The Beginnings of the New Zealand Industrial Workers of the World 1907- 1913

Part one of this series of articles on the history of the Industrial Workers of the World in New Zealand dispels the notion that New Zealand at the turn of the twentieth century was an egalitarian workers’ paradise without the class hatred that was apparent in most of the industrial world. Contrary to widespread perceptions, a class system imported from Britain was clearly in evidence, and there was grave inequality. This factor, along with a migrant workforce spreading ideas from the US, brought about the emergence of the IWW in New Zealand.

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In the early years of the twentieth century, many New Zealand workers began to display a growing dissatisfaction with their conditions. This discontent was fuelling, and being fuelled by, the rhetoric of revolutionary politics. It was a turbulent time in New Zealand’s industries, one that, for a while, threatened to change the face of New Zealand forever. It was in this environment that the New Zealand International Workers of the World (IWW) came into existence.

During the 1890s and 1900s, New Zealand was frequently presented as a progressive nation in terms of social equality and peaceful industrial relations. A leading figure of New Zealand’s early socialist movement, William Ranstead, proclaimed in 1900 that:

Here there is no aristocracy, no snobbery. There are no very rich people and no poor. I’ve not met a beggar … or seen one destitute person. There are no slums here, no miserable starving women and no suffering children. Here no sober, industrious man need lack any of the comforts of life.

Visiting French writer Andre Siegfried wrote in 1904 that he had found very little evidence of class-consciousness among the workers of New Zealand. In his work The Democracy of New Zealand, he wrote that the New Zealand worker, unlike their European counterpart, ‘… was hardly conscious of any class hatred, was not revolutionary, and was only vaguely socialistic.’ He added that they ‘have an innate admiration for money, and for the man who lives in a grand style.’ The New Zealand worker’s ambition, he claimed was limited to being like the middle-class and imitating those who were more fortunate in terms of finance and family.

A land without strikes?

Feeding the notion that New Zealand was some kind of paradise was the fact that the governing Liberal Party had introduced a succession of progressive laws, such as female suffrage (1893) state-instituted compulsory conciliation and arbitration (1894), and an old age pension (1898). These laws, combined with a perception of egalitarian attitudes across most strata of New Zealand society, led to the image of the country as an equal and fair society that attracted considerable foreign interest. The American consul, J.D. Connolly, in an 1893 address in Auckland was moved to say, ‘the fierce searchlight of the civilised world is turned full upon you.’ Many observers came to see what they could learn from this utopia in the southern seas. Among these visitors were the British socialist reformers Sidney and Beatrice Webb, French commentator Albert Metin, and the American progressive political analyst Henry Demarest Lloyd who in 1910 wrote a work entitled A Land Without Strikes about his experience of New Zealand.

A class society

It may be that New Zealand enjoyed greater equality than other countries, and the slums and poverty that existed in the large cities of the United Kingdom were not so readily apparent in New Zealand. However, the country was described as the “Britain of the South” in terms of its class system by British socialist Tom Mann, who visited New Zealand in 1906. He remarked that the differences between the rich and the working class could be easily seen and were alive and well. He painted a grim picture of what he had observed during the shooting season:

only the haw-haw Johnnie, who can afford the licence is allowed to shoot imported game which is fattened on the toil of the well-taxed farmer, [all] smacking very much of the tyranny of the privilege in the old country.

The awareness of a class system was heightened and remarked upon more frequently in the following decade. Despite the claim that New Zealand was a land without strikes, the country was not unscathed by the international wave of worker militancy that spread throughout much of the world in the first two decades of the twentieth century. At this time, New Zealand had an unprecedented upsurge in trade unionism, working-class radicalism and dissatisfaction with the arbitration act, especially from the larger semi-skilled unions such as the miners and seamen. Things had changed so much, so fast, that by 1919 the MP William Downie Stewart was moved to remark how the terms ‘class instinct, class-consciousness, class conflict, and the class war’ had all become common parlance in New Zealand. Similarly, fifteen years later, Andre Siegfried returned to New Zealand and asked Downie Stewart for an explanation for the major change he found in worker militancy. ‘He was anxious to know where these revolutionaries’ ideas had come from, who had imported them, and how far they had taken hold.’

