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Salient: Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Vol. 32, No. 14. 1969.

The End — June 26 — the beginning of..

page 14

The End
June 26 — the beginning of...

What was the meaning of the 26 June demonstration? Was it a significant now step For the revolutionary movement in New Zealand? Or was it just a sporadic event, despicable for its violence and devoid of meaning?

Will events like this come with increasing frequency and size in the future, or is this country's social system beyond serious threat from uprising and revolution?

Before deciding any of these questions let us go over what led up to, and what actually happened, at the 26 June Demonstration last year.

The arbitration court, the country's wage fixing body, had given a nil wage-order to the union demands, after a significant period of static wages and an increasing Consumer Price Index. The Unions initiated through the F.O.L., a direct protest of this nil wageorder, in the form of a combined march and demonstration to coincide with the opening of Parliament.

Following this decision, a Special General Meeting of the V.U.W. Students' Association passed motions supporting the trade union demands and voting no confidence in the government's stand on university salaries, university bursaries, and foreign policy. It was then voted that the Students' Association officially support a march to Parliament to express these sentiments to the government. The march from the university, attended by about 800 students arrived to join the F.O.L. demonstration some time after the latter had begun. Through some fault of police control or by the good management of sections of the union movement, the demonstration was already in front of the metal police barricade set up 30 yards back from Parliament steps, by the time they arrived. Apparently the unionists had marched round the end of it!

The students, carrying red flags, placards voicing student demands, banners proclaiming 'workers-student solidarity' and anti-Vietnam war placards, marched through a space in the crowd, halting practically at the steps of Parliament. Up until the time that they arrived, the demonstration had been without incident although Norm Kirk, Tom Skinner and Toby Hill were all booed by the crowd when they spoke.

Tom Skinner asked the workers to disperse before the students arrived, but the microphone was taken from him by John Gough. Committee on Vietnam Chairman, who was enthusiastically received when he told them to 'stand firm! The enthusiasm of the crowd rose when the students became vocal and the speeches more militant. Then. Holyoake appeared at the top of the steps waving and smiling at the already angry crowd. Immediately, and as if one, the crowd began to boo and hiss. They surged forward and almost broke the police cordon, so the little man scurried to the safety of Parliament buildings. Shortly afterwards the demonstration dispersed.

The newspapers saw the event, really no more violent than an international rugby match, in a very sinister light. Such headlines as "violence erupts". "chaos", "fear of not", were the order of the day and no ink was spared to blame all this on the students. Stories of "another Paris" were hurled around by worried reactionaries and "liberals" alike. For fear of suggesting any involvement of workers in the violence, critics had to fall back on "those perpetual troublemakers", the students.

Only the people who took part in that demonstration know, that the students were much less violent at the time than the workers were, that the workers were not content with the "watery" demands of their leaders and that there was a feeling of unity between workers and students. That the students were the ones to initiate the militancy can only be a reflection of the dismal state of the F.O.L. leadership and closely parallels the pattern of events in the French uprising last year. There, a militant struggle for student demands sparked off something much bigger than the students themselves represented. Ten million workers struck in solidarity with them, occupied factories, held demonstrations and fought the police; placing the whole vicious system in peril. Had it not, in fact, been for the miserably inadequate leadership of the French Communist party, the whole rotten ediface may have tumbled.

But clearly, we are nowhere near approaching a similar situation in New Zealand. Our revolutionary movement is still in its infancy, our forces are small and deeply divided and at the moment there mere thought of a smattering of workers and students alike. However, what is equally clear from the torrent of abuse that was hurled in the press atfer June 26, is that even the most dullwitted among the reactionaries is more aware of the dangers of an alliance of these two groups than the workers and students are of its advantages.

As has been proved in every successful socialist revolution up until now it is this combination which, united in a revolutionary struggle, has thrown the bourgeois order into the dustbin of history. Our efforts here should be directed with this thought in mind.

Quite obviously events the size and nature of 26 June cannot possibly hope to overthrow capitalism, encouraging as they were to those who struggle for that overthrow. There were those at the time however, who saw the wrath of the crowd and the strength of their 4000 number as an immediate force for storming the steps of Parliament and taking over the building. Of course this could quite easily have been done and apparently the minions inside the building were hurriedly preparing for this eventuality, but unquestionably the result of such an action would have been catastrophic. Apart from the heavy casualties which would be sustained, the Government could, with complete impunity and public support, seize the opportunity to embark on an offensive against all the social groups from which the rebellion arose—imprisonment of militant trade unionists, banning of radical student groups and imprisonment of their leaders etc. In short they could turn what was a small victory, into a crushing defeat, and set the revolutionary movement back many years. Surely not, we must preserve ourselves and build up to the bigger battles of the future, battles that we have an excellent chance of winning. We would do well, not to commit suicide at this stage.

Does this mean that we should guide ourselves by the principles of non-violence? Not at all. It simply means that we do not make the mistake of engaging in battles that we cannot possibly win. Each battle must be a meaningful one, it must lead to the growth of the revolutionary forces, it must be a step forward, not backwards. To every serious revolutionary, the growth of the revolutionary movement is the central task.

This introduces a very different perspective to the events of June 26. Rather than an infantile diversion for the warriors of the imagination, who think the revolution could be won tomorrow with a few well directed "molotovs", we should se it as—a demonstration—a successful demonstration that achieved at least some of demands that it put forward and which gave profound feeling of unity to a lot of those who took part.

In advanced capitalist countries such as America. England, Australia and New Zealand, where large communist parties are nonexistent and the class struggle is comparatively weak, the class consciousness of the worker is very low. In these countries the students, who are always quick to see injustice or danger in government moves have stood alone in their protests and most have become apathetic, if not hostile, toward the working class for their silence. From this condemnation, through failure to reason, the workers present low level of consciousnes, has arisen the "new left", following in the footsteps of Herbert Marcuse and C. Wright Mills.* People attracted to this position, which sees the working class as devoid of revolutionary potential and the students as the revolutionarp transformers of society, seem either eventually to become Marxists or fall victim to the disease of the "Priestly" attitude. By this latter is meant the tendency towards regarding themselves as the conscience of society, the mediate between it and its future.

Failure can only result from the activities of these groups, if only through lack of numbers. Frustration and stagnation over the years then provokes such a movement to the opposite extreme: "If peaceful means don't work, then we must use violent ones". Of course this violence is often turned against themselves—a self imposed martydom to hide from themselves the necessity to think deeper and more effectively—this is ultraleftism, the "infantile disorder" of the revolutionary movement.** That this "infantile disorder" is spreading in New Zealand is very clear at the moment. It is manifest, for example, in pointless, deliberate provocations of the police such as "sit-ins" which inevitably result in heavy fines, and demands for "direct action now" by impatient "revolutionaries" such as I mentioned earlier.

One thing is certain however, these frustrated efforts although present in most pre-revolutionary epochs have never been decisive in building a revolutionary vanguard. It has been events like the 26 June demonstration which have built and are building a vanguard capable of turning the death agony of capitalism into the corpse of Bourgeoise society.