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Labour government postpones Springbok rugby tour

Prime Minister Norman Kirk informed the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) that the government saw ‘no alternative’ to a postponement of the planned tour by the South African Springboks. This decision followed advice from the police that that if the tour went ahead it would ‘engender the greatest eruption of violence this country has ever known’,

In the run up to the 1972 election, Kirk (then leader of the Opposition) had promised not to interfere with the tour. After winning the election, he attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the NZRFU to withdraw its invitation to the Springboks. At the same time he attempted to negotiate with a number of anti-tour activists and groups. Aware of the likely fallout from the decision to postpone – there was strong public support for the tour – Kirk conceded that he would be ‘failing in his duty’ if he didn’t ‘accept the criticism and do what [he] believed to be right … the Government was elected to govern’. Those who believed ‘sports and politics don’t mix’ never forgave him. The National Party exploited Labour’s decision at the 1975 general election and it proved to be a contributing factor in the latter’s crushing defeat.

Following the cancellation of the 1973 tour prime Minister Robert Muldoon stressed that a National government would welcome a Springbok team to New Zealand, 'even if there were threats of violence and civil strife’. The events of 1981, when the Springboks finally toured, appeared to make good this pledge – but at a high cost to New Zealand society.

Image: 1973 Springbok Tour cartoon

Norman Kirk

Prime Minister: 8 Dec 1972–31 Aug 1974
Age on becoming PM: 49
Electorate: Sydenham
Political party: Labour

In 1972 Norman Kirk broke National’s 12-year-long grip on the Treasury benches and became Labour’s first New Zealand-born PM.

Kirk was from the working class. He built his own house. He had little formal education but like earlier Labour leaders, he read widely and became a skilled debater. He won Lyttelton in 1957 and eight years later became leader of the opposition.

After narrowly losing the 1969 election, Kirk swept up his image and that of his party, which won handsomely in 1972 with the slogan ‘It’s time’. His ministry included many young faces.

Kirk’s interest in foreign affairs brought new links with Africa and Asia. He campaigned strongly against French nuclear testing in the Pacific. At some cost politically, he also prevented a racially selected Springbok rugby team from touring.

At home, Kirk’s ministry brought a new sense of national identity, launching the Shipping Corporation, creating an author’s fund and restructuring broadcasting. Waitangi Day became New Zealand Day. A photograph of Kirk walking hand-in-hand with a young Maori boy across the marae remains an enduring image of his prime ministership. His government reformed Maori land law and took significant steps towards the settlement of land claims. Perhaps its most far-reaching innovation was the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, which set up the Waitangi Tribunal.

‘Big Norm’, as a pop band dubbed him, weakened as the economy staggered under the impact of the first oil price shock. In August 1974 he died in hospital. Thousands attended his state funeral.

Written by Gavin McLean

See also:

Biography of Norman Kirk on the DNZB website
Norman Kirk The First 250 Days (NZ On Screen)
Listen to the song ‘Big Norm’ (Don Wilson music website)
Premiers and Prime Ministers of New Zealand

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Labour Party TV commercial, 1969

This 1969 advertisement for the Labour Party emphasised the leadership qualities of Norman Kirk and sought to capitalise on a public mood for change as that turbulent decade drew to a close. It screened in full colour in cinemas and in black-and-white on television (colour TV wasn't introduced until 1973). Its striking split-screen imagery and pop-styled theme song were clearly aimed at younger voters, a potentially important audience in an election when the voting age was lowered from 21 to 20 (it would be reduced further, to 18, in 1974). It was not enough, however, to oust Keith Holyoake's National government, which had ruled for the previous nine years.

Ref: C1600. Make things happen, TVC, 1969. Courtesy of the Labour Party. Sourced from the New Zealand Film Archive/Nga Kaitiaki o Nga Taonga Whitiahua.

Search the Film Archive's catalogue.

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Death of Norman Kirk

Leader of the Labour Party since 1965 and Prime Minister from late 1972, ‘Big Norm’ died suddenly at the age of 51. He was the fifth New Zealand prime minister to die in office.

Kirk had faced a number of health issues during 1974 but maintained a punishing work schedule. Following a Cabinet meeting on 19 August he went home to his ministerial house in Seatoun with flu. On the 28th a heart specialist persuaded him to check into Our Lady’s Home of Compassion hospital in Island Bay. He died three days later of ‘congestive cardiac failure’ and ‘thromboembolic pulmonary heart disease’.

The public display of grief that followed Kirk’s death was reminiscent of that aroused by the death of Labour’s first Prime Minister, M.J. Savage, in 1940. Politician and historian Michael Bassett has described Kirk as ‘Labour’s last passionate believer in big government, someone whose commanding presence and extravagant rhetoric introduced a new idealism to political debate in New Zealand’.

Kirk’s popularity with the New Zealand public was perhaps best demonstrated by the song ‘Big Norm’. Performed by Wellington band Ebony, it peaked at No. 4 on the national charts in January 1974 and won the band a New Zealand music award for ‘group of the year’. The last telegram Kirk sent before his death was to Ebony congratulating them on their win.

