Revolutionaries Burn New Zealand’s Flag
Posted by Mike E on May 31, 2009
We received the following reports from New Zealand — in a bold protest two revolutionaries, Joel Cosgrove and Alistair Reith, burned the flag of South Pacific island nation of New Zealand. Their action was taken on ANZAC Day, in protest against the death of youth in New Zealand’s imperialist wars. It was particularly controversial because of the level of assumed patriotism in New Zealand, including within much of the Left.
While burning the U.S. flag is quite common, it was startling for many to see New Zealand’s flag destroyed and its military called out as imperialist. The two flag-burners and their cameraman were then suspended from the Victoria University.
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Picket against their suspension from the university
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The following article from the Workers Party website explains the politics behind this action.
The Flag is Symbolic, Imperialism is Real
Victoria university members of the Workers Party are facing charges of serious misconduct after burning the New Zealand flag. This leaflet explains the political background to the act.
Why burn the New Zealand flag?
The New Zealand flag is a symbol of imperialism. This is most obvious in its design, a tribute to the British Empire. This design was adopted after the Second Boer War, which devastated South Africa but resulted in a surge of Kiwi patriotism.
A simple re-design, while reflecting our emergence from the shadow of the British Empire, would not change the imperialist nature of the flag. It’s a tool of the ruling class, inseparably linked with militarism. From the Boer War through WWI and II, right through to armed involvement in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the flag has marked New Zealand’s presence. Flags mark military conquest, the subjugation of nations.
Flags and borders divide the working majority. ANZAC soldiers had more in common with their Turkish counterparts than with the bureaucrats who sent them to Gallipoli. The working majority has interests in common worldwide, including an end to imperial war. Ruling class nationalism is a barrier to recognising this.
What purpose does ANZAC day serve?
Many argue that ANZAC Day is not a glorification of war, but a commemoration of those who’ve lost their lives. However, the rhetoric of ANZAC Day does not simply honour the soldiers who lost their lives, it justifies those who sent them to die. This facilitates moves such as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision to form a new ANZAC Task Force.
Every year we are told that the young men whose lives were snuffed out at Gallipoli died gloriously for our freedom. We are told that the liberties we enjoy in New Zealand today exist only because of the sacrifice of these soldiers. The message is that the soldiers’ deaths were worth it, and that the cause they died for was just.
Gallipoli was not about defending democracy or free speech. The Ottoman Empire did not pose a threat New Zealand. The Allied High Command ordered the invasion of Gallipoli for strategic reasons, primarily opening a supply route to arm their then ally, the Tsar of Russia. This battle served ruling class British interests.
If we truly wished to avoid a repetition of these horrors, we would use Anzac Day to teach this basic truth: Do not believe what you’re told. Imperialist war is never glorious, and the soldiers who bled to death in the Belgian mud and at Galipolli died for nothing.
Afghanis burning New Zealand flag
To honour the men who lost their lives, we must condemn imperialist war. Only when ANZAC Day facilitates disarmament and solidarity with those resisting imperialism, only when the War Memorial is showered with white poppies, when speeches are made about a generation of men slaughtered to serve imperialist interests, only then will the Workers Party support it.
New Zealand: an imperialist nationWhile New Zealand has eked out a degree of independence from the US, it remains a junior imperialist nation. Contrary to popular myth, New Zealand was a member of the coalition of the willing which legitimised the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, sending troops to both countries.
Afghanistan is in the mess it is today because of Western involvement. Since the nineteenth century, Britain and the United States have deliberately stirred up communal divisions in the Middle East in a bid to prevent the formation of any united resistance to their plans for plundering the economic wealth of the region. During the Cold War, the CIA funded and recruited an army of Islamic mujahideen fighters based in northwest Pakistan to fight the Russians and their Afghan allies. Sectarian violence was exacerbated by this and by the subsequent occupation. The pro-Western government that replaced the Taliban has shown its stripes by legalizing rape within marriage. Yet the US and its NATO allies continue to peddle the line that the only solution to the worsening violence is greater Western military intervention.
