‘Cossacks’ to ride again 100 years after strike
A CENTURY after they first rode in from the countryside with batons in hand, Massey’s Cossacks will once again take to the streets of Wellington.
Except this time, no blood spilt.
A parade to commemorate the great waterfront strike of 1913, when prime minister Bill Massey dispatched batonwielding farmers on horseback to quell union protests on the capital’s streets, will take place on Tuesday.
Modern-day horsemen and unionists will begin from outside the Museum of Wellington City & Sea, and head up Lambton Quay to Bunny St.
The 1913 strike involved about 14,000 workers nationwide and led to clashes with police in central Wellington, involving cavalry charges, revolver fire and machineguns deployed on the wharves and in Buckle St.
They were labelled ‘‘Massey’s Cossacks’’ because of their similarities to the people of the Russian and Ukrainian hinterland who received government privileges in return for military services.
The strike exposed deep divisions between workers and bosses, as well as rural and urban New Zealand.
Mr Massey, who was prime minister from 1912-25, became a polarising figure. He was a respected World War I wartime
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be leader but was reviled by workers for letting the cossacks loose on the streets of Wellington.
Historians David Grant and Jim McAloon say the 1913 strike in Wellington was triggered by two separate disputes.
One began at Huntly on October 6, 1913, when a coal company sacked 16 unionists.
Three days later, 500 miners voted to strike until the 16 were reinstated.
Simultaneously, Wellington shipwrights had been negotiating a wage claim for several months and, on October 17, the employers rejected their claims.
The next day, the shipwrights went on strike, then four days later their affiliates, the Wellington watersiders, held a stopwork meeting to discuss the shipwrights’ case.
‘‘While they were meeting, the employers put other workers on. The watersiders demanded reinstatement and refused to work until they were reinstated,’’ Grant and McAloon wrote.
‘‘The employers said the stopwork meeting amounted to terminating the industrial agreement and that the watersiders had gone on strike.
‘‘The watersiders themselves garded it as a lockout.’’
By late November, the strikers’ position had weakened. Strikebreakers worked most ports and arbitration unions were established.
On December 22, the watersiders returned to work at most ports and the miners followed suit on December 29, according to Grant and McAloon.
From next week, the museum will be displaying pictures of the 1913 strike and promoting a walk that takes in 20 sites throughout the city where altercations took place.
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