Chris Trotter, political commentator and 1981 Critic Te Ārohi editor, reflects on his experience reporting on the contreversial Springbok tour and the role of student media.
The 56 days of the 1981 Springbok Tour weren’t the whole story – the before and after were just as important. The closest parallel I can think of for the months of preparation that went into the anti-apartheid movement’s response to the Rugby Union’s determination to host White South Africa’s racially-selected team, is the work that went into last year’s mobilisation of tens of thousands of Māori against the Treaty Principles Bill. Certainly, there was the same sense in 1981 that something absolutely vital to what New Zealand needed to become was at stake. That if you were sickened by racism, and what it makes human-beings do to one another, then you simply could not walk away from the fight.
As the person appointed to edit the Otago University Student’s Association’s newspaper, Critic in 1981, I thought long and hard about how the paper could best contribute to making sense of the historic confrontation that was certain to define the year.
The first thing I told myself was that “Critic” wasn’t mine, it belonged to the students of Otago University. As such it needed to reflect the reality of divided opinion within the student body. That a majority of students opposed the Springbok Tour did not entitle me, as editor, to pretend that the opposition was unanimous. A very substantial minority of Otago students – it was measured early in the year at around 40 percent – supported the Tour. Their voices also deserved to be heard.
Accordingly, I asked Otago’s top student debater, Michael Laws – still a fixture of right-wing commentary in New Zealand – to contribute a weekly column called ‘Dragonfly’ to the paper. I also asked him to let his fellow conservatives know that the pages of Critic would not be closed to them. Articles reflecting the dramatic global shift away from the left-wing ideas that had dominated the 1960s and ‘70s would not be rejected. (Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th US President at about the same time I began planning the first issue of the paper.)
That said, I was also determined to produce a paper that not only reflected the majority anti-tour opinion of its student readership, but also, if it was in me, spoke to the values of the University itself. The South African system of racial segregation and exploitation represented an insupportable affront to the principles of human equality and dignity upon which rational and untrammelled scholarship is based. Editorially, Critic was proudly and unequivocally anti-tour.
That did not prevent me, however, from criticising the national anti-tour organisation, Halt All Racist Tours (HART) for straying, if only a little way, from their key pledge to conduct the looming protests non-violently. So annoyed were the HART big-wigs that they asked the local HART organiser to “sort me out”. She was not entirely successful in that regard, but nevertheless made a sufficiently deep impression upon me that, 44 years later, I am still married to her.
And then the Boks arrived – and everything changed.
The elation of hearing that the Springboks vs Waikato game had been called off after hundreds of protesters made it onto Rugby Park – “They’re on the field!” – was replaced by the realisation that the New Zealand State meant to do whatever was needed to keep the Tour alive.
When a former flatmate of mine had his head split open by a police baton in Wellington’s Molesworth Street. When we saw the Red and Blue Squads levelling their long batons at us like sub-machine-guns. When we heard those same long batons thudding into the midriffs of stationary and non-violent protesters. That’s when we knew that the fight had ceased to be a matter of words, and become a matter of flesh and blood.
Without hesitation I published a full page article entitled “Saving Your Neck” in which students intending to continue their protest activity were advised on how best to protect themselves from the police riot squads and Tour supporters: “Loose-fitting clothing and plenty of padding; Groin protection; Mouthguard; Crash helmet.”
And then, suddenly, it was over. What had changed wasn’t exactly clear, but everybody knew that something had. An older, simpler, and, sadly, crueller New Zealand had been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
Long before Peter Jackson’s movies, I editorialised: “Like the gentle inhabitants of Tolkien’s ‘Shire’ we had lived in a faraway rural paradise where violence was the stuff of myth and legend […] and now like the heroes of the fable we have learned that darkness recognises no boundaries […] We have discovered that the struggle against what is wrong is the inescapable destiny of all truly human beings.”
I am immensely proud of the part I was allowed to play in that struggle. May my successors in the Critic editor’s chair never flinch from joining the battle.