Political colours

My dad was political blue through and through.  He was brought up in a time of New Zealand Labour’s Michael Joseph Savage and Peter Fraser.  I never knew why, with such a red childhood, he became so blue.

Dad was a joiner by trade, and a self-employed builder doing alterations and additions and the occasional spec house most of his working life.  When he was in his early 20s he lost all the fingers off his left hand in an argument with a skill saw, but the lack of fingers never stopped him – he had stumps and he used them to very good advantage.

As a working class man with a wife and 5 kids to support, I would have thought Labour would have been his natural bent. Perhaps it was because National’s Sid Holland, Keith Holyoake and Jack Marshall led the country from 1949 right through until 1972, with only a 3 year break from 1957 to 1960 when Labour’s Walter Nash took the reins, that dad became blue. 

His conservatism didn’t seem to reflect in our everyday life. He supported capitalism but never owned shares. He built both of the houses I lived in as a child and teenager, as well as much of the furniture.  He was hands on with everything from upholstery and car repairs to fixing mum’s sewing machine or washing machine when they broke down. We were not poor, but neither were we affluent.  Affluence doesn’t come easily to a family with 5 kids on one income from a self-employed tradie, but we had good food on the table, happy childhoods and the occasional holiday at the beach.  Maybe dad thought his ability to provide these things for his family was due to the stability of 20 years of almost continuous blue government.

I became politically aware in 1970, my first year of high school.  During 1970-71 I, like many of my school mates, took part in anti-Viet Nam protests and began to actively question dad on his political beliefs. When Norm Kirk was elected for Labour in 1972 I celebrated, while dad grumbled about where the country was going to end up.  He was grudgingly tolerant though, until Kirk died suddenly in August 1974 and Bill Rowling took over.  Dad hated Rowling with a passion, and celebrated when “the Weasel” lost the election to National – and Robert “Piggy” Muldoon – in 1975. The subsequent 9 years under Muldoon’s fiscal control polarized the country, but dad remained staunchly blue.  I moved out of home in 1975, but our political spats continued every time I visited and escalated during the violence of the 1981 Springbok rugby tour, when dad’s anti-red sentiments seemed to lose all sense of reason.

When Labour won the 1984 snap election with David Lange at the helm, dad was incensed.  He felt the country had betrayed Muldoon.  He simmered, mostly quietly, occasionally loudly vocal – often when I wound him up – and celebrated when Jim “Spud” Bolger led National to election victory in 1990. 

By now, with most of his kids moved out of the family home, dad spent much of his down time in front of either sport or politics on the TV. When the politics got too much for him he would storm out of the lounge and vanish downstairs to his workshop where he would either make or fix something to settle his turmoil. 

In 1991 he had a new nemesis – Winston Peters, who was fired from the National Party and formed his own NZ First party in 1993.  Dad’s passion against this man was probably even more than his passion had been against the Weasel, and he railed against NZ First’s election wins in 1996 when they held the balance of power in parliament. Although Peters’ coalition with National gave blue the reins of government, dad felt Peters betrayed everything he stood for.  He celebrated when NZ First lost a lot of their seats when Labour won the 1999 election under Helen Clark.

My dad died on 24 June 2001.  He never changed colour, not once, in his entire life, but although he was blue from head to toe he never, despite our political arguments and dialogues, tried to influence any of us in our political direction.  I often wondered, in the years after his death, how this intensely blue man must have felt at times to know that at least one of his kids was the proverbial “red under the bed”.  I think he would have been very proud that I had the courage of my own convictions, just as he had had for so many years.