NZHistory, New Zealand history online - empire day

Lord Bledisloe

Lord Bledisloe, Governor-General of New Zealand 1930–35, presided over the Empire Day Movement for many years.

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/1-001232;F
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Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Empire Day address

For years schools lined up children for patriotic addresses before giving them the rest of Empire day off as a holiday.

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/1-012615
Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its 'Timeframes' website, http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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Empire Day ceremony, 1903

Parades, flag raising ceremonies and unveilings and openings were common on Empire Day. The Victoria Ward of the Wanganui public hospital opened on Empire Day 1903.

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/1-024420;G
Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its 'Timeframes' website, http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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Ranfurly veterans' home

The symbolic highpoint of our first Empire Day came when Lord Ranfurly laid the foundation stone for the veterans' home that later came to bear his name. Ranfurly saw successive generations of war veterans such as these blind men seen enjoying their pipes on the veranda, as reinforcing imperial links.

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PAColl-5745-1-11
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Lord Ranfurly

Imperial unity was an interest of Lord Ranfurly, who was Governor of New Zealand from 1897 to 1904, which was during a period of heightened attention to imperialism. This drawing is by W.A. Bowring, 1901.

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: B-055-00
Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its 'Timeframes' website, http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Queen Victoria statue

F. J. Williamson's bronze statue of Queen Victoria, unveiled in Albert Park as a Diamond Jubilee project in 1899, would be the site of many Empire Day events. For more information on Queen Victoria monuments, see Mark Stocker, 'Queen Victoria Monuments in New Zealand: a Centenary Survey', History Now, 7/4. November 2001, pp. 5-9.

Gavin Mclean

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Queen Victoria statue

Christchurch unveiled its Queen Victoria statue on Empire Day 1903. It, too, had South African War commemorative role, gaining commemorative panels the following year.

Gavin Mclean

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Sir Bernard Freyberg speaking on Empire Day

Sir Bernard Freyberg (Governor-General of New Zealand 1946-52, but photographed c.a. 1925) used Empire Day to deliver some of his more significant speeches. 'We know that in this country are people who would like to see the British Empire fall to pieces', he warned in 1949. 'We must see that these people are kept in their places and are not allowed to interfere ? [and] when that time comes, those who do not abide by any laws and who do not know where the belt is, should not themselves be treated under Marquess of Queensberry rules'

Hear Bernard Freyberg's 1944 Empire Day speech to the South African Forces (broadcast from Italy).

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Transcript

Calling our comrades from the South African forces at home and overseas, all ranks of the Second Expeditionary Force in Italy send greeting to you on this Empire Day.

Before the War, Empire Day may not have meant much to some of us, but in the last four years that has changed. From service together in this war the bonds of empire have become very real and we look back with pride to victories in which the forces of the empire have played so worthy a part. The old hands in the Middle East look back with still greater pride to those early campaigns when, short of equipment and supplies, we stood together in the battle for Egypt and the Suez Canal.

These are one's thoughts on Empire Day 1944. Thoughts which renew confidence in the great part that the empire has played and will play, not only during the hard fighting still ahead, but also in the post-war world.

When I was asked to speak in this Empire Day broadcast to people in South Africa and began to think about what I should say to you, the first thoughts that came into my mind as a New Zealander is the great link which has existed in peacetime between New Zealand and the Union of South Africa. Probably there is not a man in our forces who hasn't seen Springboks in action, and many will remember the last matches when the All Blacks were beaten in New Zealand by a better team. We have to a certain extent evened things up with our very spirited matches in the Middle East. Among them one I will always remember in 1941, on a desert ground near Mersa Matruh on the eve of the Libyan campaign. Football I know will always be a great link between us...

On many occasions New Zealand troop ships have called at your ports and have been welcomed most hospitably by the people of South Africa. May I, as the commander, thank you all. I hope your recollections are happy ones and I trust you will make a due allowance for the festive spirit as a large body of men come ashore from the troopships.