In the twelve years immediately following the passage of the arbitration act in 1894, there were no recorded strikes in New Zealand. That run was not broken until 1906 when the Auckland tramway workers took industrial action. This strike was notable because it sent a message to the labour movement of New Zealand that it was possible to strike successfully. By 1910, New Zealand was the third most unionised country in the world per capita, behind only Australia and Great Britain. This degree of organisation allowed unions to unleash a wave of strikes, reflecting their newly found militancy. Over the next few years strike action was to become increasingly common.  By the end of March 1913, there had been a total of 98 strikes in previously strike-free New Zealand.

Is class relevant?

Some historians have cast doubt about whether class is relevant in a discussion of New Zealand’s past, and whether the rise in strikes reflected an increase in class-consciousness. New Zealand historian W.H. Oliver writes that while the rhetoric of class has not been absent from New Zealand it is inappropriate and irrelevant for New Zealand. He questions whether ‘we have or have had a bourgeoisie and a proletariat, and a struggle between the two.’ Historian Erik Olssen sees the social divide differently: ‘two social systems existed, one in urban and the other in rural New Zealand.’ Historian Melanie Nolan posits that ‘…class was, perhaps, at most, pertinent to city life, a subculture but not a norm.’ New Zealand was, and is, however, a capitalist society, and this means that society can be viewed as divided into the owning class and the working class. In terms of class, it is not a person’s occupation, status, attitude, or income that matters, but their position in relation to the capitalist mode of production. Capitalists own the means of production and employ the labour, while workers own nothing except their labour, which they must sell in order to survive.

For those unionists influenced by the IWW, this division was the very essence of society. The IWW preamble succinctly summed up this ideological position of the organisation in just a few paragraphs.

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system.

We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organisation formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wage system.”

 It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organised, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organising industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.

The I.W.W. Preamble as it appeared on the front page of the Industrial Unionist, March 1913.  The sun rising in the background was a common symbol in IWW artwork, signifying the dawning of a new era.

To New Zealand’s IWW supporters, the evidence of a class divide was clear. Workers could see it with their own eyes, every day of their lives—at work, on the street, and at home when the landlord came to collect rent. One contributor to the IWW’s newspaper, the Industrial Unionist, using the name ‘C.B.’, related an account of a typical unemployed worker’s daily quest for a job. They see ‘motorcars rushing past towards the aristocratic part of town, and reclining in them are well-dressed women, and portly, comfortable looking men.’ The worker goes on to say, ‘There must be something wrong somewhere. I’m willing to work and cannot get it so I’m down and out, but these rich folk never work and they never go short…why should they have it all and me none.’

The IWWs view of New Zealand’s rich was clearly painted in another article, signed by ‘A. Rebel.’ They were described as ‘battened and fattened upon the fruits of other men’s labour…drunk with riotous living and wasteful, useless lives.’ The writer added:

There is nothing too vile and mean and sordid for the bourgeois of New Zealand.  Their god is surplus value; their ambition, to live without working.

Certainly, there were some very wealthy people in New Zealand at the time.  A study by American economist James Le Rossignol and co-authored by New Zealander William Downie Stewart showed that in the opening decade of the twentieth century, a number of wealthy people had died leaving large sums of money behind. Businessman Jacob Josephs, Archdeacon William Williams, and the Hon. W.W. Johnston had all left sums ranging between £300,000 and £500,000 when they died. The same authors calculated that between 1903 and 1904 half of one per cent of the New Zealand population owned 33 per cent of its wealth.

The solidarity displayed between different workers, both in urban and rural areas, during the industrial conflicts of the first two decades of the 1900s is suggestive of a common class feeling among workers. They developed an identity no longer divided by trade; instead, there was a commonly held self-identification based on the need to sell their labour in order to survive. The term “class” itself became a rallying cry, and this was reflected in the emergence and growth of popular, radical working-class organisations such as the IWW. Many workers’ consciousness of class changed and a new resolve to fight for better conditions emerged. Capitalists were aware of the growing emergence of class consciousness among workers. In 1913, the general manager of Union Steam Ship Company said the Great Strike was not “for wages so much as an incipient class war.”

