A road to nowhere?
By Ewan Tavendale
This year’s local body elections probably won’t enlighten us as to which direction the public, or more correctly the various social classes, might be heading politically. Certainly, there is nothing so far to suggest that the local elections will herald a Labour Party revival. However, the local elections are not without interest. The
mayoral election campaigns so far in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch have already confirmed one
Style without substance: You’d better get a better slogan.
thing: the emperor has no clothes. What I mean by that is that these elections are exposing just how weak the National Party really is as an organisation.
You imagine that National and Labour are well-organised with membership strengths at local level in keeping with the parties’ standing in Parliament. This is not so. The reality is that the status of these parties in the public eye, the two main pillars of the political system, is not founded upon masses of members in communities or workplaces. Both parties are totally dependent for their image on the say so of the mass media.
This state of affairs is not grievous for National, which can generally rely on the friendly support of the media owning corporations. The current government gets an easy ride, and that will not change any time soon. [Read More…]
Recent articles
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The origins of the Labour Party
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Making history or maintaining the status quo?
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After the Brexit: Fighting Racism
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From the archive
Anzac Day: Against the Carnival of Reaction
On Anzac Day 1967, at the height of New Zealand involvement in the ‘American War’ in Vietnam, with New Zealand troops taking part in the suppression of the Vietnamese struggle for national liberation, members of the Progressive Youth Movement in Christchurch tried to lay a wreath following the dawn service in memory of those killed by imperialism in Vietnam. They were arrested and charged with disorderly behaviour. Feminists a decade later faced down a media-driven public outcry when they laid wreaths to the victims of sexual violence during war.
Lest we forget? It’s more like lest we remember. Anzac Day serves as a carnival of nationalist reaction, a day of public ritual aimed at promoting forgetting: forgetting the real legacy of New Zealand imperialism and militarism in favour of a sentimental nationalism, an anti-political celebration of national unity. [Read More…]
