Story: Cold War

Some conservatives believed that the 1951 waterfront dispute was a communist plot to cripple New Zealand. It is a view supported by this Gordon Minhinnick cartoon, which shows the wharfies as a puppet operated by a puppeteer from the World Federation of Trade Unions, who also sports a Soviet hammer-and-sickle badge. In the sound file the trade unionist and watersider Toby Hill offers a different view.

Transcript

Interviewer: What were the effects of '51 that you first think of?

That a country that claimed to be a democracy could accept the complete loss of civil liberties. Emergency regulations which one would believe would come from some totalitarian state.

Interviewer: Mind that an effect of that was that after '51 we did have civil liberties bodies form, didn't we that was a direct effect of that dispute?

Oh, well, there were many outstanding citizens who protested immediately about the emergency regulations. The immediate effect of the dispute was the madness of the Prime Minister to bringing in down a further set of regulations to control unions etcetera and he finished up having to make 46 amendments because the nation then had become aroused.

Interviewer: How did you feel about the control of the press during the dispute? This was most unusual in a democracy like New Zealand, wasn't it?

No democratic country in the world has ever seen such a servile press as the press of New Zealand at that time, who seemed to with glee gloat suppress any news that may be to the credit of the watersiders.

Interviewer: Do you think this could ever happen again?

Well, I'm never one that says that nothing cannot happen again but I would say this, that any government that attempted to do it again would face a united trade union movement under the Federation of Labour and would not be able to get away with the denial of liberties and the denial of people to stop work.

Interviewer: Was that one of the big lessons learned? The tactical lessons learned from '51, that you never split your own movement?

Well of course '51 is not a situation that just happened. There was an incessant campaign against waterside workers through the press. There was the Cold War period and anybody that didn't say yes to the policy of the Cold War became an enemy. There was also the difference with the Federation of Labour and its support, well it support is wrong, its attitude that the watersiders were wrong was the greatest assistance any government could have got to bring in those despicable regulations.

Interviewer: Do you think in fact that the Holland government could have smashed the watersiders' union as it did without the support of the FOL?

No, no, no government could have smash the waterside workers union if there was a united trade union movement.

Interviewer: How much did you get support did you get from rank and file members of the FOL, apart from Fintan Patrick Walsh, was there a rapport between you anyway?

I think the greatest support we received was that the seaman in defiance of their president, refused to man the ships.

Interviewer: Do you have the answer to that 64,000-dollar question about how Fintan Patrick Walsh headed the FOL and his own union?

Yes, well, because the content of many unions of the Federation of Labour were dependent on the compulsory unionism and therefore their votes swung towards him.  

Interviewer: what happened to you immediately after '51? You were out as far as the waterfront was concerned.

I wasn't only out as far as the waterfront was concerned. I was out as far as many of the trade union movement were concerned and employment was extremely difficult. In three years from '51 to '54 I couldn't earn the sum of five hundred pound a year with a family to keep. If one had been guilty of a crime and had been imprisoned he'd have had a prisoner's aid looking after him, but nobody wanted to do anything with somebody who led a waterfront dispute.

Interviewer: So, things were really very tough?

Oh, very tough, but I want to make it clear it wasn't only tough for me. It was tough for many others and by virtue of my position, well even now 25 years after if a press wants to have another quote just as leader of the '51 dispute, as I had to tell one editor, has he got no other news to talk about? Can't he talk about the cost of living? Can't he talk about lack of hospitals? But all he said, well you're a figure in the country. I said, why don't you do something on Holland, who brought down the greatest undemocratic regulations in the world - why wouldn't you want any refer to those things? But of course, they're not things you talk about, are they?