Name and prosecute the cops who killed Shargin Stephens!
It is now six years since the police tormented Rotorua man Shargin Stephens day and night for more than a month with incessant and utterly unjustified ‘bail checks,’ and then, […]
Category Archives: police
Arthur Thomas, the presumption of innocence, and the dangers of name suppression
If anyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence today, it is Arthur Allan Thomas. In 1971, and again at a re-trial in 1973, Thomas, a Waikato dairy farmer, was […]
The Christchurch atrocity and the need for a class political response
Today we mourn with our Muslim brothers and sisters all those killed and injured in the Christchurch terror attack, and send our solidarity and condolences to their families and friends. […]
A book that changed the course of the class struggle
After a six-month strike, the struggle at Waihi came to a head in early November 1912, shortly after the arrival in Waihi of the Commissioner of Police John Cullen, a […]
“Half-caste Maori” strikebreakers at Waihi and Huntly (First of two parts)
(Note: In quoting historic documents, I have not attempted to modernise their Anglicised spelling and usage of Māori words, offensive as some of these things may seem today. The English […]
Capitalism’s Trail of Blood: The Fight for Safety on the Job
Harry Holland and the early labour movement in Australia and New Zealand, Part 13 The defeat of the miners’ strike ended the forward momentum of the working class that had […]
Arbitration or Mobilisation: the Battle of Broken Hill begins
Tenth part of Harry Holland and the early labour movement in Australia and New Zealand The ore miners at the Barrier were central to the Australian economy and thus wielded […]
The nineteenth-century police state in New South Wales
Harry Holland and the labour movement in Australasia Part 1 In the year 1890, a mass strike erupted that eventually involved sixty thousand waterside workers, seafarers, miners, shearers and rail workers […]
Acting in the true Anzac spirit
On Anzac Day, militarism dresses up in the mask of pacifism. It honours the sacrifices made by the soldiers of the Great War, gives due recognition to the horrors they […]
Deaths in the coal mines and union-busting: 100 years ago in Huntly …and today
12 September marks the hundredth anniversary of the second-deadliest single mine disaster in New Zealand history. On that day in 1914, an explosion ripped through the Ralph coal mine in […]
A worker at large 