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Graphic: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966.

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This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.

Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.

NEW ZEALAND ALLIANCE

Contents

Submitted by admin on April 22, 2009 - 23:33

Original and Present Aims

From the outset it was understood that the New Zealand Alliance was not a “temperance alliance” for it aimed at the total suppression of the liquor traffic. Although the Alliance has originally intended to be a union of the various temperance organisations, provision was made in the constitution for individuals to become members; and, over the years, efficient branch organisations were created in many districts. In its heyday, the 1920s, the New Zealand Alliance placed most emphasis on political activity and campaigned uncompromisingly for total prohibition. After the 1929 depression increasing financial difficulties led the Alliance to curtail its public campaigns and to concentrate on educating the electorate. To a certain extent it relaxed the demand for total prohibition in favour of fuller public control over the liquor trade; and, in this connection, it has accepted trust control as a desirable, but not ultimate, step forward. Moreover, the New Zealand Alliance continues to exercise a strict and often politically embarrassing scrutiny over every change in the country's licensing legislation.

Nowadays the New Zealand Alliance carries on much educational work through its youth department, the Young Abstainers' League. This organisation, which is the successor of the Young Men's and Young Women's National Prohibition Guilds of former days, functions through church and youth groups. The principal aim of the Y.A.L. is to educate young people to accept total abstinence from alcoholic liquor as a way of life, and it urges this by means of national competitions, rallies, and the distribution of literature.

The official organ of the New Zealand Alliance is The Vanguard, and the Y.A.L. publishes quarterly The Young Abstainer.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

  • Temperance and Prohibition in New Zealand, Cocker, J., and Murray, J. M. (jt. eds.) (1930)
  • Constitution of the New Zealand Alliance as Amended and Adopted at the Annual Meeting, March 21st 1946
  • New Zealand Alliance 75th and 76th Annual Reports, 1962 and 1963; New Zealand Herald, 11 Sep 1869
  • Evening Post, 1, 2, 3 Mar 1886.