1981 Springbok Tour

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The 1981 Springbok Tour (still known by many in New Zealand as The Tour) was a controversial tour of New Zealand by the South African Springbok rugby team. South Africa's policy of racial apartheid had made the nation an international pariah, and other countries were strongly discouraged from having sporting contacts with it. However, rugby union was (and is) an extremely popular sport in New Zealand, and the Springboks were considered to be New Zealand's most formidable opponents. There was therefore major division in New Zealand as to whether sport or politics should take priority and if the Springboks should be allowed to tour.

The decision to allow the Tour was made be the New Zealand Rugby Football Union, but could have been negated by Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, who chose to allow the Tour to go ahead. Major protests ensued, aiming to make clear many New Zealanders' opposition to apartheid and, if possible, to stop the matches taking place. This was successful in one case, but this also had the effect of creating a 'law and order issue'. For many people the issue was now one of whether a group of protesters would be allowed to prevent a lawful activity taking place. Although the protests were some of the most violent in New Zealand's history, no deaths resulted. After the Tour, no official sporting contact took place between New Zealand and South Africa until the early 1990s, when apartheid had been repealed.

[edit] Background

A poster advertising a meeting of the Citizens' All Black Tour Association to protest racially selected All Blacks teams touring South Africa.

The Springboks and New Zealand's national rugby team, the All Blacks, have a long tradition of intense and friendly sporting rivalry.^[1] From the 1920s to the 1960s, the South African apartheid policies had an impact on team selection for the All Blacks: the selectors passed over Māori players for some All Black tours to South Africa.^[2] Opposition to sending race based teams to South Africa grew throughout the 1950s and 60s. Prior to the All Blacks' tour of South Africa in 1960, 150,000 New Zealanders signed a petition supporting a policy of "No Maoris, No Tour".^[2] The tour occurred however, and in 1969 Halt All Racist Tours (HART) was formed.^[3] During the 1970s public protests and political pressure forced on the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) the choice of either fielding a team not selected by race, or not touring the Republic.^[2] However, South African rugby authorities continued to select Springbok players by race.^[1] As a result, the Norman Kirk Labour Government prevented the Springboks from touring during 1973.^[3] In response, the NZRU protested about the involvement of "politics in sport".^{[citation needed]}

Although the New Zealand Government can prevent non-nationals from entering the country (allowing the government to stop tours by opposing teams), it does not limit the freedom of New Zealanders to leave the country. For example, after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the government did not force New Zealand Olympians to boycott the Moscow Olympics.

In 1976 the All Blacks toured South Africa, with the blessing of the then newly-elected New Zealand Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon.^[4] Twenty-five African nations protested against this by boycotting the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.^[5] In their view the All Black tour gave tacit support to the apartheid regime in South Africa.^{[citation needed]} The All Blacks again failed to win a series in South Africa (they would not do so until 1996, after the fall of apartheid). The 1976 Tour contributed to the Gleneagles Agreement being adopted by the Commonwealth Heads of State in 1977.^[6]

[edit] The Tour

By the early 1980s the pressure from other African countries as well as from protest groups in New Zealand, such as Halt All Racist Tours (HART), reached a head when the New Zealand Rugby Union proposed a Springbok tour for 1981. This became a topic of political contention due to the issue of the sports boycott by the other African nations. Activists asked New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon to cancel the tour, but he permitted the South African team to come to New Zealand and they arrived on 19 July 1981. Since 1977 Muldoon's government had been a party to the Gleneagles Agreement, in which the countries of the Commonwealth accepted that it was:

"the urgent duty of each of their Governments vigorously to combat the evil of apartheid by withholding any form of support for, and by taking every practical step to discourage contact or competition by their nationals with sporting organisations, teams or sportsmen from South Africa or from any other country where sports are organised on the basis of race, colour or ethnic origin."

Despite this, Muldoon argued that New Zealand was a free and democratic country, and that "politics should stay out of sport."

Some rugby supporters echoed the separation of politics and sport. Others argued that if the tour were cancelled, there would be no reporting of the widespread criticism against apartheid in New Zealand in the controlled South African media. Muldoon's critics, on the other hand, felt that he allowed the tour to go ahead in order for his National Party to secure the votes of rural and provincial conservatives in the general election later in the year.

The ensuing public protests polarised the New Zealand population as no other issue has in the nation's history. While rugby fans filled the football grounds, sizeable protest crowds (including other rugby fans) filled the surrounding streets, and on one occasion succeeded in invading the pitch and stopping the game.

A protester confronts police during the Tour.

To begin with the anti-tour movement committed themselves, by and large, to a programme of non-violent civil disobedience, demonstration, and direct action. In anticipation of this and as protection for the touring Springboks, the police created two special riot squads, the Red and Blue Squads. These police were, controversially, the first in New Zealand to be issued with visored riot helmets and with what was then referred to as the long baton (more commonly the side-handled baton or tonfa). After early disruptions, police began to require that all spectators assemble in sports grounds at least an hour before kickoff

At Gisborne, protesters managed to break through a fence, but quick action by rugby spectators and ground security prevented the game being disrupted.

