Sewing Freedom by Barry Pateman

Author:Barry Pateman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2013-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

For a whole week the myrmidons [warriors] of capital and government carried on the orgy of violence, and during that time 1,800 men and women were driven forcibly from the place, till Waihi now resembles a deserted village. The masters, aided by the authorities, have finally succeeded in establishing the peace of Warsaw in Waihi.39

The January 1913 edition of Freedom also carried an article on ‘Waihi’s Black Week,’ and it is likely similar New Zealand news was exchanged amongst English and foreign speaking papers. “Leaflets, pamphlets and journals were par excellence the means of communication between anarchist groups,” writes Hermia Oliver. “The circulation [of anarchist news] was thus geographically very wide.”40

In Scotland too, Aldred’s The Spur reported on the New Zealand situation, describing the country’s prevailing militarism and gifting the New Zealand state a sordid claim to fame. “Of all British Dominions, for scientifically suppressing revolutionary thought the New Zealand Government is the worst,” wrote The Spur.41 For these international newspapers, labour regulation and state sanctions in the form of New Zealand’s arbitration law was no model to be mimicked.

Another example of a New Zealand influence abroad (and a further transnational link to Freedom) is the visit to London by New Zealand Wobbly, Percy Short. After the Great Strike of 1913, Short left the country to “get an insight into the European movement.”42 But while abroad he also imparted knowledge of his own. As well as replying in person to a letter received by the Auckland IWW from a syndicalist publication in Europe, Short was interviewed by Nettlau, who was interested in hearing news of the Great Strike and arbitration firsthand. Having been on the committee of the Industrial Unionist and having penned a number of articles in the Maori language for its pages (extremely unique at the time), Short was a well-qualified interviewee.

Although in his interview Short touched on antimilitarism (including a hunger strike of PRU militants in Lyttelton) and the Maori response to syndicalist propaganda, it was the trade union movement and the behaviour of the conservative organizations that interested [Nettlau] the most:

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