Imperialism in the Pacific
More locally, we have treated Pacific neighbours as sources of cheap labour and trade, often interfering in governance.
While capital may flow freely across borders, workers only move when it suits the ruling class. When the post-war boom ended in the 1970s, the NZ ruling class turned to shutting off working class immigration, especially from the Pacific. 100,000 Samoans were stripped of citizenship rights, in a piece of legislation that has been maintained ever since. The Workers Party calls for open borders and full rights for migrant workers.
Despite the line of “democracy promotion” in the Pacific, the ruling class is primarily interested in having stable elites to trade with. In 2006, New Zealand and Australian troops were deployed to quell pro-democracy riots in Tonga. Only 9 of the 34 seats in the Tongan parliament are elected, and Tongans have voted for pro-democracy candidates in all 9 of those seats. However, New Zealand backs the monarchy, a major source of trade.
Yet paradoxically, New Zealand has isolated Fiji since the coup carried out by Bainamarama; why advocate democracy in Fiji and not Tonga? We did not isolate those who carried out the Fijian coups in 1987 and 2004. In fact, Fiji has never been a full democracy, with a voting system that entrenches a tribal elite, at the expense of Indo-Fijians. The current interim government however, is pledging to hold elections once there has been electoral reform, disestablishing the racially segregated voting system and instituting one person one vote. This may yet be shown to be empty rhetoric, indeed some of the actions of the interim government seem rather undemocratic and should be of concern, but New Zealand’s stance is clearly not based on democracy. There are powerful New Zealand interests in Fiji, which is New Zealand’s largest export market amongst the Pacific Islands. New Zealand’s attitude to Fiji is not based on humanitarian interests, but on the interests of capital.
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Accompanying every justification of New Zealand militarism and imperialism is the national flag. It stands for unthinking obedience to orders and the false god of nationalism – the idea that working class New Zealanders share common interests with their bosses against the rest of the world.
Workers and all oppressed people of all countries , unite to resist imperialism.
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Coverage from New Zealand’s mainstream press:
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New Zealand Herald:
Victoria University students thrown out for NZ flag burning protest
“Victoria University in Wellington has temporarily banned three students for burning an New Zealand flag on campus.
The students burnt the flag outside a campus bar on May 6 as part of an Anzac Day anti-war protest.
The university has disenrolled flag burners Joel Cosgrove and Alistair Reith, and Ian Anderson, who filmed the protest, until the end of the first trimester on June 7 on the grounds they breached health and safety standards.
It also issued a written warning to Marika Pratley, who was there at the time, and banned all four from the Mount Street bar.
“These students have shown a disregard for the safety of others and of university property,” dean of humanities and social sciences Professor Deborah Willis said.” (full article)
Alastair Reith said
Cheers for the coverage comrades. One correction though – we didn’t burn the flag on ANZAC Day itself, which is on April 25th. The motivation for the flag burning was a meeting organised in the student union building bar by the Victoria University of Wellington Student’s Association to decide whether or not VUWSA should lay a belated wreath in “commemoration” of ANZAC Day. There’d been a storm in a teacup within the University politico scene (a very small and incestuous one) and on right-wing blogs over how “disrespectful” this was.
VUWSA took an agnostic stance and by holding such a meeting on it’s own initiative was essential backing down to right-wing pressure. The motions the Student Association President (a former member of the Workers Party expelled for trying to restrict the right to strike and have union meetings enjoyed by VUWSA staff, amongst a whole lot of other stuff) put forward to the meeting had been taken by her to the Returned Services Association, historically and currently a right-wing conservative organisation, to seek their approval. There were no critiques of ANZAC Day being put forward by anyone and there were certainly no critiques of New Zealand’s long and often bloody imperialist history.
Joel got up and read out a statement outlining our opposition to New Zealand imperialism and the way ANZAC Day is used to legitimise the deaths of the mostly working class people whose lives have been thrown away in it’s service. After that we went outside onto the deck of the bar, in the rain, and set the flag alight.
