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Mabel Howard

In 1947, 14 years after Elizabeth McCombs had become the first woman MP, and more than half a century after women had won the vote, Mabel Howard became New Zealand’s first woman Cabinet minister.

First elected to Parliament for Christchurch East in a by-election in February 1943, Mabel Howard was to become a ‘high-profile and sometimes flamboyant’ minister in the first Labour government. She won the new electorate of Sydenham in 1946 and held the seat until her retirement in 1969. Following the death of Dan Sullivan in April 1947, she was appointed minister of health and minister in charge of child welfare, becoming the first female Cabinet minister in any Commonwealth country.

Coming from a strong trade union background, Howard declared her concern for ‘women, the aged, the sick and the unfortunate’. She had a forthright manner and a reputation for saying what was on her mind. She caused a fuss in September 1954 when – during a lacklustre debate on the Merchandise Marks Bill – she waved two pairs of bloomers in front of an astonished House. She was trying to illustrate that although clothing sizes were supposed to be standardised and correctly labelled, much variation existed. The ploy worked. While clothing manufacturers criticised the stunt, she also received much support (including from within the National Party) and standardisation was soon legislated for.

In the Walter Nash-led second Labour government (1957–60) Howard became minister of social security, minister in charge of the welfare of women and children, and minister in charge of the Child Welfare Department. Her reputation for lacking tact and having been unnecessarily antagonistic towards departmental officials and doctors apparently contributed to Nash’s decision not to give her the health portfolio she had previously held.

Howard was re-elected with large majorities in 1963 and 1966, while Labour was in opposition. She stood down in 1969 after the Labour Party introduced a mandatory retirement age. Her health was deteriorating and she was in the early stages of dementia. She was committed to Sunnyside Hospital, Christchurch, where she died in June 1972.

By Neill Atkinson

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Iriaka Rātana

The first Māori woman to be elected to Parliament, Iriaka Matiu Rātana was a passionate advocate for the welfare of her people.

She was born Iriaka Te Rio at Hiruhārama on the Whanganui River in 1905, and had connections to Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi through both parents. A talented singer, at 16 she went to live at Rātana Pā, joining and later training the young people’s cultural groups that accompanied prophet Tahupōtiki Wiremu Ratana on his tours around the country. In 1925 she became Rātana’s second wife and after his death, in 1939, she married Matiu, his son by his first marriage. By then, she was one of the most influential women in the Rātana movement.

Matiu Rātana won the Western Maori seat in 1945 but died in 1949, and Iriaka decided to step into his place. Despite vehement opposition from some, she became the Labour Party candidate and was comfortably elected. After giving birth to her seventh child in December 1949, she entered Parliament.

Iriaka Rātana accepted the desirability of Māori integration into Pākehā society, and was optimistic about the future of race relations. These attitudes assured her of a respectful hearing in Parliament. Distressed by the poverty and powerlessness of many Māori, she looked to the Department of Maori Affairs and organisations such as the Maori Women’s Welfare League (to which she belonged) for answers. She worked ceaselessly to represent the interests of her constituents, and in the 1950s successfully fought for the upgrading of services at Rātana Pā. In 1969 Iriaka Rātana retired from politics. She died in 1981, survived by nine children and many grandchildren.

By Angela Ballara; adapted by Nancy Swarbrick

Read full biography of Iriaka Rātana (DNZB)

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Iriaka Matiu Rātana

With fellow Labour MPs, Iriaka Rātana speaks to supporters of the Rātana political movement on Manukorihi marae, Waitara, in 1966. She was the first Māori woman to be elected to Parliament.

The angel of arbitration

In this cartoon from the New Zealand Graphic of 1894 an angelic William Pember Reeves, minister of labour in the Liberal government, attempts to unite an employer and a worker, both highly suspicious, behind the principle of compulsory conciliation.

Reeves was largely responsible for the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of that year, which required unions to register and for both parties to negotiate instead of fighting with strikes and lockouts. If the two parties could not agree, a process of compulsory arbitration by a state-sponsored arbitrator followed. The compulsory arbitration process meant New Zealand experienced no strikes between 1894 and 1908.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference no: A-312-8-005
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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liberal party

william pember reeves

labour

The defeat of the 1913 strike

The leaders of the United Federation of Labour were unenthusiastic about the strike from the beginning, but felt obliged to lead actions that had been decided on through democratic processes. They believed the strike was a tactical mistake, in that it put the UFL at risk before the new federation had built up its resources. In spring watersiders and miners had the least economic leverage and farmers were free to enrol as special constables.

