Peter Gibbons meets a protest
Wellington is not all urban markets and fine dining though it is certainly heading in the right direction. There are number of natural hazards here including the umbrella-shredding wind, a saturation of Wishbone stores and constant protest marches. I bumped into one of the latter today.
It wasn’t a big protest – maybe fifty people – and was led by a man I had thoroughly believed would be in Parliament by now, Mr Andrew Little. Judging by the placards and the chanting, some EPMU members were very unhappy with Telecom and were loudly comparing the company to a number of bodily waste products.
The protest may have been small but Mr Andrew Little’s considerable organisational skills were certainly in evidence. There were a number of professionally designed EPMU banners being waved and most of the protesters had hand-written signs – albeit all in the same handwriting.
More media (1) were visible than Police (0). When the solitary photographer got ahead of the pack to take some front-on snaps, the marchers made sure to form two solid lines eight abreast at the front so that their group would appear much larger in any pictures. Once past those bristling front rows, the protestors walked more casually in twos or threes, many discussing the weekend’s sports results. It resembled some form of snake with a giant, puffed up head obscuring a thin, frail body.
It’s a political cliché to say that protests in New Zealand are not what they used to be but that does not mean its not true. I still recall the marches on Parliament in the 1990s by 1,000 Police and then 1,000 fire fighters thanks to the unique Ministerial skills of Jack Elder. These were hugely impressive protests though in retrospect I wonder who, if anyone, was policing them.
Conversely, a few weeks after the Police and Fire Service protests, students from Victoria University marched through town. From a pub, we generously estimated perhaps three hundred souls, several of whom have now beaten Mr Andrew Little into Parliament. The local newspaper optimistically reported 500. Encouraged, the Victoria student association immediately claimed there had been 1,000. Not to be outdone, the national student association put out a press release stating there were 2,000 students on the march.
I guess the other 1,700 or so must have either popped into the pub before ours or joined the march by car at the very last minute. Don’t laugh – that is exactly what happened on the Hikoi…
August 10th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Reminds me of going to the rugby. Excitement in the spectator bubble in crowd shot focus, the rest wondering why the field just seems to be going through the motions.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
We wondered what all the noise was down Lampton Quay. Was Mr Little in his capacity as EPMU don, Labour president or leftie agitator?
You are right about protest numbers. There was an Iraq War protest in Lower Hutt in 2003. I counted 50-60 people. The Hutt News (very sympathetic) reported 600. I rang the cops and asked them their count of the crowd and they said 60.
August 10th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I actually think Little is not a bad bloke. Once you get past all the rhetoric, in practice he is very practical and results orientated.
August 10th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
“You are right about protest numbers.”
It’s been my experience that neither journalists nor the police can count – fair enough if you are trying to guesstimate a figure in the tens of thousands, but a few years back I had to argue with a journo who claimied there’d been a thousand people on a march I helped to organise – I’d counted 500-odd.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
The Truck Driver protest last year was quite a good one. Don’t forget about that. (Even though Helen Clark ‘couldn’t hear it from her office’)
August 10th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I met Andrew Little at NZ Universty Student Association meetings a hundred years ago and he was impressive then, he is one of the few people Labour has who could stop the rot. A guy with a strong Union background who represents the interests of the membership as opposed to, the passed their used by date, ivory tower intellectuals ( light weights ) that make up a hell of a lot of the Labour caucus and appear to represent nothing other than their own interests as opposed to the interests of their constituants. Christ as I type this they are climbing on a bus on TV One news. Something that I hold DPF personally responsible for, would he have taken his road trip before the last election had he known the boredom those copy cat idiots would inflict on provincial NZ ?
Incidently Peter thankyou for your previous post I am looking forward to some seriously good cheese very soon
August 10th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Or McDonalds, in the great left wing tradition of confusing “showing your solidarity” with “showing your solidity”.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Like the Adult Education protest last week.
The Wellingtonian proudly announced that over 500 people attended.
Even the group’s own press release only said 100.
Looked more like 50 to me.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Yes Rex, if Big Pare gets on the Labour hinterland bus, no provincial Maccas is safe…