1970s Decade of protest
Growing up in rural New Zealand, I didn’t have a lot of political protest in my young life. But I had an increasing political awareness, and one of my strongest memories was of having an impassioned argument with my father about apartheid.
Television was new in New Zealand, and my family had been fairly early getting one in 1964. It sat in the corner with a doily and pot plant on top of it. Goodnight kiwi reminded us when it was bedtime.
That night we’d seen a play. A girl about my age was in a South African boarding school, whites only. Recently it had come to light that her grandmother was black. The play ended with her going home, expelled from school, sitting waiting for a train, not knowing whether she should sit in the whites-only or coloureds waiting room.
My sister and I were weeping profusely, arguing with my father that this was wrong. He was stubborn: it was separate but equal development.
Years later, when I was married to one of the first rugby players to make himself unavailable to play against the 1970 Springboks, poor Dad had to cope with clashing feelings – how could he be lucky enough to get a potential All Black for a son-in-law, but unlucky enough for that son-in-law to refuse to play against New Zealand’s greatest opponents?
By 1967 I was at Massey University and in my first year, carried along by more politically sophisticated friends, I marched against NZ’s involvement in Vietnam. My quite political mother had explained what was known as the ‘domino theory’ to me – fight them in Southeast Asia, or we’ll have to fight them at home. But by 1967 I accepted I didn’t agree with either of my parents politically. I have stayed as steadfastly left as they were right.
Muchofthefirsthalfofthe70swe spent in France (Robert had become an All Black in 1971, playing against the British Lions in New Zealand, toured with the All Blacks to Britain andFrance,andattheend1973–a year when a tour by South Africa had actually been cancelled – he took up the opportunity to play in France).
We returned in 1976 with a toddler and a baby about to be born – just weeks after Robert Muldoon had become prime minister. Norm Kirk had died in office not long before.
As the exhibition which opens at Square Edge on May 1 shows, Palmerston North already had a large number of socially aware citizens prepared to take to the streets.
Internationally it was a time of political activism. Racism overseas had highlighted racism at home: we weren’t the non-racist country we had bragged we were. Women’s rights, including effective contraception and the right to abortion, along with affordable childcare, were issues as big in our small university city as they were all over the world.
The combative, populist Muldoon was to hold power for nine years. He was a catalyst for revolution. We were the baby-boomers coming through and we expected different things for ourselves and our children. Muldoon seemed like the worst version of our parents.
My father, who’d found Keith Holyoake pompous, found much to admire in Muldoon, seeing as strength what we thought of as bullying. As the 70s ended, with the probability of a Springbok tour in 1981, Muldoon’s recalcitrance got more and more frightening.
Going through the photos available for the exhibition was certainly a strange exercise. Our youth, still tantalisingly close in our minds, is now the olden days. Checking to see who we recognised was challenging. Any small blond boy in a striped McLaren folding buggy could’ve been Benedict; only the dates of the photos and the strangers pushing the stroller were evidence that it was someone else’s little sweetie.
Young women nearly all had long hair and not much makeup. Young men had sideburns, moustaches and shoulder-length hair. We took our children with us on marches – a protest could feel like a Park Road Playcentre meeting. By 1981, our daughter Gemma was skipping to One Two Three Four We Don’t Want your Racist Tour at Central Normal school.
The icons remain, however. There’s Alan Millar, in a photo in the exhibition, hands in pockets, marching in the front row of a “say no to nuclear power” protest. In my first year, going out to the Massey campus at night for English lectures, there among the first-years, nuns, primary teachers looking to get more qualifications, was Alan, on his feet thundering a line from Oliver Twist. Farewell, Alan.
Also in the exhibition, here’s Roger Middlemass, fighting for his union. There is Red Parsons. Farewell Red. There are Robert’s parents, marching for peace next to their Presbyterian minister. Farewell, Angus and Gwen. There’s Rosemary Baragwanath, who got whacked by a long baton in Molesworth St. There’s the Māori Land March coming through Palmerston North, numbers swelling as they walk through the city. One good thing about the Springbok tour issue: it forced us to focus on New Zealand’s own issues.
I miss it sometimes. Unity is a great feeling, and having a moral purpose, a fight to fight, gets you through the day. It was great being a Palmerstonian doing our bit.
The day in 1981 that our house got egged (what a waste of protein) energised rather than frightened us. It was high up near our roof, so we left it as a reminder. Or perhaps hoping the rain would do the cleanup job.
Also, I miss its innocence. Social media’s non-existence. I miss feeling that if we try hard enough, change will happen. The planet, misused, abused by us for so long, its needs still trampled on by those in power, indeed by all of us, seems to be getting its own back these days. And Muldoon surely would have felt right at home.
The exhibition
These photos and more can be seen at the exhibition “1970s: Decade of Protest” at Square Edge Community Arts Centre from May 1-26. Thirty of the 100 photographs in the exhibition have come from the Manawatū Standard archives, held by Manawatū Heritage, some never published before. The rest are from the “1970s Protest Photos NZ – Where were you in ’72?’” exhibition, first shown in Wellington in 2023.
Linda Burgess, writer, teacher, activist, and resident of Palmerston North back then, reflects on that turbulent decade.