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Confrontation '51: The 1951 Waterfront Dispute
264 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1972
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 31, 2024
An account of one of the most dramatic events of post-WWII New Zealand history, the 1951 waterfront lockout. Bassett, a Labour Party member at the time he wrote this, has obvious biases, but this is a reasonably sober and objective book, as far as it goes.
The National government essentially turned the country into a dictatorship in order to crush the waterfront union and a few other militant unions. The government was assisted by the main union federation and all its affiliates, which were viciously anti-communist and right-wing. Anyone who has a simplistic view that the trade unions and the Labour Party were more left wing in the "good old days" should study this history. The vast majority of the unions ruthlessly isolated and helped to strangle the most militant union in NZ, and the federation joined in the frothing anti-communist hysteria spread by the government.
Not that the waterfront workers union was communist or anything of the sort. They were ready to capitulate to the government's demands very quickly, but because of their record of militancy and "trouble making", the government kept them locked out for 151 days and used the dispute to test out a number of extreme laws: including censorship of the press and brutal measures to isolate and starve the watersiders into submission.
I learnt quite a bit from this book, although it didn't tell me everything I wanted to know. For instance, while it gives you a very good picture of the McCarthyite/Cold War hysteria promoted by the government and the newspapers, there is almost nothing in this book about what the Stalinists themselves were writing and doing during the dispute.
The National government essentially turned the country into a dictatorship in order to crush the waterfront union and a few other militant unions. The government was assisted by the main union federation and all its affiliates, which were viciously anti-communist and right-wing. Anyone who has a simplistic view that the trade unions and the Labour Party were more left wing in the "good old days" should study this history. The vast majority of the unions ruthlessly isolated and helped to strangle the most militant union in NZ, and the federation joined in the frothing anti-communist hysteria spread by the government.
Not that the waterfront workers union was communist or anything of the sort. They were ready to capitulate to the government's demands very quickly, but because of their record of militancy and "trouble making", the government kept them locked out for 151 days and used the dispute to test out a number of extreme laws: including censorship of the press and brutal measures to isolate and starve the watersiders into submission.
I learnt quite a bit from this book, although it didn't tell me everything I wanted to know. For instance, while it gives you a very good picture of the McCarthyite/Cold War hysteria promoted by the government and the newspapers, there is almost nothing in this book about what the Stalinists themselves were writing and doing during the dispute.
March 17, 2023
Useful for my history project (plus I need to get my goodreads goal up)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews