Nick Kelly
The Spark December 2007
On Saturday 3 November, around 100 to 150 people demonstrated outside the Labour Party conference at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna, keeping alive the recently established tradition of leftist protest outside Labour conferences.
It was a loud and angry protest but mostly peaceful. Demonstrators focused their anger on the police raids, the trumped-up charges against activists, and Labour’s anti-democratic “terrorism” laws.
Inside the conference were Labour’s predominantly middle-class and elderly members, and a number of union officials. At one point Jill Ovens, former Alliance leader and now northern secretary of the Service and Food Workers Union, came out of the conference and told the demonstrators that she was on the same side as them. She got booed, and loads of people shouted things like “What are you doing in the Labour Party then?”
She stormed off, but her partner, Len Richards, came out to remonstrate and yelled to the crowd that they’d never effected change, they’d “destroyed the left”. When Workers Party member Jared Phillips reached for the megaphone to reply, Richards whacked Phillips. His blow also hit protester Bronwyn Summers.
Richards then threw the megaphone on the ground and walked off, while the police arrested a protester who tried to intervene. The guy was dragged away and taken to a police van where he was cuffed and searched. Richards’ assault was seen by police who were by his side, but he walked away scott-free.
This quite graphically demonstrates the role Labour-aligned union bureaucrats play with regard to radical mobilisations.
Later, Richards vehemently denied hitting anyone, but when shown video footage offered an apology. At the very end of the demonstration, when numbers had dwindled, a group of Maori performed a haka in front of the police line. This was not the first protest outside a Labour conference at the Bruce Mason Centre. In December 2001 a picket of a similar size to this year’s one protested outside the Labour Party conference at the same venue.
The focus of that protest was the invasion of Afghanistan, where Labour had supported the US invasion after the September 11 attacks in New York. There was also a small picket of teachers on the first evening of the protest.
Inside, Nick Kelly, the recently-sacked chair of MP Paul Swain’s electorate committee (now a Workers Party member), yelled “Stop the bloody war!” at Helen Clark during her main conference speech. Member of Labour’s ruling council and EPMU official Paul Tolich and a couple of EPMU heavies worked with the police to have Nick dragged out, and shut down any dissent within the Labour Party conference.
At the time, the Socialist Worker Organisation (SWO) argued that others from the Anti-Imperialist Coalition, which included ACA (now Workers Party) members, should have tried to “engage” more with Labour delegates, rather than treating Labour like the enemy.
The following year the SWO took control of the protest at the election-year conference (which under Labour’s constitution must always be held in Wellington in an election year). The SWO held a “mass meeting” at Victoria University that they talked up beyond belief, saying hundreds would attend and so on. In the end the 30-odd usual suspects showed up.
They had a lobby outside the conference with an open mic. The whole focus was to try and convince Labour delegates of progressive politics.
Nick Kelly tried to enter the conference, pulling out his Labour membership card and demanding that he be allowed to enter to hand out leaflets. Paul Tolich and some EPMU heavies were at the door. Later they had Nick arrested for trying to enter the conference, but charges were dropped after a couple of hours.
In 2003 the conference was held in Christchurch. The protest was a united front group that included most of the Christchurch left. Socialist Worker argued that the protest shouldn’t be too aggressive. Alliance and Green members joined the ACA (Workers Party) in opposing SW on this.
The march had around 300 participants. Issues included the closure of a local hospital, Labour letting university fees go up, the GE moratorium being lifted, New Zealand army engineers in Iraq, and troops in Afghanistan.
Before the main protest, a group of ACA members went down to shout at the conference delegates through a megaphone. One MP yelled at them that they were “only helping Act”, to which they replied, “You guys gave birth to Act!”. A police officer told one of them off for swearing into a megaphone.
The 2004 Labour Party conference was held at the Bruce Mason Centre, like this year and in 2001, but no protest was organised in Auckland that year. However, Labour didn’t get a year off protests at their functions. In April 2004, the Labour Party held a fundraising dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Wellington. Appropriately, the restaurant was on Tory St – hence the slogan “Labour: up Tory St without a paddle”.
Around 70 people showed up to the protest. 2004 VUWSA exec member Scott Trainor, who’d been put up as the Labour candidate months earlier but became radicalised, stole this show. Scott burnt his Labour Party membership card in front of Helen Clark when she walked through the picket line.
Later in the evening someone (not sure who, but not the WP) called in a bomb threat – so the Labour delegates probably missed out on dessert.
In 2005 the election-year conference was held in Wellington, and a united front group was set up like for the Christchurch conference in 2003. Some National Front members showed up (like about 20) but were heavily outnumbered by left activists.
Protesters did a short march, stopping outside Ed’s Juice Bar where Benson-Pope and some others were having a faction meeting, and made some noise about youth rates etc.
The protest continued around the Town Hall for two hours, meaning delegates who turned up for Helen’s conference speech had to cross a picket line. Youth rates, troops in Afghanistan, student debt, the foreshore and seabed legislation, the right to strike and various other issues were raised at this rally.
It has been a fairly recent event on the NZ left that people have begun protesting outside Labour conferences, with many in the past not fully seeing that Labour is the enemy of working people. But after the recent “terror raids”, and eight years of government serving the capitalist class, working people are starting to see what this Party is really like.
Next year, Labour’s election convention will be in Wellington (Labour always has its election-year gathering in the capital). It’s important that the left stand up and protest against Labour’s anti-worker and pro-capitalist policies in government. And it’s important to build a movement outside of capitalist parties and their conferences, where the left can really effect change.
