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Film: children meet the Queen at Athletic Park, 1954

Film clip: children gathering to meet the Queen

Still shots and description

The royal couple are standing in the back of a specially converted jeep as it drives past thousands of children gathered in Athletic Park. As their car passes the children, they all swarm en masse to the other side of the field to get another look as the jeep turns a corner.

Commentary:

‘Wellington, a great moment for the 133-year-old capital city, as never before it celebrates. And the greatest, most tumultuous welcome of all is from its children. The organisers have arranged that every child shall have a good view as the Queen and the Duke drive past - but the children find a way to ensure at least two good views! Fifteen thousand individual wills, they build but a single pattern.

These are the future men and women of one far corner of a commonwealth of many governments, but of one allegiance.’

Archives New Zealand
The royal tour of New Zealand, 1953–54 (National Film Unit)

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Royal Visit of 1953-54

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HMS Philomel berthing at Wellington

HMS Philomel berthing at Queens Wharf, Wellington, on 16 March 1917 after returning from wartime service overseas. When the ship docked for maintenance in Bombay (Mumbai) earlier that year, it was discovered that major repairs were needed to its deck and hull. Rather than undertake this expensive work, the Royal Navy detached the ship from its fleet and sent it back to New Zealand. A guard of 50 corporals from the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, as well as several VIPs, greeted New Zealand's first warship when it arrived in Wellington. Once back in New Zealand waters, Philomel served as a stationary depot ship then as a training and accommodation facility at Devonport naval base, Auckland.

Credit:

Royal New Zealand Navy Museum
Permission of the Royal New Zealand Navy Museum must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Maheno leaves Wellington, 1915

The hospital ship Maheno leaves Wellington for the Dardanelles, 10 July 1915.

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Auckland Libraries
Sir George Grey Special Collections
Reference: AWNS-19150708-35-2

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Native Contingent soldiers depart Wellington

Māori soldiers of the Native Contingent waiting to board the troopship HMNZT Warrimoo, Wellington wharf, 14 February 1915. In addition to standard army service caps (tucked into the left shoulder) they wear the British Wolseley-pattern sun helmets which the rest of the NZEF had been issued on arrival in Egypt.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/2-011079-F
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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William Wakefield

Colonel William Wakefield was one of the earliest European settlers at Port Nicholson (Wellington), where he served as the New Zealand Company’s Principal Agent between 1840 and 1848.

Born in 1803, the young Wakefield and his older brother Edward Gibbon Wakefield were implicated in the abduction of 15-year-old heiress Ellen Turner, a crime for which both men served three years in prison. After his release William became a soldier of fortune in Portugal and Spain, before returning to England in the late 1830s to the offer of employment in the New Zealand Company. The company, founded by his brother, promoted the systematic colonisation of New Zealand, and William was appointed to lead the first ship and settlement.

William Wakefield sailed from Plymouth on the Tory, which anchored off Petone beach on 20 September 1839. William negotiated the purchase from local Māori of land which the Company would then on-sell to prospective settlers. New Zealand Company immigrant ships began arriving in early 1840, by which time Wakefield incorrectly assumed he had acquired large tracts of land on both sides of the Cook Strait. Throughout the 1840s Wakefield attempted to prove the legitimacy of these purchases, and repeatedly suggested that Wellington replace Auckland as New Zealand’s capital – which finally came to pass in 1865.

As Principal Agent, Wakefield also supervised the Company’s settlements in Nelson, Whanganui and New Plymouth, and took steps to acquire land for the settlement of Dunedin. Surrounded by a growing body of settlers who were discontented because of delays in receiving their land, Wakefield was renowned for steering a sensible middle course and avoiding being drawn into conflict. However, he bore some responsibility for the tragic Wairau Incident, because he knew his claim to have purchased the district had been challenged by local Māori. And he strayed from the path of moderation again in 1847, when he was involved in a duel with Dr Isaac Featherston. Wakefield died of apoplexy in 1848, and his friends later erected a memorial to him (now situated in the Basin Reserve) to honour his contribution to the founding of Wellington.

Read William Wakefield’s biography (1966 Encyclopedia)

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NZ soldiers before deployment to Malaya

Members of the 2nd Battalion of the New Zealand Regiment march along Lambton Quay and into Willis Street, Wellington, in late 1959, shortly before embarking for Malaya.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PA1-f-119-01-3
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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Battle of Featherston Street

The ‘Battle of Featherston Street’, in downtown Wellington, saw some of the most violent street fighting of the 1913 Great Strike. The strike began in October following disputes on the Wellington waterfront and at the Huntly coal mines. Watersiders and coal miners around the country struck in sympathy, an were later joined by seamen and other workers. The Reform government of William Massey organised special constables, nicknamed ‘Massey’s Cossacks’, who came into the cities from rural areas to reopen the wharves.

On 5 November crowds of strike supporters clashed with more than 800 mounted special constables. The specials were riding from their base at Buckle Street to Lambton station (near today’s Wellington railway station). Their mission was to escort racehorses from the station to the wharves so they could be shipped to Christchurch for the New Zealand Cup race meeting.

On Willis, Ghuznee and Dixon streets, stones were thrown at the specials, who responded by charging and batoning the crowds. The battle began in earnest on Featherston Street, where specials charged strikers. Pro-strike tram drivers tried to ram specials on horseback, and metal spikes and detonators were thrown at horses’ feet. Eventually the specials broke through and took control of the wharves. This was a decisive moment in the strike. From now on ‘scabs’ (also known as ‘free labourers’) could be brought onto the wharves to load and unload ships.