To our friends in the Union of South Africa, and particularly to our comrades in arms, wherever they are serving, I send to you from the battlefields of Italy a message of good wishes from all ranks of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

Good luck, God speed.

Kia ora katoa.

Would you like me to do it again? I'll do it once again...

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Alexander Turnbull Library,
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Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its 'Timeframes' website, http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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Sound Archives / Nga Taonga Korero
Reference: T2668
This sound file may not be reused without permission from Sound Archives / Nga Taonga KoreroSound Archives

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Children and Empire Day

'So we'll do our best while we're children
To grow up kind and true,
To keep up the fame of our Empire's name
And the old Red, White and Blue'

'Our Flag', New Zealand School Journal, Part I, June 1921

Children were key targets for Empire Day. Lord Meath's Empire Day messages encouraged them to celebrate the history of British royalty or the Empire. 'Remember brave warriors, pioneers, sea captains, 'Queen Victoria the Good'' ', he said in 1912.

Empire Day at Stratford

Think of the Empire as one big happy family, younger children were told. 'Britain is like a mother with many children who have gone from her into other countries to earn their living', the School Journal advised. 'She still loves them; she sends them many kind messages, and helps them in every way she can. And the children, the people far away from her, love her in return ... This little mother and all her big children we call the Empire, and we keep up Empire Day just as we might keep up our mother's birthday in the family, to show that we are still her loving children'.

In 1909, the School Journal likened colonials to swallows leaving their nest, flying overseas and then returning. That swallows were northern rather than southern hemisphere creatures did not worry Journal editors; dormice and other foreign critters infested their magazine.

Older children got a less homely homily. In 1912 Classes V and VI were warned that if 'citizens of the British Empire lose their simple and hardy ways of living, and become lovers of ease, the Empire will pass away'.

Occasionally, darker family secrets were shared. 'While we call to mind to-day the great multitude of brave men and women who sowed that we might reap', the School Journal told pupils, 'it is well that we should remember that the British Empire has sometimes grown by ways of which we are not proud'. That meant slavery and the Opium Wars.

Here, as elsewhere in the Empire, educators often diluted or resisted imperialism's propagandists. The School Journal kept printing articles about royalty, but by the 1930s the special 'Empire Day Numbers' had been dropped.

Our first Empire Day

Empire Day begins, 1903

'If it can be arranged without unduly dislocating trade and unnecessarily duplicating holidays, there is every reason why the fundamental political relationship of the British peoples should be popularised by the general celebration of Empire Day'.

New Zealand Herald, 24 May 1912

Lord Ranfurly

Ironically, our first Empire Day was a day late. In 1903, 24 May fell on a Sunday. In Auckland the King's Empire Veterans held separate Protestant and Catholic church parades that day, but the main events took place on Monday, which was a public holiday.

The laying of the foundation stone for what is now the Ranfurly Veterans' Home in Auckland provided the day's highlight. The home was Governor Lord Ranfurly's pet project.

Blind residents outside the Ranfurly Veterans' Home

This local version of London's Chelsea Home for Pensioners would help individual war veterans while symbolically renewing imperial ties of affection. Ranfurly personally chose the site - 'not too near a public house yet not too far and within easy communication' - and laid the foundation stone at noon on 25 May 1903. Like other events that day, it drew heavily on recent memories of the South African War.

Empire Day observances varied elsewhere around the country. Christchurch also made a day of it by unveiling a large statue of Queen Victoria in Market (now Victoria) Square. Ballantyne's department store advertised that it would close at 1 p.m. 'Seats have been provided inside the enclosure for old colonists who have applied for tickets', the Press reported. In the evening Christchurch people had the choice of several entertainments, performances of Rickards' Variety Co. at the Theatre, the Imperial Biograph at Canterbury Hall, Deans' Vaudeville Co. at the Oddfellows' Hall, as well as the United Cricket Club's annual ball and the Volunteer Garrison officers' annual dinner. The scientist Alexander Bickerton put on an Empire Day fireworks display at Lancaster Park.