The seizure of the wharves in Wellington and Auckland greatly reduced the strikers’ industrial power. Similar takeovers by ‘scab’ arbitration unions soon happened in other ports.

Harry Holland’s sedition charge

When the UFL leaders called for a general strike in the main centres on 10 November, the response was poor. While many arbitrationist unions gave financial support to the strike, few outside Auckland were prepared to join it. The situation was made more difficult by the arrest of many of the strike leaders on 11 and 12 November.

Social Democratic and Labour parties

While the strike was still going, in December 1913, James McCombs won a by-election for the Social Democratic Party, becoming MP for Lyttelton. The Social Democratic Party had been formed at the July 1913 Unity Conference to act as a parliamentary party promoting socialism. Paddy Webb was elected as Social Democratic Party MP for Grey in July 1913. In 1916 the Social Democratic Party combined with the United Labour Party to become the New Zealand Labour Party.

A further blow came with a Supreme Court ruling in early December that it was illegal for arbitration unions to financially assist strikers from other industries.

Considering the strike lost, the Federated Seamen’s Union negotiated independently with the employers and returned to work on 17 December. The UFL then announced that the waterfront strike was over, and the watersiders returned to work on 22 December. Most miners’ unions did not return to work until mid-January.

End of the strike in Huntly

The unions now agreed to return to work under the arbitration system. The more militant leaders of the UFL, such as Hickey and Semple, soon lost their positions at the head of the federation. The most radical unionists from the IWW, such as Tom Barker, departed for Australia.

The strike was not a complete defeat for the unions. The employers and farmers failed to destroy the UFL, which survived to evolve into the Alliance of Labour and later the Federation of Labour. The Red Fed militants in the mines and on the waterfront set about taking control of the new arbitrationist unions.

By demonstrating the power of the state to crush industrial action, the strike convinced many unionists to become more involved in political action with the goal of gaining power through the electoral system. Strike leaders Bob Semple, Peter Fraser, Paddy Webb, Bill Parry, Dan Sullivan and Michael Joseph Savage all became ministers in the 1935 Labour government.

Former St Andrew’s Church

Former St Andrew’s Church (1888)

Denouncing ‘the sin of cheapness’

Dunedin has many magnificent churches. There is Robert Lawson’s First Church; within walking distance you can also find Knox Church (1876) in George Street, and St Paul’s (1919) in the Octagon, while just north of the university is that wonderful polychromatic pile, All Saints (1865). They usually top guides to city architecture. Walk south of the Exchange, however, and trek up Carroll Street (formerly Walker Street) in what used to be the smoky heart of Dunedin’s late Victorian business district and you will find the former St Andrew’s Church. This brick, crenellated building, cement plastered early in its life, is not Lawson’s best and most people pay more attention to the nearby former Sunday School. The Historic Places Trust gave the 600-seat church its lowliest rating, the old D (which, critics allege, stood for ‘[Record and] Demolish’), but it deserves better, because it was here that on 30 September 1888 the Reverend Rutherford Waddell preached ‘what was to prove the most influential sermon in New Zealand history’.

Who was Waddell? Not much to look at. He had a slight speech impediment, but this small Ulsterman of Scots-Irish parentage blazed like the burning bush symbol in this church’s gable. In 1879 Waddell accepted the call to St Andrew’s Presbyterians. Reverend Adam Glasgow had started preaching in the notorious ‘Devil’s Half Acre’ from a tent chapel in November 1881, opening a more permanent building in May 1882 and then this one in 1870. Then a flourishing mixed inner-city congregation of rich and poor Presbyterians, St Andrew’s took to the industrious Christian socialist. Waddell involved himself in many civic affairs but as the ‘Long Depression’ of the 1880s bit deeper, he responded with practical church-based initiatives. He opened a mission hall in 1888, set up a savings bank, opened a free library and developed sporting and self-improvement clubs on top of supporting overseas missions. In 1889, with his encouragement, suffragists Lavinia Kelsey and Rachel Reynolds opened New Zealand’s first free kindergarten in the church hall. But Waddell made his biggest splash by denouncing ‘the sin of cheapness’, the cost-cutting by manufacturers and middlemen that was producing sweated labour. The curse fell particularly heavily on women and boys in the garment and footwear trades, where they put in 72-hour weeks in dirty, dangerous plants for nine shillings. Outworkers fared even worse; Waddell found that one woman got just twopence for finishing a pair of trousers.

