History of New Zealand anarchism

aotearoa / pacific islands | history of anarchism | press release Thursday November 22, 2007 10:14 by Dmitri (personal capacity) ngnm55 at gmail dot com

Book launched in Auckland

“A History of Anarchism in Aotearoa/New Zealand from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s”.

A book on the history of Anarchism in New Zealand launched in Monday, 19 November 2007 at the Auckland anarchist social centre where one of last months Urewera 17 was arrested, says author Toby Boraman.

The book has the title “A History of Anarchism in Aotearoa/New Zealand from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s”.

Monday, 19 November 2007 was also the 25th anniversary of the death of anarchist punk rocker Neil Roberts who died while placing a bomb outside the Wanganui Police Computer on 18 Nov, 1982 in a protest against the creeping fascism and police state of Muldoon.

But Boraman says that the launch wass not going to be a celebration of Roberts’ protest act - which harmed noone else - and that the book clearly argues that Roberts’ act of property destruction was completely ineffective in challenging the system.

“Anarchists are not terrorists, but instead aim for a society organised without coercion”, he said. “Anarchists in New Zealand have never purposely maimed, injured and killed people to create a climate of fear and far from the mythology of the mad bomber, anarchists have played constructive roles in a number of protest movements”.

Boraman says Anarchists were prominent in the anti-nuclear, anti-Vietnam War, anti-US military bases, commune, unemployed and peace movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The book captures some of the imagination, audacity, laughs and wildness that animated many of the social movements at the time, he says.

During this time, particularly from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, an astonishingly broad-based revolt occurred throughout the country. Thousands of workers, Maori, Pacific people, women, youth, lesbians, gays, students, environmentalists and others rebelled against authority. Innovative new styles and anarchistic methods of political dissent became popular.

Boraman says that it will interest not only anarchists and richly-details a much neglected anti-authoritarian leftist current in New Zealand history.

The book “A History of Anarchism in Aotearoa/New Zealand from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s” is paperback, 154 pages, RRP $30-$35, ISBN 978-0473-122-997. Illustrated with historical photographs, posters and leaflets.

To read the introduction of the book, go to http://www.rabblerousers.co.nz and click on excerpt.

A percentage of book sales will go to the defence fund for those arrested in the anti-terror raids.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0711/S00304.htm

* The biggest part of this article published in A-Infos.