Story: Communes and communities

A resident picks apples at Beeville, near Morrinsville, in a 1970s photo by Ans Westra. Founded in 1933, the anarchist community of Beeville grew out of the extended family of Ray Hansen. Honey production provided a major part of the community's income – hence the name Beeville.

Listen to Beeville founder Ray Hansen talk about the community's ethos of responsible individual freedom, which sometimes led it into conflict with authority, particularly over military service and taxes.

Transcript

Well, our position has from the beginning been one of individual freedom. This has been a major value with us because the freedom of the individual, not an irresponsible freedom, but the understanding of freedom was that it could only be freedom if it was responsible because irresponsible activity destroys freedom. Now this has been very hard to make understood in the society that has been based almost entirely on authority. And so although we haven't set out to come into conflict with authority, we haven't tried to destroy authority in the world around us yet authority has tried to impose itself upon us with the result of non-acceptance on our part to a large extent and a challenge to authority, often an open challenge to authority and this is often come into the courts too and which we've openly challenged authority and taken the rap by going to prison, different ones of us have gone to prison at different times. We haven't complained about this because we felt that if you really meant this thing about freedom, you had to be prepared to pay the price, whatever it was.