Alick Shaw

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Alick Shaw

Alick Shaw served as a Councillor and Deputy Mayor of Wellington City. Mr. Shaw is an accredited commissioner for hearings convened under the Resource Management Act, a member of the New Zealand Parole Board and has served on the boards of a wide range of organisations in the sport, cultural and charitable sectors, council controlled organisations, Crown entities and privately held companies. He has been a Director of Housing New Zealand Corporation since June 01, 2015. Mr. Shaw served as a Director of New Zealand Transport Agency until May 2014.[1]

Parliamentary candidate

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Old protestors

The veterans of the 1981 Springbok tour protests are still proud of having stood up for something they believed in, despite their scars.

For 32 years, the hair hasn't grown from the scar on Karen Brough's temple.

It's a brutal reminder of the evening of July 29, 1981, when she was at the front of 2000 anti-apartheid protesters who came up against baton-wielding police in Molesworth St, outside Parliament.

The 16-year-old Wellington High School pupil was hit in the head with a baton, knocked to the ground, then hit on the back and arms.

Anti-tour protesters had already forced the cancellation of a game in Hamilton when Ms Brough and her friends attended the rally in Parliament Grounds on July 29. The protest was then due to head up the road towards the South African consulate-general.

The crowd surged ahead anyway. Outside Parliament's main gates, five lines of police blocked their path. Protest marshals warned they would keep going; police stood their ground.

The crowds behind forced those in front directly into the police line. A Dominion reporter was two metres from the front line, yet heard no order for batons to be used.

"But suddenly, the policemen in the front line began hitting the front rows of demonstrators," the paper reported the next day - a day when coverage competed with the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

Police said they were pushed, kicked, and had their ties torn off, and they were acting in self-defence. Batons were drawn for 20 seconds at the most, Deputy Chief Inspector Peter Faulkner said.

Ms Brough ended up on the ground. She was dragged out by friends and later treated in hospital. "There were a lot of injured people but there were no ambulances," she says.

Alick Shaw, who would go on to become a Wellington city councillor, was a "chief marshal" of protesters that day.

"We had made a decision, if a line was formed, we would keep going, which was the last time we ever made that decision."

He remembers cadets from the police college were in the front row. "I think it would be fair to say, for some more senior police, they were surprised when the batons were drawn."

The Molesworth St incident ended direct confrontation between anti-tour protesters and police.

That decision was further enforced when it was claimed (though never confirmed) that the military, on behalf of police, had a warehouse of barbed-wire and tear gas ready for an upcoming Palmerston North game.

Protest leader Trevor Richards says there was a concerted effort to stretch police resources during the tour. On the day of the Waikato game, 2500 people marched on to the Wellington motorway.

Early in the tour, about 45 people walked on to the runway at Wellington Airport and closed it down after Air New Zealand had become a target for flying the Springboks around.

"Many of us did things that, under any other circumstances, we would never have contemplated," he wrote in his book Dancing on Our Bones. "If the police wanted to send everyone to the match venue in an attempt to protect the game, they could. We would close down the rest of the country."

Thirty-two years later, Ms Brough lives near Dannevirke, where she is a support worker for people with intellectual disabilities. She remains outspoken, notably on issues to do with the environment and the sale of state assets.

"I'm still protesting, more so because National is in government."[2]

Struggle for dominance with Maoists

On October 30, 1981 in Socialist Action, Treen accused New Zealand's main Maoist organization, the Workers Communist League, of holding protesters partly responsible for tour violence. He said "a number of central organisers of the Coalition to Stop the Tour - (COST) - were members of the WCL, including the chairmen of COST's marshalls Committee - Alick Shaw. (COST was a pressure group in New Zealand opposed to sporting contacts - particularly pertaining to rugby - with South Africa).[3] In the WCL's paper called Unity, Shaw retaliated and accused those concerned with "domestic racism" of trying to "hijack the movement". [4] Further, Shaw, in an article in the Victoria University student's newspaper called Salient, accused the protesters of "attacking the police".[5]

Stop the Tour

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Robert Reid with Alick Shaw

COST executive committee

The Workers Communist League dominated Citizens Opposed to the Springbok Tour at all levels.

The COST executive committee was elected after the initial May 1st 1981 mobilisation. It consisted of;

Later co-opted was Alick Shaw Open WCL member.

The marshall's committee consisted of;

The Paper

All through the ’70s, Mike Law edited HART News and in 1974 was business manger for the allied Maoist publication “The Paper”. Other helpers or contributors to “The Paper” included, Rona Bailey, Alick Shaw, Peter Franks, Terry Auld, Robert Reid, Lisa Sacksen (all future members of the Workers Communist League) future Air NZ board member Rob Campbell, future Race Relations Conciliator Joris de Bres, unionist Pat Kelly, Principal Family Court judge Peter Boshier, journalist Gyles Beckford, writer Tony Simpson and HART leader Trevor Richards.

References

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ [2]
  3. ↑ Socialist Action October 30 1981
  4. ↑ Unity October 1
  5. ↑ Salient September 21
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