The next day, free labourers were registered in an arbitration union and began working the ships. They avoided crossing picket lines by dossing down on board ships or in makeshift dormitories in wharf sheds. Once the wharves were working again it was only a matter of time before the strike collapsed. Similar ‘scab’ unions were set up around the country as the authorities regained control of the wharves.

Image: scene from the Battle of Featherston Street.

Remembering the 1913 strike

Extract from a Radio New Zealand Spectrum programme, ‘Two Wellington Childhoods’, which was broadcast on 18 March 1972. In this segment George Davies and Marjorie Lees recall their experiences of the 1913 strike in Wellington.

Transcript

George Davies (GD): I remember the 1913 strike very well. My young brother was going to school then and I was just on the verge of going out of the primary school, and Mum warned us within an inch of our lives to keep away from the strike or anything to do with the strike and to be home, straight home from school. But of course, being kids we had to go along Arthur Street and have a look at what they were doing.

Marjorie Lees (ML): Of course my father was enrolled as a special constable and I believe there was some sort of riot in which the strikers attacked the special constables after they’d been issued with batons and they were marching down from the barracks, and there really was quite a nasty riot. And I think the special constables took refuge in Whitcombe and Tombs and all the windows were smashed and my father came back in a frightful state and said ‘this is the French Revolution all over again and you must be sent away’. So we were sent away to the country and I thought that was pretty poor. But the strike went on for a long time and so we were allowed to come back, and do you remember that all the country men came down with their horses and they patrolled the wharves, they rode backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards all along the wharves. And a tea place was set up for them in the Star Boating Club and I was allowed to go down and help my mother hand teas to them. And you know at about 11 or 12 you’re terribly susceptible and I fell violently in love with Tiny [Bernard] Freyberg, of all people, I thought he was the most handsome and glorious man I’d ever seen! He never took any notice of me, but my little sister had curly hair and was very pretty and he used to give her rides on his horse, and I was very miserable about that.

Interviewer: You were very jealous?

ML: Yes

Interviewer: Now your father’s attitude was that it was the French Revolution, but can you remember his political feeling about there being a strike?

ML: Well of course, the waterside workers were less than the dust, it was absolutely wicked of them to strike, they were damaging the country. They had no case at all as far as he was concerned.

And you see some of the country men also manned the ships and they went to stokers and seamen and things.

Interviewer: And can you recall your own reaction to this? Did you take father’s viewpoint as a matter of course – it didn’t occur to you to question it?

ML: No, I thought the strikers were evil too. And apparently the special constables rode about all through the town, especially up in the slums where most of the waterside workers lived and their wives disposed empty chamber pots over them and various things like that…. You heard about the wicked strikers and so on.

GD: Every so often the farmers would line up in Buckle Street, all abreast on their horses, and at a given signal they would tear along Arthur Street, like mad cavalry scattering all the strikers – the strikers were all gathered in Arthur Street. And then they’d reform at the top of Cuba Street and then tear back.

Now, during this process, which … could have been like Balaclava, the strikers, they provided themselves with a plentiful array of road metal and they used to let fly at these fellas on the way up and down, and there were quite a few hurt. Well we went down to have a look and I saw some chap bumping at the road with a fence post. And I said, ‘what are you doing?’, ‘trying to get some rocks out to throw at these jokers.’ Well, I said, ‘I’ll give you a hand’. I’d taken sides straight away without knowing what it was all about. So I started bumping up these things and all of sudden he sung out ‘here they come’ and I leapt over somebody’s fence and then stood up to have a look, but unfortunately some fella from the other side who had let fly at a striker, he’d missed him but he didn’t miss me. I got the stone right on the top of the head and I had to have three stitches in it and a week off school, a hiding from Mum that I still remember. And I was told that when I got better I had to go down to the police station because a policeman wanted to see me. You know I was sick with fright, I couldn’t eat. I was so frightened. People were frightened of policemen in those days, little boys, if you mentioned policemen that would curl them up straight away.

Radio New Zealand. Any re-use of this audio is a breach of copyright. To request a copy of the recording, contact Radio New Zealand. Reference: 'Two Wellington Childhoods', Spectrum, SJ 1981.

Hear the full recording on the Radio New Zealand website.

Image: Strikers gathered on the corner of Taranaki and Arthur streets, Wellington (see full image and referene on Flckr)

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Terrace Gaol, Wellington

Among the notable strike leaders detained in the Terrace Gaol were: Harry Holland, Maoriland Worker editor and later leader of the Labour Party; Bob Semple, UFL organiser and Minister of Works from 1935; Peter Fraser, Social Democratic Party activist and later Prime Minister (1940-49); and George Bailey, the chairman of the strike committee. All were held on charges of making ‘inflammatory speeches’. Tom Young, the president of the UFL and secretary of the seamen’s union, and Tom Barker of the Industrial Workers of the World were held on charges of sedition. Also in gaol were 28 firemen (stokers) from the New Zealand Shipping Company vessel Opawa, who had refused to work because their ship’s cargo had been loaded by scab labour.

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

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference no: 1/2-058369-F
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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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.

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference no: 1/1-002596-F
Photograph taken by Walter Francis Tibbutt
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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