Report on Blackball Mayday Celebrations 2009

by Paul Maunder
The celebrations began on the Friday night with a singalong with The West Coast Wobblies, who presented traditional union anthems, some originals, plus a sequence from a Euan McColl radio documentary from the early sixties, based on stories from the Welsh mines. They were followed by local folk singers, Arthur and Christine Toms.
Saturday morning saw a forum, facilitated by Leigh Cookson, at the Working Men’s Club, on the topic of The Legacy of Neo-Liberalism There were members of the EPMU, NDU, SFWU, Unite, NZCTU and the NZ Writers Guild present, plus representatives from Alliance, The Democrats, Labour, The Anarchists, ARENA and Gatt Watchdog, The Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Party, the local Grey Power and The West Coast People’s Centre. As well, there was a teacher, a midwife, Blackball citizens and a poet.

Paul Maunder, the promoter of the topic, began by framing the discussion. With the current financial crisis seriously diminishing world wealth and causing ongoing suffering amongst working people, one would expect that people would be revolting against the corruption and greed revealed at the heart of neo-liberalism and the obvious failure of ‘the market’. At the same time warnings of environmental disaster continue. At the social level, increasing dysfunction is being faced. Yet the response has been muted and apathetic. Nor is there a clear sense of a different, hopeful future.

Thereafter, a series of provocations were delivered.

The first, by Te Whaea Ireland, a young teacher, was framed by the key competencies outlined in the new curriculum. There are five:
Thinking creatively and critically, understanding and being curious;
Being able to use language, symbols and texts;
Managing self- being reliable and resilient;
Showing relatedness, communicating and sharing;
Participating and contributing and joining in the world.
Teachers are finding themselves increasingly having to teach the last three, the social skills, rather than the first two areas, which were the traditional task of the teacher. Children are no longer being taught the social skills within the family setting. Focus and stillness are lacking. Children’s minds are more fragmented. Reasons? Obviously TV, diet, the lack of the father role, but as well, in her view, children are desperate for one on one contact with adults. Parents love their children but the children are stressed. Families are stressed through everyone working long hours to survive economically. Children are arriving at school earlier, then there’s after school care, there’s no adult with the time to help with homework, no time for mooching- that stress-free space which generates self management, relatedness, creativity etc. The family is no longer functioning as a nurturing unit. She saw among her peer group, the stress in terms of a young couple trying to acquire a home and to have a family. She saw the traditional homemaker, once gender equality is accepted, as a valid and vital role in society.

Caroline Selwood, a midwife, saw increasing numbers of very young women planning early pregnancies as a life choice, and a growing number of babies born into dysfunctional situations. Yet each child, at birth, is a ‘hopeful consciousness’. But that hope is so quickly dissipated. There is a lack of community awareness and a lack of willingness to work for the community.

Matt Winter, EPMU organiser, reported on worker stress, a similar lack of time because of long hours, financial commitments and so on. Trevor, a delegate, stated that it is difficult to get people to take on the delegate role, or for union members to participate in union activities.

Sandra Quick, a part time teacher and mother, spoke of the time required to grow families and communities. Lots of people are working invisibly to care for family and others and yet men and women reliant on benefits are still pressured to work in spite of their roles caring for the very vulnerable.

Grey Power reported on elderly frustration in their interactions with WINZ, an apathy from staff, with bizarre interpretations of regulations. But also that older people were increasingly minding the grandchildren, providing child care, and were too busy to volunteer for anything else.

There was some general discussion on the provocations so far. People remembered the ‘single wage supporting a family’ negotiation position in the fifties and sixties. There was a call for role pride for young men and young women, an unease in what had been discussed so far, at a possible return to women captured and oppressed by the nurturing role, although, as it was pointed out, that role has been de-gendered. There was a feeling however, that we have to make a society where family is possible, where unpaid work is respected, before we can tackle the dysfunction.

Kevin Hague, Green MP, began his provocation by stating that it is unwise to be romantic about the past. As a Gay man, life would have been very uncomfortable.
He talked of the two weeks of Shock and Awe in parliament prior to Christmas. Then he reflected on what had happened in 1984, with the Treasury briefing documents to the incoming Labour Government. In these documents there was a clear ideology which has become embedded in society: the minimalist state, that people act out of self interest, that they act as individuals, that they are valuable only as consumers, or as a resource for production. As a consequence, people become alienated from their work and from one another. The system is designed around this. Because of interest, the economy has to continue to grow and needs to extract more and more from the environment and from people. In order to restore the environment and society, we need to change the economic system.

Kent Gallagher, a high school teacher, spoke of the need for a cultural evolution, of the need for people to get smarter in terms of what is real wealth, real relatedness and so on.

Paul Watson, NDU organiser, had prepared a paper for the forum. In it, he talked of the phenomenal loss of jobs world-wide, and that behind each loss was a family bearing the consequences. And then, the extraordinary amounts of money being pumped into saving the financial system, and that the debt will have to be repaid by working people, who will be faced with wage restraint and loss of conditions when it comes to bargaining. Accordingly, it is necessary for the working class to have hold of the driving wheel when it comes to decision making in the future.