Ideas on the move

It was perhaps inevitable that the IWW’s radical ideas would eventually land on New Zealand shores, as there were thousands of immigrant workers in New Zealand. Between 1900 and 1913 over 115,000 people entered New Zealand, and an unknown number travelled freely between countries. This migratory movement of labour brought influences to New Zealand that reflected the contemporaneous international increase in socialist activity. In parts of Europe, South America, the United States, Canada and South Africa, as well as Australia and New Zealand, the revolutionary doctrines of socialism and industrial unionism were proving increasingly attractive to a growing number of people. Italy, Argentina, Ireland, and Australia were all affected to some extent by general strikes and large-scale social unrest, while troops were deployed on the streets of Britain in response to waves of industrial unrest. The growth in the ideas was accompanied by a rise in votes for socialist parties across Europe. In the US, the Socialist Party’s 1912 presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs polled almost one million votes, equal to 6 per cent of the total vote, standing on an anti-capitalist platform calling for the collectivisation of the means of production and distribution.

The memoirs of New Zealand political activists during this period record this exchange of people and ideas. The New Zealand socialist John A. Lee called New Zealand, “one of the earth’s political crossroads,” with orators on their way to Australia and San Francisco stepping off ships and “onto the soap-box.” Australian “Wobbly,” an alternative title for a member of the IWW, Bill Beattie remarked in his memoirs how “IWW members were the most travelled section of the working-class.” Tom Barker, who was to be a leading light in the Auckland IWW, noted that the general source of socialistic ideas tended to come from the US rather than Britain:

There was always a constant flow of people from the West Coast North American ports to New Zealand, some of them going to Australia, sometimes stopping over, and there was a bigger flow of education and that kind of thing from the Pacific than there was from Britain.

The NZSP and IWW ideas

Initially, the organisation most influential in spreading the tenets of the IWW within New Zealand was the New Zealand Socialist Party (NZSP). The party was a broad church, and represented most shades of socialist thought from Marxists, Fabians and parliamentary socialists, to syndicalists and anarchists, although its prime objective was the ending of capitalism and the establishment in New Zealand of a co-operative society founded on the common ownership of the means of production. The first branch was set up in Wellington in July 1901, with other branches forming soon after in Auckland and Christchurch. At first, its popularity and influence on the New Zealand labour movement was limited, and it was considered little more than a debating society. However by 1906, the influence of the party began to grow as their journal, Commonweal, changed its tone and began to increasingly present the ideology of the revolutionary industrialism of the IWW among its pages. At the same time worker dissatisfaction with the Liberal Party increased, and many of them left to join the NZSP.

The influence of the NZSP received a further boost in 1907 with the arrival in Auckland of Harry M. Fitzgerald, who has been described as a “key figure in transforming New Zealand socialism.” Fitzgerald was not an imposing person, and he wore heavy spectacles, but he possessed a powerful “voice that rang like a church-bell.” In Canada, he was renowned as a skilful orator advocating revolutionary socialism and industrial unionism. He was described as “a platform general with no equal.” He regaled audiences with anti-capitalist stories of his own creation, such as a Descent to Hades. In this story, a recently deceased Fitzgerald is refused entry to heaven after enquiring of St. Peter as to the whereabouts of Karl Marx. It appears that St. Peter is struggling to quell a socialist uprising at the time. So the orator heads to hell and discovers a socialist utopia, “where the labourer receives the full fruits of his toil, and daily appearing inventions are reducing the period of actual graft to a minimum… [and] there is no government… [nor] person who accumulates wealth.” When Fitzgerald asks the devil where the capitalists are, he is told that they get “sent up above.” The Truth newspaper reported that the crowd at the Wellington His Majesty’s Theatre, who seemed to enjoy the tale enormously, met this quip with much laughter.

Group photo taken at the 2nd New Zealand Conference of Socialists, held in Wellington, 1909. H.M. Fitzgerald is sitting on the floor on the right.

In an age where public meetings were a source of entertainment as well as enlightenment, such a gifted speaker was highly valued. Fitzgerald not only delivered speeches and lectures; he busied himself running a series of economics classes and helped to form a Socialist choir. His enthusiasm generated so much revolutionary zeal among working people that by the time the NZSP held its first national conference in April 1908, where it formally adopted the preamble of the IWW, the organisation had grown to a membership of 3000 people. While on a visit to New Zealand, the noted British-born socialist and trade unionist Tom Mann remarked that NZSP branches were being set up at such a rapid rate that it would soon lead the Australian socialist party in “numbers of branches and aggregate membership.” The party had branches in Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington and numerous others in smaller towns including Waihi and Gisborne by this stage. All had their own rooms, ran bookshops, organised weekly lectures and street meetings and, in competition with the churches, held Sunday schools for children where socialism was taught.

