chose peaceful methods of protest, rather than the methods of violence and despair all too prevalent in the modern world.

The first Labour Day procession, Dunedin, 1890 (click for image credit)

As our readers may have noticed, this working week is a short one, following on from the welcome Monday break for Labour Day. Many New Zealanders may be unaware of Labour Day’s origins in the workers’ struggle for an eight-hour working day.

Samuel Parnell, an English carpenter who was an early Pākehā settler in New Zealand, was one of the first eight-hour day advocates. In 1840, soon after arriving in Wellington, Parnell refused to work for more than eight hours a day on his contracts. At that time the standard work day for British workers was at least 10 hours, with Sunday as the only day of rest. The eight-hour principle was adopted by many workers in Wellington and spread to other parts of the colony. However, workers such as shop assistants, farm labourers and domestic servants continued working extremely long hours.

Agitation for the eight-hour day spread throughout the industrialised world in the 1880s. On 3 May 1886 a workers’ eight-hour strike meeting in Chicago was fired on by police. The following day, at an indignation protest in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, a bomb was thrown, killing and wounding a number of policemen. Although the bomb thrower was never identified, eight anarchist labour activists were arrested, charged and convicted of conspiracy to murder. Four were executed, while one committed suicide in jail.

At an 1889 international labour congress in Paris, 1 May was adopted as a date to both demonstrate for an eight-hour working day and to commemorate the ‘Haymarket martyrs’. Since 1890 the celebration of May Day as the workers’ day has been adopted in a large number of countries. In New Zealand, however, Labour Day is held on the fourth Monday in October.

New Zealand’s October Labour Day also has its origins in the 1880s eight-hour movement. In 1890 the Maritime Council, consisting of the powerful transport and mining unions, called for a ‘labour demonstration day’. The day was to celebrate workers’ trades and to promote the eight-hour day. The date chosen, 28 October 1890, was the first anniversary of the Maritime Council’s foundation. The council itself did not survive the year, being destroyed in the collapse of the 1890 maritime strike. Despite this set-back, the Labour Day demonstrations were a huge success in many parts of the country. Large processions were held in Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington, with the 80-year-old Samuel Parnell leading the Wellington parade.

In the 1890s Labour Day was not an official holiday, although government offices were closed on the day. Richard Seddon’s Liberal government passed a law in 1899 declaring the second Wednesday in October as the Labour Day public holiday. In 1910 this was ‘Mondayised’, with the Labour Day holiday falling on the fourth Monday in October. While a Labour Day holiday had been gained, the union struggle to extend the eight-hour day to all workers continued.

The tinsmiths and sheet metalworkers float in a Labour Day parade, Christchurch, 1900 (click for image credit)

In the early years there was widespread participation in Labour Day events, which were generally organised by committees of trade unionists and their supporters. Events included parades, with banners and floats representing the particular unions and with workers dressing in their work gear or carrying the tools of their trades. The parades were followed by large picnics, often accompanied by brass bands and sporting competitions. Wellington’s regular Labour Day picnic at Days Bay attracted thousands of people, while Canterbury Trades and Labour Council’s 1913 picnic at Wainoni Park was attended by a crowd of over 8,000.

By the 1910s many of the Labour Day processions were becoming dominated by floats and banners advertising local businesses. The emphasis was also shifting to the social, rather than political aspects of Labour Day. Some of the more militant unions and socialist activists started to call for May Day, rather than Labour Day, to be recognised as the workers’ day. There had already been some-small scale marking of May Day. On 1 May 1906 the small New Zealand Socialist Party had been able to fill His Majesty’s Theatre in Wellington. The audience heard a number of speakers extol the merits of a socialist future, in addition to the Socialist Orchestra playing the ‘Gloria’ from Mozart’s ‘12th Mass’.

In the mid-1920s Labour Day activities went into decline, but few New Zealand workers marked May Day in its place. The miners’ unions were an exception; they observed May Day as an unofficial holiday and, from 1937, had a May Day holiday written into their employment awards. The 1930s depression saw May Day being used as a day of protest by workers and the unemployed. In Christchurch, on May Day 1932, over 10,000 people marched to Cranmer Square to express their concern over the ongoing crisis.

In recent times unions’ marking of May Day has been relatively low key, although various social events continue to be held on the day. Labour Day for most people is simply another public holiday. It is notable, however, that Christchurch trade unions have continued the tradition of the Labour Day picnic, combining entertainment with a social message.

I hope everyone had a fine Labour Day holiday and express my thanks to the pioneer labour activists who made it possible.

Cheers for the day off! : the Eight Hour Day Committee, 1890, including Samuel Parnell in the centre of the front row (click for image credit)