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WHEN I FIRST started attending Labour Party branch meetings in the early 1980s I quite deliberately flouted their conservative dress code. Just out of university, I turned up in the jeans, T-shirt and op-shop jacket that had become the obligatory counter-cultural signature of the 1970s. With my shaggy hair and droopy moustache, I reiterated the statement a minority of my generation had been making for more than a decade. It was a statement of rejection: a repudiation of the conventional world of the “ordinary” New Zealander. In my youthful and arrogant opinion, ordinary New Zealanders subscribed to a way of life that was as stultifying of individuality and creativity as it was morally compromised.
Not surprisingly, the rather conservative working-class men and women who (in those days) made up the core of Labour’s membership were less than impressed. They were intensely proud of their party and its achievements. Participating in its deliberations was something to be undertaken with decorum and respect. These members turned up to branch meetings in the same outfits they wore to church. Politics, like religion, was about salvation. You took it seriously – or you stayed at home. Until I showed some sign that I understood this, these folk were not disposed to give me the time of day.
I suppose the very fact that I had joined a mainstream political party predisposed me to give some heed to the expectations of its “ordinary” members. Or, maybe it was just my firm socialist belief that the working class still had a critical role to play in the creation of a better, more socially-just society, that made me sensitive to their rejection of my middle-class, hippy-dippy contempt for Labour’s traditions. Whatever the explanation, I pretty quickly came to the conclusion that until I showed some respect for my fellow party members they had no reason to take me seriously.
So I got my hair cut, trimmed my moustache and dressed as respectably as my limited wardrobe would allow. It worked. I had to endure a bit of teasing, but the ice was broken. By respecting them, I had earned their respect. Now they were willing to listen.
I was not, however, the only university-educated, middle-class Baby Boomer to join the Labour Party in the early 1980s. In the aftermath of the 1981 Springbok Tour, and the narrow National Party victory it made possible, thousands of former protesters threw in their lot with Labour. The vast majority of these were NOT, as I was, firm socialists. It was social liberalism which defined their political aspirations: the identity-based belief system which had grown out of the “New Social Movements” of the 1960s and 70s. Anti-racism, feminism, gay liberation, environmentalism and anti-nuclear activism had been the prime recruiters for this new breed of Labour supporter. Unfortunately, the baggage they brought with them would alter Labour’s political personality irretrievably.
One of the defining characteristics of the New Social Movements (which we now know as “Identity Politics”) was the relatively small number of their adherents. That word “relatively” is important in this context, because if you were in the anti-racist, feminist or gay liberation movements of the late-1960s- early-1970s they did not seem small at all. When you protested in the streets, thousands – tens of thousands – protested with you. But the US President of the time, Richard Nixon, was not fooled. When he talked about the “Great Silent Majority”, he was alluding to the fact that those Americans who still clung to the traditional values of their parents and grandparents vastly outnumbered the members of the “counter-culture” who did not.
It was the same in New Zealand. Outside the campuses and the cheap inner-city suburbs, most New Zealanders continued to believe in the core tenets of New Zealand’s social and political faiths. Few journalists bothered to record the thoughts of these New Zealanders concerning the direction in which their society was heading. The radical agendas of “women’s lib” and “gay rights” sold many more newspapers and magazines than the “traditional values” of ordinary Kiwis. The fact that those who subscribed to these radical agendas constituted a minority of the population in no way caused them to question their content. On the contrary, the fact that they were rejected by the majority only increased their moral lustre.
Ever since the defeat of Nazi Germany – whose citizens went on fighting for Adolf Hitler right up until the very end of World War II – the notion that majorities possess some sort of superior moral force had fallen into disrepute. Indeed, the widespread belief in the inherent superiority of males over females, “whites” over “blacks”, heterosexuals over homosexuals, was construed by the New Social Movements as evidence of the “tyranny of the majority” – against which people of superior education and stronger moral purpose were obliged to do battle.
Veterans of the Springbok Tour protests in New Zealand were uneasily aware that the rugby fans in the stands (many of them working-class Kiwis) vastly outnumbered the protesters in the streets. What more proof was needed that New Zealand society was morally bankrupt, and that it could only be improved by politicians and public servants who were willing to overide the unethical beliefs of the majority and ensure that the politically correct ideas prevailed.
When people holding these frankly elitist views entered the Labour Party in the early 1980s they looked at its working-class membership through narrowed eyes. Where had they been; where had their unions been; when the fight against Apartheid sport was raging? They knew where – in the stands! They also knew where the 800,000 signatures gathered against the passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill had come from – right-wing working-class Catholics!
Those who wonder why Labour’s educated middle-class recruits from the early 80s were so loath to lift a finger to help the largely working-class victims of Rogernomics should wonder no more. What possible motive could they have had for preserving a culture so steeped in racism, sexism and homophobia? In their eyes, neoliberalism and social liberalism were clearly destined to lead New Zealand away from the social and political sins of the reactionary socialists of the Old Left, and into a bright new, culturally progressive, future. Dress code: Casual.
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