As it turned out the meeting failed to gain quorum anyway, illustrating how fake and without substance the “backlash” against VUWSA’s agnostic stance really was, but I think our action was still a worthwhile one. On two TV channels there was coverage of the flag burning with Joel’s speech played over it, and around a million people saw a revolutionary critique of New Zealand imperialism being put forward, something that is all too rare.
Maz said
“These students have shown a disregard for the safety of others and of university property,”
Ha! As if the suspension of the students were based on ‘health and safety’ grounds!
I don’t think anything raises quite a stink as burning flags in New Zealand, or Norway, or Denmark or Canada. These countries play just as an important role in the maintenance of the imperialist system as the ‘big dogs’ and yet very often the mainstream left in these countries builds support for their ruling class by promoting an ‘anti-imperialist’ patriotism. It’s ripe for exposure. Well done.
Mike E said
Alastair:
Thanks for the description of the background to your actions.Your militancy and consciousness are welcome and needed. And clearly you have touched a nerve — and what was (seemingly) a comment on some some backward university politics is being understood as something significant.
Can you fill us in on the larger background of this?
My impression is that (unfortunately) the line struggles when down insuch a way in Australia that the “Maoists” there gathered around Aussi patriotism (strange as that is to the intensely anti-patriotic Maoists of the U.S.!)
In New zealand too there has been an intense, historic struggle over whether the country is an imperialist social formation (in its own right) involved in the oppression of other nations, or whether it is primarily some form of colony of Britain and U.S. (i.e. an oppressed country where the fight for “full independence” is somehow an important struggle for communists to take up).
Clearly you are bold in seeing New Zealand operating as a junior partner (not victim) of U.S. and British imperialism. Can you lay bare some of the reasoning? Are there documents and statements on these controversies? Is there an anti-patriotic and anti-imperialist sentiment among sections of the people in New Zealand (among the Maori people for example)? How do you expose the imperialist nature of New Zealand — what are its manifestations?
Nick Kelly said
The true reasons for this action by the Workers Party are much more cynical, and can be viewed below:
http://nickkellyandtheworkersparty.blogspot.com/
Ian Anderson said
I’m sure someone more qualified will pipe up, but here’s a contribution from the cameraman:
“In New zealand too there has been an intense, historic struggle over whether the country is an imperialist social formation (in its own right) involved in the oppression of other nations, or whether it is primarily some form of colony of Britain and U.S. (i.e. an oppressed country where the fight for “full independence” is somehow an important struggle for communists to take up).”
For some time after transition from Empire to Commonwealth, we were economically dependant on Britain. Whether you call us a ‘junior imperialist nation’ or ‘neo-colony’ during that time is relative, as we participated in both British and US imperialism, and plundered the resources of the Pacific.
However, we’re now economically independent of Britain, and militarily take the UN’s lead rather than the US. In Iraq the only troops we sent were UN-approved, as with our involvement in East Timor. We’re nuclear-free due to a series of Maritime strikes, a policy Labour eventually took credit for.
It’s also worth looking at our relationship to Australia. In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand are partners; we both use short-term visas to exploit Pacific labour, we both have troops deployed in East Timor, both have police backing the monarchy in Tonga, and we ganged up to place pressure on other Pacific nations in isolating Bainimarama. Australian corporations have a strong role in our economy, but looking at the region as a whole, the Pacific Islands are peripheral nations, while capital accumulates in Australia & NZ.
The republican movement is fairly bourgeois. One of the Green slogans opposing our involvement in the War on Terror was ‘our troops and our police,’ although clearly those forces serve the bourgeois government, not the proletarian majority. There was a bit of nationalist sentiment whipped up over our FTA with China, involving cries of a ‘race to the bottom.’
“Is there an anti-patriotic and anti-imperialist sentiment among sections of the people in New Zealand (among the Maori people for example)?”
Tuhoe, who didn’t sign the Treaty and see it as an imperialist document, also oppose Maori participation in Pakeha wars.