A deeply unfashionable view of the roots of New Zealand. Current discourse in the country is almost entirely focused on the sins of colonialism and the valiant efforts of the colonised to shake off the British inheritance. To the extent the mechanisms of colonialism are discussed, they are framed as a more or less ignoble failure to live up to Te TiritI, which is said to create a partnership between the Crown and the indigenous. This is now a quasi constitution.
Of course, the stuff about the late, reluctant adoption of the statute of Westminster and New Zealand’s angst at being cast off in 1973 after the sacrifice of its soldiers in European wars is all true. But perhaps the pain is too recent to be acknowledged.
It is deeply frustrating that The Treaty, which is short enough to be read in one minute, can be used to justify so much ~~bullshit~~ ineffective action.
As a 5th generation kiwi of mixed UK working class, ethnic & religious heritage, born near Wellington 1961, I recognize much of what you describe. However, I grew up not understanding my grandparents, uncles etc sense of Britishness. I always thought of myself as a person who was clearly, only of the Pacific (not to be confused with Pacifica) but without a socially acceptable claim to a pacific island national identity. As an adult, I realized their 'motherland' identity was related to both the obligated economic dependence and the real sacrifices my ancestors had made. The only men who made it back 'home' to Britain after arriving in NZ in the 1840's were the soldiers.
The economic shock in the 1970s was terrible for my family, maybe most? We went from confident and comfortable to brittle and poor, almost overnight. We (the nation) are still socially and financially dealing with the consequences.
I'm from Stokes Valley, a little earlier than '61. I remember school yard talk about the disadvantage of looking Maori. Watched the state houses get built in Taita. Rather than the '70s, the late '80s and early '90s have had the biggest economic impact on me. I left a dying industry, retrained at university and came out into an economic recession. Had to take the first job offer I got, which was not in the area I trained in. Mind you, I had re-established myself enough by the mid to late '90s to buy a house and support a family. More easily than for my kids nowadays.
I'm genuinely not sure how much to credit Britain joining the EEU with our cultural break from them. It must have been a big deal but I have no first hand knowledge of it or even second hand stories. Some say that the invention of nylon carpets in the 50s was a bigger deal, that dealt a heavy blow to our wool industry (from which it has never recovered; NZ technically still has many sheep but they barely matter next to the modern economic centrality of the diary cow). Departure from Britain may have been more gradual (trying to pin down an independence date is tough, so spread out and piecemeal was the transfer of sovereignty).
I was born the 80s and I grew up with a closer connection to British culture than American, but NZ went neoliberal in the 80s and much was changing alongside me. I reckon Kiwis ten years younger than me and beyond are significantly more influenced by American culture than British and that this trend will continue, especially as Britain becomes ever more inward focused.
You did not mention the Pasifika slice of New Zealand's population. I believe this is where NZ's future lies, as an anchor and integrator to the Oceanian world. Looking up towards the northwest Pacific rather than Britain or America. As a (mainly) geographical determinist I feel an island mindset starting to creep into the culture. The Māori might have had a violent past, but on the world stage Aotearoa is a small island.
I once read in Jared Diamond's *Collapse* of how the Greenlanders slavishly followed the latest fashions of Norway only to die out as the Innuit thrived in the same conditions. This feels to me an especially important lesson for New Zealand.
Australian Britishness, similar to Kiwis, is also prettt alien to my experience as I was born in 1988 and raised here from 90s. It's when you read about the ANZ past does the overwhelming centrality of Britishness become apparent
My grandfather, born in 1925, identified as a British subject or citizen and new Zealand as a British country right until his last years in the 2000s or 2010s. He was born in NZ and so was his father and grandfather. But nevertheless he was very positive about Britain, more so Scotland where his paternal ancestors were from than England, but it was all Britain to us. I suppose being a farmer he had a sense of whose bread we buttered, to reverse an old turn of phrase!
That left a mark on me and I do value New Zealand's British background. I think people take for granted all the things we inherited from them: language, law, Parliament, etc.
We are more multicultural these days. Married a Chinese immigrant so my own child can whakapapa back (as we say in NZ) to multiple cultures. But the British heritage will always be there. With the NZ UK FTA of 2021, US isolationism, and China's authoritarian turn, we might find Britain very much a part of our future too!
Nicely written. I was unaware of the sacrifices that New Zealand made for the motherland. As an Australian I always considered the UK as the motherland and still feel a debt of gratitude for everything that Britain gave us, and the world.
Trying to 'evolve" a conversation with most kiwis is plainly futile. It's as if the whole purpose of language for them is to curtail its possibilities as aoon as they can, with bromide, cliché and brute commonplace. Nothing of what you write here suggests any source for that impulse at all. I have to say i was seriously hoping it woulld!