The sermon inspired George Fenwick, editor of the Otago Daily Times, to investigate. Soon Fenwick’s reporters were rattling teacups up and down colony. Conservative politicians, sensitive to charges that Old World evils were emerging in ‘Better Britain’, responded by setting up a Royal Commission. Its majority report denied that ‘sweating’ existed in this antipodean Garden of Eden, but demanded a comprehensive new Factory Act and other sweeping reforms, Waddell’s minority report declared that sweating was here. By then he was serving as president of a widely supported Tailoresses’ Union. The unions lost the 1890 Maritime Strike but the issues raised by Waddell significantly influenced the 1890 general election and the legislative programme of the new Liberal government that would rule for the next 21 years.

The preacher retired in 1919 after 40 years at St Andrew’s. He died in Dunedin in 1932. A plaque on the building commemorates the man who preached New Zealand’s most influential sermon. You can see some of the fittings from the church, which amalgamated with First Church in 1978, in the latter’s east transept. In more recent times, the old church has been used by the Word of Life Pentecostals and since 2001 the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Further information

This site is item number 65 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Books

J. Collie, Rutherford Waddell, A.H. Reed, Dunedin, 1932
Charles Croot, Dunedin churches past and present, Otago Settlers’ Association, Dunedin, 1999

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Gavin McLean, 2001

Other images:

Alexander Turnbull Library
References: PAColl-4920-3-09-08 and H-713-106 (by William Blomfield)
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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1888

Waitaki Dam

Waitaki Dam (1934)

Power to the people

Work began on the Waitaki Dam, the first large state hydroelectric scheme in the South Island since Lake Coleridge, in mid-1928 at a site 7 km from the Kurow railhead. It was the last major dam built by pick, shovel and wheelbarrow, tools anachronistically retained because politicians wanted to reduce the unemployment rate. At its peak 1200 men laboured in often dangerous and freezing conditions; 350 houses and 700 huts sheltered them from the extremes of North Otago winters, but work conditions and high accident rates made Waitaki a bleak site.

The Waitaki Dam owes its true significance to its role as an incubator for Labour’s social security scheme. In 1928 a site-based Waitaki Hydro Medical Association contracted with the Waitaki Hospital Board to provide medical and ambulance services, paid for by a monthly deduction from wages. Dr David McMillan, ‘the little doctor’, and the Reverend Arnold Nordmeyer, both of whom entered Parliament at the 1935 election, based Labour’s social security scheme on their Waitaki experience. A commemorative plaque adorns McMillan’s old surgery at nearby Kurow.

The dam is 48 m high and 542 m long. Unusually, Waitaki does not have a spillway - the water flows over the top, making a spectacular sight in floods as the flow breaks up on the disrupters on the dam face. When Governor-General Lord Bledisloe opened Waitaki on 27 October 1934, its 30 megawatts provided about half the mainland’s electricity. Modifications have boosted that to the current 90 megawatts.

The old village, once home to 40 staff and their families, has struggled to survive. Covenanted by the Historic Places Trust but empty since the late 1980s, it was put up for mortgagee sale in 2001, lock, stock, houses, lodge, garages and utilities.

Further information

This site is item number 91 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

Websites

Book

G.G. Natusch, Waitaki dammed and the origins of Social Security, Otago Heritage Books, Dunedin, 1984

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Natalia V (Flickr)

Other contemporary image: DJ McLeod (Flickr)

Historic images:

Alexander Turnbull Library
References: 1/1-003835-G, 1/1-003838-G and WA-62049-F (photographed by Whites Aviation)
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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1934

Political cartoon, 1972

In this Eric Heath cartoon from 27 November 1972, new Prime Minister Norman Kirk is the barman kicking out the defeated Jack Marshall and his deputy, Robert Muldoon. Kirk’s deputy Hugh Watt holds up a sign announcing that the ‘bar’ is ‘under new management’.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: A-311-4-017
Cartoonist: Eric Walmsley Heath
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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Division and defeat - 1951 waterfront dispute

Despite the scale of the 1951 dispute, the wider labour movement was not united behind the watersiders' cause. In fact, only 8% of the country's union members took part in the dispute – the other 200,000 continued working. The watersiders’ militancy had isolated them from most unionists, who were affiliated to the more moderate Federation of Labour (FOL). Fintan Patrick Walsh and other FOL leaders called on wharfies to ‘abandon their Communist-dominated misleaders’. Meanwhile, Walter Nash’s Labour Party Opposition sat uncomfortably on the fence, denouncing government repression but refusing to back either side.

Strike-breakers enter the wharves

Attempts at mediation were undermined by the ideologies, intransigence and egos of those involved. Sensing victory, the National government took a hard line with the unionists. Instead of simply forcing the wharfies to accept the original 9% increase, the government resolved to destroy the old Waterfront Workers’ Union and replace it with new unions in each port. As the dispute dragged on into winter, there was widespread intimidation and sporadic outbursts of violence.

