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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Student's Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 9. May 21 1968

[introduction]

Big Norm

Big Norm

In the country of the politically maimed, the one-armed man is king.

Side by side at Labour Conferences with Big Boy Norm, who climbed to power by stabbing Labour's last leader figuratively in the back, sits Norm the one-armed bandit, symbol of Labour's housie generation, the man who first abandoned Labour leader Savage and then Democratic Labour Leader Lee, and is now Labour's president. They run the Party conference as if it were a cross between the annual convention of Al Capone's gang during Prohibition and the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.

Lining the platform table of Labour's conference are the framed (in how many senses?) plush photographs of the Leaders of the past; from the platforms come encomniums of the leadership—"Norm and I are very close" (Hugh Watt), "of all the leaders in Labour history, Kirk is the best" (Hugh Watt again), "the most important thing in the Party is loyally to the leadership" (Fraser Colman); all that is missing are larger-than-life photographs of Big Norm smiling down from every wall and copies of the Thoughts of Norm bound in shocking pink. Sir Francis Kitts will be hauled over the coals for these omissions.

The two Norms—both related, I am credibly told, to that leading Australian figure. Norm Everedge—are too shrewd to rely on anybody else to do their own dirty work. There's nobody that loves you like yourself, as they say. When some academic or other criticises, they are quick to recommit the resolution (that she persuaded conference to pass) when almost half the delegates are gone, carefully making the issue one of confidence in the leadership. When Big Norm stands before the conference with incipient tears glistening in his eyes, to tell them how a political scientist has betrayed their conference and delivered them into the hands of the National Party, who could say him nay? Who knows, perhaps he even believed it himself.

By Owen Gager, our political editor. He did his M.A. (Hons.) in History at Auckland. He is now at Victoria writing a book on the structure of the New Zealand Labour movement from 1916 to 1949. He is also editing Dispute, doing English III and English III additional, and working for the Students' Association as Publications Officer. He proof-reads for the Dominion at night but calls himself a Trotskyist by day.

The proper reaction to this enactment of what could almost be a scene in Bonnie and Clyde or The Threepenny Opera is Brecht's comment—

Those who lead the country into the abyss

Call ruling too difficult

For ordinary men.

The two Norms should be shown up as what they are—men who seek individual power With the minimum of scruple. Their opponents are such different people in outlook and personality from the two Norms that in their characteristic generosity (especially to those in power) they are willing to overlook such minor episodes in their leaders' lives as the deposition of earlier leaders. They try to persuade men who know only the language of power with sweet reason and political science. In part this is because they genuinely regard the Labour leadership as honourable men because incapable of regarding anybody otherwise; in part it is because they have more in common with the Labour leadership than often appears. Both the two Norms and the university branches which oppose them want to maintain the Protection money racket—the system whereby in return for donations to Party funds manufacturers (collectively) are given unlimited Protection (also known as import substitution) from overseas competition. By this system manufacturers can be as inefficient as they like provided only they employ enough people to satisfy the trade unions (this is what Dr. Wall called the essential humanism of the Labour Party). The businessmen also get low interest rates if they say they can't get enough ready money to keep on employing people. As Dr. Finlay once said, if you don't believe in import substitution you shouldn't be in the Labour Party. People in the universities don't want to end this system—not only does the system keep the money coming in, but their real aim is to set up an educated middle class to participate in the "industrialisation" protection has been supposed to produce over the last fifteen years and never has. If you build up manufacturing, you place a greater premium on education—and so build up a bigger and better class system.