If I had to guess as to the origins, it's part of the cultural package that developed to handle life in a rather small social world. A strong push for agreeableness makes sense as a way to avoid conflict when you are going to be having repeated interactions with that same pool of people. Combine that with the strong streak of egalitarianism in the country and you can start to see how it came about. Then add in the evaporative effect of people with ambition selecting out to head back to the Mother country....
Or as they would say back home "Oh I don't know about that, it all sounds a bit full on aye. I don't really know what your going on about with what evolving the conversation talk, we were just trying to have a yarn"
Yesss! As if everyone should automatically know where this "yarn" they are "having" begins and ends, even when its chief feature is apparentky not to unravel! Perhaps a passing Æmedican migbt (gasp) stage an intervention at this point, advising that they're trying to "shoot the breeze" whilst i'm trying to "chew the fat"? But you've put your finger on it for sure - that incessant drive for agreeability, whereby taciturnity becomes the crowning social virtue!
A bit orbital, but I remember how much reverence older Kiwis had for the government of Michael Savage. He steered New Zealand through the worst of the depression, and was the pioneer of the cradle-to-grave welfare state, which was a radical concept back in 1938. He characterised it as “applied Christianity” rather than anything Marxist which did a lot to foster acceptance. Many working people kept his portrait hanging in their home for decades afterward.
All that is true but the larger picture is that all the Savage government policies were based on the economic-political model of dependency on imperial Britain. (In 1939 Savage even declared war on Germany using the phrase “where Britain goes, we go. Where Britain stands, we stand.”)
The writing was on the wall for that stance after WW2, and locked in after Suez. In 1973 Britain joined the EU and it was game over for brave little NZ, the economic outpost of Britain.
Subsequently NZ adapted, as it had to. But it would be useful if those continuously harking back to the good old days of 1930s-1970s welfare before the dreaded ‘neoliberalism’ if they joined the dots. The Savage dream can’t be resurrected in its 1930s form. So what would be the economic-political model in the 2030s that might sustain a reinvigorated welfare state?
A deeply unfashionable view of the roots of New Zealand. Current discourse in the country is almost entirely focused on the sins of colonialism and the valiant efforts of the colonised to shake off the British inheritance. To the extent the mechanisms of colonialism are discussed, they are framed as a more or less ignoble failure to live up to Te TiritI, which is said to create a partnership between the Crown and the indigenous. This is now a quasi constitution.
Of course, the stuff about the late, reluctant adoption of the statute of Westminster and New Zealand’s angst at being cast off in 1973 after the sacrifice of its soldiers in European wars is all true. But perhaps the pain is too recent to be acknowledged.
It is deeply frustrating that The Treaty, which is short enough to be read in one minute, can be used to justify so much ~~bullshit~~ ineffective action.
You write of mere politics. Society is the product of unending power plays.
As a 5th generation kiwi of mixed UK working class, ethnic & religious heritage, born near Wellington 1961, I recognize much of what you describe. However, I grew up not understanding my grandparents, uncles etc sense of Britishness. I always thought of myself as a person who was clearly, only of the Pacific (not to be confused with Pacifica) but without a socially acceptable claim to a pacific island national identity. As an adult, I realized their 'motherland' identity was related to both the obligated economic dependence and the real sacrifices my ancestors had made. The only men who made it back 'home' to Britain after arriving in NZ in the 1840's were the soldiers.
The economic shock in the 1970s was terrible for my family, maybe most? We went from confident and comfortable to brittle and poor, almost overnight. We (the nation) are still socially and financially dealing with the consequences.
Thanks for the feedback. Interesting to hear from kiwis
I'm from Stokes Valley, a little earlier than '61. I remember school yard talk about the disadvantage of looking Maori. Watched the state houses get built in Taita. Rather than the '70s, the late '80s and early '90s have had the biggest economic impact on me. I left a dying industry, retrained at university and came out into an economic recession. Had to take the first job offer I got, which was not in the area I trained in. Mind you, I had re-established myself enough by the mid to late '90s to buy a house and support a family. More easily than for my kids nowadays.
Australia and New Zealand are never foreign to each other nor to Britain.
I'm genuinely not sure how much to credit Britain joining the EEU with our cultural break from them. It must have been a big deal but I have no first hand knowledge of it or even second hand stories. Some say that the invention of nylon carpets in the 50s was a bigger deal, that dealt a heavy blow to our wool industry (from which it has never recovered; NZ technically still has many sheep but they barely matter next to the modern economic centrality of the diary cow). Departure from Britain may have been more gradual (trying to pin down an independence date is tough, so spread out and piecemeal was the transfer of sovereignty).