During the forum, Hungarian poet, Eva Brown, read from her poetry, to provide a creative vision to the thinking.

It is difficult to summarise the debate, except to say that there was a felt need to return to some basic working class values, of the struggle being for a society where working class family life is possible once more. A feeling that many of the progressive causes have been unable to seriously challenge neo-liberalism, of the need to refind the basis of struggle without losing the social advances that have been made in terms of gender, sexual preference, ethnic justice and so on. But as well, this refinding will necessitate a willingness to rethink some frameworks, both economic, political and cultural.

On reflection, and this is a personal musing, to form a further provocation, can we turn this into a meta-narrative (I feel the lack of a meta-narrative)? Is the basic task of our species, like other species, the task of reproduction of the species? That is after all, what drives life. Why should we be different? Yet, consciousness allows us to be aware of this task. So, for example, we are aware of the balance between competition and co-operation, that predatory behaviour always threatens the balance, yet balance is usually restored (until technology).
We can see the five key competencies of the new curriculum as framing the task in the 21st century: to produce members of the species with these competencies. In the light of these competencies, ethnic cleansing is not part of the task, nor is ethnic or gender romanticism, nor is imperialism. How to distribute resources effectively is key. Hard to argue why one family involved in the task of reproduction should have millions of dollars of income, while another lives in poverty. The task feels like a socialist one to me. Nor, given what we know, can we, as a species, make life impossible for other species. So our reproduction has to be ecologically wise.
What family shape? The competencies would seem to preclude internal oppressions a la the patriarchy, homophobia etc. In mammal species, gender roles can be varied in terms of succour and food and shelter provision. Given consciousness and recent struggles against social oppressions, variants of family shapes are obviously acceptable, as long as the key competencies are produced.
One would however, look with suspicion I think, at any tendency to employ other people, to contract out the primary family tasks, this being the tendency of ruling classes in past societies (wet nurses, cooks, maids, governesses etc). It can be argued that this contracting out can be socialised, but evidence (USSR, Israel) would suggest it does not produce the key competencies, but rather overly obedient citizen/soldiers.
Reproduction of the species takes up to the first fifty years of life. What then? And what of those who are infertile or do not mate, or wish to mate with their own gender, or do not wish to reproduce? Given the level of surplus of a modern society, and the tasks of health care, education, culture production, and environmental repair and so on, that go to assist the reproduction of the species, as well as the normal task of production, there is plenty to do. But what is done, supports and celebrates the central task, in all its complexity; this new meta-narrative: the survival of a competent human species.
This is perhaps then, the legacy of neo-liberalism, that we have to reject it, in toto, as a death force, and seek life again.

The forum ended with some banner making, introducing slogans from the discussion, to be added to the traditional ones:

UNITY SOLIDARITY COMMUNITY

LOOSEN THE NOOSE REDISCOVER WONDER

THE ENEMY REMAINS THE SAME
FOR THE GOOD TO HAPPEN THERE MUST ALWAYS BE STRUGGLE

These banners were then carried through the village in the annual march, at the end of which Tina McIvar spoke about the Union Aid project.




In the afternoon, there were workshops on the memorial/shrine project (hopefully to open this Labour Day).
One group discussed events/rituals during a year. It was considered absolutely necessary to get unions to own the memorial through making annual small financial contributions toward ongoing infrastructural costs.
A Workers Memorial Ceremony should be held annually (names of the fallen, songs, speaker)
Mayday – get local workers involved. Ask local miners councils to put on transport. Have hour long ceremony. Choir could tour local working men’s clubs beforehand. Get the lyrics of the songs out there, for many workers know nothing of the history.
The web site is vital.
The local school is keen to get involved. Have them build a cairn with the names of the ’08 strikers on the stones.
The possibility of building a wall with the names of those killed at work through the years. (it will become another project for it will be a very long wall).
The second group worked on the draft wording for three of the twelve panels. Mark Derby is preparing these, and given his comments re layout, the group felt he was on the right track.
The third group looked at a schools programme. They felt that we should work with Shantytown on this programme, for Shantytown often bring school parties out to Brunner. They could include Blackball.
Education resources should be on the website and linked to the curriculum.
We should seek input from teachers.
Creative writing from students should be put on website.
Need to employ someone to develop the education programme.
Important to cater for children on Mayday.
Look at ACTU’s resources for schools.
Maybe a children’s book on the ’08 strike.
Have oral histories, MP3’s available for ‘wanders through the town’.
Cater as well for adult groups.

Saturday night saw the premier of Paul Maunder’s play The Curator of Baghdad, a story from Guantanamo. The story teller, confined in a cage in the middle of the Blackball Church, told his story, assisted by two other actors who played various roles. The inspiration came from the sacking of the Museum of Baghdad shortly after the invasion, and the painful decision that the prison at Guantanamo Bay is the spiritual centre of the US Empire.