An advertisement for an oration by H.M. Fitzgerald.  “Music, Questions, and Discussion” gives an idea of the entertaining nature of these events

The IWW is born

It was after a NZSP meeting that the first IWW branch in New Zealand was formed.  In response to Fitzgerald’s rousing lecture to the Wellington branch on 29 December 1907, over 70 people responded to an invitation to form a branch of the IWW. The following week the Commonweal reported that an IWW branch was launched in Wellington with nearly 100 members. To belong to the branch an individual simply had to endorse two sentences, namely: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common,” and “Labour is entitled to all it produces.”

Advertisement for the first meeting of the IWW in Wellington

Following the inaugural meeting, the first elected officers were Mr. T. Park as secretary, Mr. Eagle as treasurer and J. Dowdall, W. Reid, J. Larler, J. Jones, M.J. Conchie, T. Luke and P. Glyn as committee members.  Although all of these people were members of the NZSP, they stipulated at their first branch meeting that no organiser of the IWW could be an organiser of any political party or use the IWW platform to endorse any political party. They also decided that no member of the IWW could be an officer in any other trade union.

The local decision not to allow the use of the organisation as a platform to publicise political parties touched on an ongoing global debate in socialist circles: whether to seek change through parliament or outside of it.

A second New Zealand branch of the IWW emerged in Christchurch as a direct result of the argument between the two strategies. Members of the literature committee of the local branch of the NZSP spent all of their funds on literature in protest against being asked to hand it over to

the branch committee to fund the party during the upcoming election. The literature committee felt that entering elections was a futile act and maintained that the money was better spent on education resources. They promptly left the NZSP and formed the Christchurch IWW local.

Maoriland Worker 23/6/11

This Christchurch branch proved to be a short-lived affair when they eventually voted to become a recruiting body for the New Zealand Federation of Labor (NZFL) which was seen as having potential as a revolutionary union along IWW lines.

The NZFL was created with the stated ambition of uniting the different craft unions together into “One Big Union” and coordinating action between them. This was the central idea behind the IWW. There was a strong belief in this union among New Zealand’s radicals. W.A. Griffiths, acting secretary and treasurer of the IWW Christchurch branch, wrote to the Maoriland Worker in August 1911 to say that they were full of hope and determination to carry on the class war, and that, ‘we are in the proud position of being the real live branch of the Federation in this city.’

A third IWW local was set up a couple of years later in Auckland. This would be the most influential of the IWW branches in New Zealand. The prime mover behind this local was John Benjamin King. He was a great orator and revolutionary industrialist like his Canadian compatriot before him, Harry Fitzgerald, but unlike Fitzgerald, he advocated direct action over parliamentary action.

King had left Vancouver with two other Wobblies, James Sullivan and Mr Childs. On the trip to New Zealand, they met up with Englishmen Alec Holdsworth and Charlie Blackburn, who were convinced by King of the veracity of the IWW philosophy. Upon arrival, all became IWW activists in New Zealand. Also influential in this group was the then secretary of the NZSP in Auckland, Tom Barker.

The Auckland IWW was headquartered in the same building as the Auckland branch of the NZSP on Wellesley Street. It had an initial membership of 25 people, which was enough for it to meet IWW rules, get formal recognition by IWW headquarters in the USA and be awarded its charter as Local 175. The Auckland local also launched its own monthly newspaper, the Industrial Unionist, on 1 February 1913. Unlike the Christchurch branch, the Auckland local eventually turned its back on the NZFL as they grew disillusioned with it when it moved away from its initial enthusiasm for revolutionary industrial unionism.

 The beginning of the IWW occurred during a time of both local and global industrial unrest and union organising. Despite the imagery of a country without class divisions or disputes, New Zealand was a highly stratified country with pervasive poverty and considerable wealth. In this environment, IWW ideas were welcomed by many, and opposed by some. The ideas gained a foothold through the NZSP and eventually local branches formed. Rising dissatisfaction among many workers and the flow of ideas from around the world quickly increased the IWW’s influence on organised labour in a short time.

Part 2 will examine the opposition faced by the IWW from the existing craft unions and how the influence of the IWW grew as a result of dissatisfaction with those existing unions and with the arbitration system along with a change in the cultural perspective of workers during this period.

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