‘Terrorists’ and truncheons

On 30 April a railway bridge near Huntly was dynamited, presumably by striking coal miners. Train drivers were warned in advance and no one was hurt, but coal supplies were severely disrupted. Prime Minister Holland denounced it as ‘an infamous act of terrorism’.

On several occasions, unionist street protests were broken up by ranks of baton-wielding police. The worst incident occurred in Auckland on 1 June – dubbed ‘Bloody Friday’ – when police violently dispersed up to 1000 marchers in Queen Street. One victim suffered a suspected fractured skull, and 20 others had to be treated for lacerations, concussion and bruises.

By the end of May, with new unions of strike-breakers (denounced by unionists as scabs) registered in the main ports, the wharfies’ position was becoming increasingly hopeless. Eventually, after a five-month struggle, they conceded defeat on 15 July. Jock Barnes, meanwhile, had been sentenced to two months in prison for 'defaming' a police constable.

The aftermath

Watersiders' loyalty card, 1951

Militant unionism was dealt a crushing blow. Many watersiders were blacklisted (banned from working on the wharves) for years afterwards. Holland immediately called a snap election, which took place on 1 September 1951. The electorate delivered the government a resounding victory, with National winning 54% of the vote and four more seats than in 1949.

The defeat of the wharfies reasserted the FOL’s control over the New Zealand union movement. Bitterness between supporters of the watersiders and FOL leaders, such as Fintan Patrick Walsh, lingered for decades, even though Walsh himself adopted a more militant stance in later years. For many unionists, though, the watersiders’ loyalty card – bearing the words ‘stood loyal right through’ – was a prized badge of honour. More than half a century later, the 1951 dispute continues to hold a central place in the history and mythology of the New Zealand labour movement.

War on the wharves - 1951 waterfront dispute

Idle ships during the dispute

The immediate cause of the 1951 waterfront dispute was the post-war economic situation. After years of restrictions and shortages, the economy was booming. As the cost of living soared, workers demanded higher wage increases.

In January 1951 the Arbitration Court awarded a 15% wage increase to all workers covered by the industrial arbitration system. This did not apply to waterside workers, whose employment was controlled by the Waterfront Industry Commission. The mostly British-owned shipping companies that employed the wharfies instead offered 9%, claiming that earlier waterfront wage increases should be taken into account.

The Waterside Workers’ Union protested by refusing to work overtime from 13 February. The shipping companies in turn refused to hire them unless they agreed to work extra hours. When no agreement could be reached, union members were locked out. The nation’s wharves soon came to a complete standstill.

A state of emergency

Hear the state of emergency declaration

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Hear this radio broadcast from Prime Minister Sidney Holland. See a transcript and reference for this file.

Arguing that New Zealand’s vital export trade was under threat, the National government declared a state of emergency on 21 February. The following day Prime Minister Holland warned that New Zealand was ‘at war’. On the 27th, troops were sent onto the Auckland and Wellington wharves to load and unload ships. Draconian emergency regulations imposed rigid censorship, gave police sweeping powers of search and arrest and made it an offence for citizens to assist strikers – even giving food to their children was outlawed.

Despite the restrictions, the wharfies enjoyed the support of a well-organised relief network. Connie Birchfield recalled how:

Somebody produced a slaughtered sheep to share. I got the impression it was stolen but now I know there were friendly farmers who donated sheep, and market gardeners who gave vegetables, and tradespeople who provided other goods and services for nothing.

Fighting back

F.P. Walsh caricature

Watersiders and their sympathisers also managed to evade government censorship by producing illegal newsletters and dodging police raids to distribute them through clandestine networks. Supporters even tried to set up a ‘freedom radio’ station with a transmitter hidden deep in the Wellington hills. As well as attacking the government, watersiders’ propaganda denounced Fintan Patrick Walsh and other Federation of Labour leaders as rats who had betrayed the workers’ cause.

Other unionists, including coal miners, freezing workers, seamen, hydroelectric power workers and some drivers and railwaymen, went on strike in protest at the government’s action. At the height of the dispute around 22,000 workers were involved. Although the waterfront was an overwhelmingly male world, women played an active role. Some wharfies’ wives entered the paid workforce for the first time to support their locked-out husbands. Jock Barnes’s wife, Freda (Fuzz) Barnes, organised the wharfies’ Auckland Women’s Auxiliary, which helped co-ordinate the relief effort for workers’ families.