I was born the 80s and I grew up with a closer connection to British culture than American, but NZ went neoliberal in the 80s and much was changing alongside me. I reckon Kiwis ten years younger than me and beyond are significantly more influenced by American culture than British and that this trend will continue, especially as Britain becomes ever more inward focused.
You did not mention the Pasifika slice of New Zealand's population. I believe this is where NZ's future lies, as an anchor and integrator to the Oceanian world. Looking up towards the northwest Pacific rather than Britain or America. As a (mainly) geographical determinist I feel an island mindset starting to creep into the culture. The Māori might have had a violent past, but on the world stage Aotearoa is a small island.
I once read in Jared Diamond's *Collapse* of how the Greenlanders slavishly followed the latest fashions of Norway only to die out as the Innuit thrived in the same conditions. This feels to me an especially important lesson for New Zealand.
Australian Britishness, similar to Kiwis, is also prettt alien to my experience as I was born in 1988 and raised here from 90s. It's when you read about the ANZ past does the overwhelming centrality of Britishness become apparent
My grandfather, born in 1925, identified as a British subject or citizen and new Zealand as a British country right until his last years in the 2000s or 2010s. He was born in NZ and so was his father and grandfather. But nevertheless he was very positive about Britain, more so Scotland where his paternal ancestors were from than England, but it was all Britain to us. I suppose being a farmer he had a sense of whose bread we buttered, to reverse an old turn of phrase!
That left a mark on me and I do value New Zealand's British background. I think people take for granted all the things we inherited from them: language, law, Parliament, etc.
We are more multicultural these days. Married a Chinese immigrant so my own child can whakapapa back (as we say in NZ) to multiple cultures. But the British heritage will always be there. With the NZ UK FTA of 2021, US isolationism, and China's authoritarian turn, we might find Britain very much a part of our future too!
Thanks for sharing
I remember he had Kipling's poem "If" hanging on the wall, and another poem about the UK, too:
"There are four kinds of people in the UK –
First, there were the Scots who kept the Sabbath – and everything else they could lay their hands on;
Then there were the Welsh – who prayed on their knees and their neighbours;
Thirdly there were the Irish who never knew what they wanted – but were willing to fight for it anyway.
Lastly there were the English who considered themselves self-made men, – thus relieving the Almighty of a terrible responsibility."
Britain abandoned ANZ.
Nicely written. I was unaware of the sacrifices that New Zealand made for the motherland. As an Australian I always considered the UK as the motherland and still feel a debt of gratitude for everything that Britain gave us, and the world.
Trying to 'evolve" a conversation with most kiwis is plainly futile. It's as if the whole purpose of language for them is to curtail its possibilities as aoon as they can, with bromide, cliché and brute commonplace. Nothing of what you write here suggests any source for that impulse at all. I have to say i was seriously hoping it woulld!
If I had to guess as to the origins, it's part of the cultural package that developed to handle life in a rather small social world. A strong push for agreeableness makes sense as a way to avoid conflict when you are going to be having repeated interactions with that same pool of people. Combine that with the strong streak of egalitarianism in the country and you can start to see how it came about. Then add in the evaporative effect of people with ambition selecting out to head back to the Mother country....
Or as they would say back home "Oh I don't know about that, it all sounds a bit full on aye. I don't really know what your going on about with what evolving the conversation talk, we were just trying to have a yarn"
Yesss! As if everyone should automatically know where this "yarn" they are "having" begins and ends, even when its chief feature is apparentky not to unravel! Perhaps a passing Æmedican migbt (gasp) stage an intervention at this point, advising that they're trying to "shoot the breeze" whilst i'm trying to "chew the fat"? But you've put your finger on it for sure - that incessant drive for agreeability, whereby taciturnity becomes the crowning social virtue!
A bit orbital, but I remember how much reverence older Kiwis had for the government of Michael Savage. He steered New Zealand through the worst of the depression, and was the pioneer of the cradle-to-grave welfare state, which was a radical concept back in 1938. He characterised it as “applied Christianity” rather than anything Marxist which did a lot to foster acceptance. Many working people kept his portrait hanging in their home for decades afterward.
All that is true but the larger picture is that all the Savage government policies were based on the economic-political model of dependency on imperial Britain. (In 1939 Savage even declared war on Germany using the phrase “where Britain goes, we go. Where Britain stands, we stand.”)
The writing was on the wall for that stance after WW2, and locked in after Suez. In 1973 Britain joined the EU and it was game over for brave little NZ, the economic outpost of Britain.
Subsequently NZ adapted, as it had to. But it would be useful if those continuously harking back to the good old days of 1930s-1970s welfare before the dreaded ‘neoliberalism’ if they joined the dots. The Savage dream can’t be resurrected in its 1930s form. So what would be the economic-political model in the 2030s that might sustain a reinvigorated welfare state?