Molesworth Street revisited

(First published in The Dominion Post, August 9.)

IT’S NO exaggeration to say that for some of my generation, the 1981 Springbok tour was as much the defining event of their lives as the 1939-45 war had been for their parents.

Over 56 days, they rose up in a cathartic rebellion that gathered momentum as the tour progressed.

The anti-tour protests brought to a head all the frustrations and resentments of a baby-boomer generation that had chafed through two decades of conservatism and conformity, topped off by the snarling authoritarianism of Robert Muldoon.

It was more than just a protest against apartheid. It was an emphatic rejection of the values of the old New Zealand – values associated with the short-back-and-sides generation that ran the rugby union and the RSA.

For many of the protesters, raised in middle-class comfort in the suburbs, confronting police skirmish lines was the closest they had come, or were ever likely to come, to real danger. It could be hazardous, but it was exhilarating.

It's no surprise, then, that aspects of the tour have entered the realms of cultural mythology. It's widely thought, for example, that the police responsible for batoning protesters in Wellington's Molesworth St were members of the famous (infamous?) Red Squad, the elite police team specially formed for the tour. In fact, the Red Squad was nowhere near Wellington that night.

But there's another aspect of the so-called Battle of Molesworth St that needs to be clarified.

It's often presented as a brutal, gratuitous attack that came out of the blue. An article in this paper last Saturday perhaps unwittingly reinforced that impression. But the truth is that Blind Freddy and his dog could have seen the confrontation coming, even if the protesters didn't.

I had taken part in the protest rally that preceded the march up Molesworth St that night. The police had co-operated fully, but then the protest leaders announced a previously undisclosed plan to march on the South African consulate. That wasn't part of the deal with the police.

Inspector Bert Hill gave a clear warning of the likely consequences. "I am sorry, we cannot let you walk on Molesworth St," he said through a megaphone. "Please do not go onto Molesworth St and block the street."

The protest leaders ignored him. Only four days before, protesters had succeeded in forcing the abandonment of the Springbok match against Waikato. They probably thought they were unstoppable.

But police pride had been seriously hurt at Hamilton and it should have been obvious that they weren't about to be humiliated again. Their credibility was at stake.

Small wonder that the night air was soon filled with the sound of batons striking protesters' heads. Despite opposing the tour, I thought my fellow demonstrators brought the battering on themselves that night.
 

* * *

HAYDN JONES, who writes an entertaining column in this paper's Your Weekend magazine, devoted his most recent piece to the subject of single-income families.

He's the sole earner for his young family and says their one luxury is that his wife stays at home and looks after the children. They can afford to do this, because they live in a relatively cheap provincial city.

His Auckland friends put their children into daycare and spend so many hours at work that they have little energy left at weekends.

Jones laments that often both parents have to work to put food on the table. He adds: "That's the great New Zealand tragedy."

But is it? I agree that it's sad, but I don't believe parents have no option.

That may sometimes be the case, but more often it comes down to choice. It's a tradeoff: Either they have a good car, a flash house, expensive holidays and modern appliances, or they accept a lower standard of living in return for the benefits of spending precious time with their children – something they will never get a second crack at.

Jones and his wife have chosen the latter, and good on them. Plenty of other young parents could do the same; it's all a matter of expectations.

* * *

WAS THERE ever a sillier euphemism than the expression "to sleep with" someone, meaning to have sex with them?

I recall reading an interview with Bill Wyman, the most carnally active member of the Rolling Stones, which referred to him sleeping with 265 women in three months.

Good grief. They must have been short naps.

Recently, this nonsensical term cropped up again. A columnist in the British Spectator wrote that the racing driver James Hunt was alleged to have "slept with" 33 British Airways stewardesses in two weeks.

This coy phrase dates back to a time when polite people couldn't quite bring themselves to mention sex explicitly. How it survives in an era when we insist on being shamelessly blunt about most other things is a mystery.

 

1981 and all that

Historian Matthew Wright, writing in the Dom Post today, reminds us that it’s 30 years since the Springbok tour.

I agree with Wright’s premise that the protests against the tour were about much more than apartheid and rugby. They were an eruption of frustration and resentment against years of suffocatingly authoritarian, conservative government. The Springbok tour and the polarising figure of Robert Muldoon provided a convenient touch-paper.

However I question Wright’s conclusion that anti-tour protests had little impact on the white South African government or apartheid. He writes that “the white minority government wasn’t listening to international pressure”, but in fact the evidence suggests the republic’s burning desire to play rugby against New Zealand was a critical factor in bringing about political reform. Chris Laidlaw, who was New Zealand’s first diplomatic representative in black Africa, told me in 1994: “Rugby played a far bigger part in the transition to democracy [in South Africa] than most people realise.”

The African National Congress recognised that white South Africa’s rugby fervour was a pressure point that could be exploited to the ANC’s advantage. Laidlaw hosted secret meetings in Harare between ANC officials and South African rugby bosses Louis Luyt and Danie Craven, at which the message was clear: no more international rugby until apartheid was abolished.

“Once he [Luyt] got that into his head there was no stopping him,” Laidlaw told me. “He went straight to the South African government and said: ‘Things are going to have to change.’” So Wright may be slightly off the mark when he writes that New Zealanders bashing each other in Molesworth St weren’t going to change anything.

And it’s unfortunate that his piece is marred by a couple of minor factual errors. I observed the so-called Battle of Molesworth Street at close range and I don’t recall the police Red Squad being there, as Wright says. The Red Squad’s job was to protect the Springboks and match venues. What’s more, they weren’t commanded by Ross Meurant, as Wright implies, although that was a common misconception that Meurant may have been happy to go along with. The Red Squad was actually led by Phil Keber.

Oh, and I don’t recall seeing any PR-24 police batons (the so-called Minto bars that Wright refers to) at Molesworth St either. The batons used that night, as is clear from Evening Post photographer Ian Mackley’s black-and-white picture accompanying Wright’s piece, were standard, old-fashioned truncheons.

Footnote: As Wright remarks, the bloody clash between police and protesters in Molesworth St coincided with the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. This presented The Dominion with a dilemma: which story should take precedence? In the end, the Dom went with the royal wedding on the top half of the front page and the Battle of Molesworth Street below the fold.