Kōrero: Political parties

New Zealand's Communist Party was always small in terms of numbers, but during its decades of existence there was at times a larger group who sympathised with its aims. The party’s moves in and out of public and official favour during its nearly 80 years of existence were linked to events in the communist Soviet Union, European communist states and, later, communist China. When out of favour, communists were ‘the reds under the bed’ and those who sympathised with them were ‘pinkos’. This recruitment poster was produced in the 1940s, when the party was approved of because the Soviet Union had joined the Allies in the Second World War.

Courtesy of the Socialist Worker New Zealand Archive