Maoriland Worker office

The original caption of this photo reads, ‘Unity Conference delegates outside the Maoriland Worker office, Wellington’. The occasion was probably the first Unity Conference of 21 to 27 January 1913, which was held at the Maoriland Worker office, 290 Wakefield Street.

The Maoriland Worker, edited by Harry Holland at the time of his arrest during the 1913 strike, was the official newspaper of the New Zealand Federation of Labour and its successor the United Federation of Labour. It was also the official paper of the Social Democratic Party. The Worker declared itself to be ‘a journal of industrial unionism, socialism, and politics’, and presented a broad range of socialist opinions. With the mainstream press strongly against the strike, the Worker was a loud alternative voice. Other left-wing papers supporting the strike were The Social Democrat, produced by socialist activist Harry Scott Bennett, and The Industrial Unionist, the newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World. New Zealand Truth, a populist scandal sheet claiming to have the widest circulation of any New Zealand paper, was also firmly pro-strike and sympathetic to socialism. (From the 1920s Truth was firmly right-wing).

See more images of Wellington during the 1913 strike here (Flickr)

See the Maoriland Worker on PapersPast.