Listen to the song ‘Big Norm’ on Don Wilson’s website

Image: Norman Kirk in 1971

Norman Kirk Springbok tour cartoon

In this Nevile Lodge cartoon, which appeared in the Evening Post in 1973, the prime minister, Norman Kirk, and his deputy, Hugh Watt, are discussing the problems the new Labour government faces. The proposed Springbok tour looms large as one of these problems. Through the window the leader of the opposition, Jack Marshall, and his deputy, Robert Muldoon, are looking on smugly.

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: B-134-765
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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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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Unofficial prime ministerial houses

Hill Haven, Northland

Ariki Toa’s role as the prime minister’s official house ended in the 1930s when George Forbes moved out. In 1935 the new prime minister, Michael Joseph Savage, a frugal bachelor, made the break permanent by choosing a smaller ministerial home in Molesworth Street. Three years later, dying of cancer, he moved into Hill Haven, 66 Harbour View Road, in the suburb of Northland. Frederick de Jersey Clere had designed it in 1909.

Keith Holyoake shifting house

From 1940, Peter Fraser also lived in Hill Haven, entranced by ‘one of the most beautiful views in the world.’ Nine years later, Fraser lost office to Sid Holland, who, preferring a place with a guest bathroom, renovated 41 Pipitea Street in Thorndon. This brick house is close to Parliament, but its surroundings were still industrial, ‘with a brewery chimney quite close, a paint factory next door, commercial offices (B.P. Ltd) on the eastern boundary.’ The section had a small lawn in front and room for a clothes line behind, but the house was too small to entertain official guests.

Pipitea Street house

Holland’s National successor Keith Holyoake also lived there. In 1966 the air was still ‘sodden with the smell of hops and malt from the brewery up the street, and jackhammers are busy tearing down Victorian ruins all around.’ But the economy-minded Holyoake dismissed all suggestions of building a new official residence. The Holyoakes put buckets under the leaks in the kitchen roof whenever it rained.

Ministerial residences

Holyoake was not as eccentric as he might seem. Ministerial houses were seldom very flash. Every time the government changed, prime ministers-elect trotted around these places, often still occupied by defeated ministers and their families. In November 1972, for example, Norman Kirk and his wife, Ruth, went house hunting. Because they knew Holyoake had let 41 Pipitea Street deteriorate, they did not even bother to look at it. They chose a Seatoun house recommended by their ministerial driver.

The Ministry of Works looked after ministers’ houses. As many had been bought only to be demolished for motorway and other development, it skimped on their maintenance and furnishing. Television came to New Zealand in 1960, but the Ministry waited until 1965 before providing TV aerials for ministers’ houses. Ministers paid for their own sets until 1973, when Cabinet made them free – provided the screens did not exceed 23 inches (58 cm).

Impact of the Vietnam War in New Zealand - NZ and the Vietnam War

It is difficult to assess which side had the better of this debate during the Vietnam War. The decision to send combat forces to Vietnam initially appeared to enjoy high levels of public support, and the National Party did not suffer unduly adverse electoral consequences, being returned to office twice - in 1966 and 1969 - during the Vietnam period. Nor was the government ever sufficiently concerned by domestic criticism to change a policy it had adopted largely for alliance reasons.

On the other hand, despite having no decisive impact on official policy-making and arousing hostility from some New Zealanders, the anti-war movement drew growing support, especially during the closing stages of the Vietnam War. This support was illustrated most visibly during the 'mobilisations' of the early 1970s, when thousands marched in protest against the war in all the country's major centres. The Vietnam conflict thus brought with it a polarisation of opinion and a questioning by many New Zealanders of the government's alliance policies, especially among younger people in higher education during these years - the so-called Vietnam Generation.

Another significant domestic impact of the critique championed by the anti-war movement was that one of the two major political parties came to embrace many of its premises. The Labour party was initially more cautious in opposing official policy on the Vietnam conflict. The party had stressed humanitarian and economic aid as more important than military action in helping to resolve Vietnam's problems from the early 1960s. Yet once New Zealand combat forces were sent, party leaders were reluctant to advocate immediate withdrawal, perhaps because of concerns about likely electoral consequences.

Labour's policy on Vietnam firmed considerably after 1966. By 1969, its leader, Norman Kirk, had made an unequivocal commitment to withdraw if victorious in that year's election, but National was re-elected. Thereafter, Labour asserted its opposition more confidently, sensing it was now on the more popular side of the issue and seizing on the Americans' own progressive disengagement from Vietnam as vindication of its policy. Since almost all New Zealand troops had left Vietnam before the November 1972 election, the new Labour government's prompt withdrawal of the remaining training teams caused little controversy.

