Workers, farmers and war: New Zealand in 1914
Of all the questions confronting the working class in New Zealand in the decade beginning 1912, as it set itself on a course toward political independence, none was more decisive […]
Category Archives: Labour Party
Why the founding of the Labour Party was a historic advance
“The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into the [working class] movement is always the constitution of the workers as an independent political party, no matter […]
Conspiracies, exposés, and revolutionary morality – a discussion in 140 characters
When I published a post critical of Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics – How attack politics is poisoning New Zealand’s political environment last week, it prompted an exchange on Twitter […]
The politics of “Dirty Politics”: three aspects of the election campaign in New Zealand.
To begin with the numbers: In the general election held in New Zealand yesterday, the National Party government was returned for a third term with a slightly increased majority. Of […]
Harry Holland and the question of Chinese immigration
The rise of the class-struggle wing of the labour movement in New Zealand in the decade from 1907 was rapid, spectacular – and well-documented. Beginning with the first challenge to […]
The rise of a New Zealand Empire in the Pacific
Within less than a month of joining the war against Germany in 1914, New Zealand had seized its first colonial conquest from Germany. On August 29 1914 troops from the […]
A country of inveterate, backwoods, thick-headed, egotistical philistines
The period of the Liberal government in New Zealand from 1890 to 1912, was one of unprecedented general prosperity – in comparison with the rest of the world – the […]
The Mana Party in the blind alley of electoralism
Almost the entire left in New Zealand has been giving electoral support to the Mana Party in recent years (and by ‘the left’ I mean groups and individuals who speak […]
Abortion rights and a nasty little smear
Last Friday the New Zealand Herald reported that an unnamed rural GP (doctor) has had her practising certificate suspended for six months for the ‘crime’ of prescribing the drug Misoprostol […]
The party of labor and the Labor Party
In the birthplace of industrial capitalism, the young proletariat went through a protracted process of formation into a class. In the first decades the individual wage-laborers were assembled by the […]