If of limited practical significance after 1973, Labour's and National's divergent policies on Vietnam symbolised wider differences about national security. National continued to accept the orthodoxies of alliance reasoning on which its Vietnam policy was based. In contrast, Labour leaders called for 'new thinking' in foreign policy that would allow New Zealand to pursue a more independent course in world affairs, that would incorporate a 'moral' dimension, and that would better reflect the country's character as a small multiracial nation in the South Pacific. Having rejected the Vietnam policy of New Zealand's major alliance partner, Labour's leaders did not repudiate ANZUS - as many anti-war activists and party members urged. Instead, they sought to sanction a position of dissent within the alliance framework, analogous to the line of argument which would later be used to justify the fourth Labour government's policy of opposing nuclear ship visits. Such qualifications notwithstanding, Labour's stance on the Vietnam War broke the previous bipartisan, Cold War consensus on foreign policy.

The Vietnam War thus marked a turning point in the evolution of New Zealand's post-war foreign and security policies. In terms of national security doctrine, combat involvement in Vietnam represented the culmination of a line of official thinking based on the primacy of the ANZUS alliance, the acceptance of stark assumptions about the menace of Asian communism, and the cogency of forward defence in South-east Asia.

While privately dubious about the wisdom of a massive military effort in Vietnam, the Holyoake government showed that it was committed to the shared alliance strategy of containing communism in South-east Asia. It offered public support for American policy and contributed token combat forces in Vietnam as the price of continued participation in that strategy. The outcome of the Vietnam War, however, created a crisis for the alliance policy and several of its elements - most notably a strong forward defence posture in South-east Asia - were adjusted in the aftermath of that conflict. In large part, that readjustment was due to the re-evaluation of American regional strategy in the form of the Nixon Doctrine.

The Vietnam experience was thus also important as a test of the country's interaction with its major post-war ally. On the one hand, the National government's policy staved off any confrontation with Washington of the sort which would cause the suspension of the American security guarantee to New Zealand in the 1980s. To that extent, the Holyoake government attained the central objective of its Vietnam policy and the alliance with the United States remained intact at the end of the war. On the other hand, the alliance relationship was less firmly rooted on a popular level, with significant numbers of New Zealanders coming to oppose perceived subservience to the United States in security matters.

Norman Kirk

Norman Kirk promised that if Labour won the 1972 election it would not interfere with the New Zealand Rugby Football Union's decision to invite the Springboks to tour in 1973. When he made a U-turn in April 1973 and announced the government's decision to cancel the tour, it was met with howls of protest in some quarters. He argued that the country could not be put through the predicted social turmoil that would be the result of the tour proceeding.

See biography of Norman Kirk

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 35mm-18291-21-Ft
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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Stopping the 1973 tour - 1981 Springbok tour

From the mid- 1960s it was clear that the issue of New Zealand-South African rugby contact was central to South Africa's attempts to maintain international sporting contact. It was equally clear that those opposed to apartheid believed that by isolating South African sport the ability to force real change increased. In July 1969 HART (Halt All Racist Tours) was founded by University of Auckland students with the specific aim of opposing sporting contact with South Africa. With a Springbok tour to New Zealand proposed for 1973, the issue was to become increasingly politicised.

Kirk and the Springbok issue

In the run-up to the 1972 election, Norman Kirk, the Labour opposition leader, promised not to interfere with the tour. After winning the election, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to persuade the NZRFU to withdraw its invitation to the Springboks while at the same time attempting to negotiate with a number of anti-tour activists and groups. His advice from the police was that that if the tour went ahead it would ‘engender the greatest eruption of violence this country has ever known.’ As if to warn him as to the potential for civil unrest the rugby grandstand at Papakura was burnt down on 9 April 1973 but Kirk’s mind had already been made up. Days earlier he had written to the NZRFU informing them that the government saw ‘no alternative, pending selection on a genuine merit basis, to a postponement of the tour’. Aware of the likely fall-out from this decision– there was strong public support for the tour- Kirk conceded that he would be ‘failing in his duty’ if he didn’t ‘accept the criticism and do what [he] believed to be right…the Government was elected to govern’.

Prime Minister Norman Kirk

The decision to ‘postpone’ the tour was also influenced by the fact that Christchurch was hosting the 1974 Commonwealth Games and a boycott by black African nations of these games was likely should the tour proceed. Critics of the decision believed that not only had Kirk performed a policy back-flip he had bowed to threats from ‘rent-a-mob’ activists. Those who believed ‘sports and politics don’t mix’ (referred to by activist Tim Shadbolt as KEEPOOS -Keep Politics out of Sport) never forgave him.

There is no-doubt the decision hurt Labour at the following general election in 1975. While National had itself cancelled an earlier tour in 1967 what appeared to hurt Labour the most was its original pledge not to interfere. National's new leader Robert Muldoon declared that the cancellation of the tour was 'one issue on which people will change their vote'. He maintained that a National Government would welcome a Springbok team to New Zealand, 'even if there were threats of violence and civil strife’. Muldoon's confidence on the matter seemed confirmed by National's landslide victory. Events in 1976 and 1981 perhaps vindicated Kirk’s earlier decision.