At Lancaster Park, Christchurch, some protesters managed to break through a security cordon and a number managed to invade the pitch. They were quickly removed and forcibly ejected from the stadium by security staff and spectators. However, a large, well co-ordinated street demonstration managed to occupy the streets immediately outside the ground and confront the riot police. Rugby spectators were kept in the ground until the protestors dispersed.

At Rugby Park, Hamilton (the site of today's Waikato Stadium), about 350 protesters invaded the pitch after pulling down a fence. The police arrested about 50 of them over a period of an hour, but were concerned that they could not control the rugby crowd. Reports that a light plane piloted by a protester was approaching the stadium were the last straw, and police cancelled the match. The protesters were ushered from the ground, with enraged rugby spectators lashing out at them. The aftermath of this game, followed by the bloody dispersal of a sit-down protest in Wellington's Molesworth Street in the following week, in which police batoned bare-headed, sitting protesters, led to the radicalization of the protest movement as a whole. A small minority of the protesters saw the opportunity to force a confrontation with authority, and came to protests wearing motorcycle helmets, with home-made shields and a variety of weapons. Others adopted defensive armour against police batons.

The authorities too were forced to make concessions to the protest movement, strengthening security at public facilities after protesters disrupted telecommunications services by damaging a waveguide on a telecommunications microwave station, disrupting telephone and data services, though TV transmissions continued as they were carried by another waveguide on the tower. Army engineers were also deployed, and the remaining grounds were surrounded with razor wire and shipping container barricades to decrease the chances of another pitch invasion.

Test Programme for the third Springboks' Test at Eden Park in Auckland

During the final test match at Eden Park, Auckland, a low-flying light plane disrupted the final game of the tour by dropping flour-bombs on the pitch. The scenes that appeared on television made the country look on the brink of civil war as they replayed running battles between helmet-clad protesters, the police and enraged rugby fans. "Patches" of criminal gangs, such as traditional rivals Black Power and the Mongrel Mob, were also evident (interestingly enough, the Mongrel Mob were Muldoon supporters). Footage was also shown of police beating unarmed clowns with batons. The "clown incident" soured attitudes of many towards the police.

There were, in fact, many peaceful protests around the country, but sporadic violence attracted the press and led to the impression of a nation at war with itself. The police, on the other hand, prevented the release of 'provocative' images (such as an officer on fire after being hit by a molotov cocktail). These images were, however, shown to policemen to 'motivate' them before the Auckland test. Perhaps because of this, the tour remained a bizarrely civilised breakdown of order. Neither side used firearms or tear gas. There were no deaths, and no serious injuries. Some of the more violent policemen were quietly disciplined. Protesters who might, in another country, have faced charges of attempted murder or treason, were charged and convicted of relatively minor and unimportant disorder offences — or acquitted after defence by pro bono lawyers. Leaders of both sides went on to fill important roles in public life.

Some of the protest had the dual purpose of linking alleged racial discrimination against Māori in New Zealand to apartheid in South Africa. Many of the protesters, particularly Māori, were frustrated by the image of New Zealand as being a paradise for racial unity. Thus it was seen as being useful by many opponents of what they saw as racism in New Zealand in the early 1980s to use the protests against South Africa as a vehicle for wider social action.

[edit] The Rugby

[edit] Aftermath

Although the Muldoon government was re-elected in the 1981 election its majority was reduced from four seats to just one and, as in 1978, Muldoon's National Party received fewer votes than the opposition Labour Party. Whether this decline in popularity was a consequence of Muldoon's support of the tour or part of a larger trend away from his government's paternalistic conservatism is still a matter for debate.

The NZRFU constitution contained much high-minded wording about promoting the image of rugby and New Zealand, and generally being a benefit to society. In 1985 the NZRFU proposed an All Black tour of South Africa. Two lawyers sued the NZRFU, claiming such a tour would breach the NZRFU's constitution, which it clearly did. The High Court duly stopped the All Black tour. The 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand could have been stopped by the courts: it is interesting that protest groups did not attempt such a remedy within the "system" in 1981. The All Blacks did not tour South Africa until after the fall of the apartheid régime (1990 - 1994), although after the official 1985 tour was cancelled an unofficial tour did take place in 1986 by a team including some but not the majority of All Blacks players. These were known outside South Africa as the Cavaliers, but advertised inside the Republic as the All Blacks.

For the first time in history, rugby in New Zealand had become a source of embarrassment rather than pride. The sport fell into a six-year decline, arrested only by the country's victory in the first Rugby World Cup, in 1987.^[8]

Public respect for the police also took a battering as a result of The Tour, with protesters filing a number of high-profile brutality complaints against officers. Many felt that the authorities had set up the Red and Blue Squads for the purpose of suppressing dissent, as opposed to by-the-book law enforcement.

For the New Zealand protest movement the 1970s only truly arrived in the early 1980s - protests against the New Zealand Army's involvement in the Vietnam war had been somewhat muted. Together with the Bastion Point occupation and ANZUS, the tour marked the high water mark of protest success. The decline of the trade union movement, unemployment and increases in student work load would combine to see the movement wither by the early 1990s. Yet without an obvious rite of passage such as compulsory military training, participation in the tour protest is fondly remembered in a bizarrely similar way for many who came of age in the 1980s.

[edit] The Tour in New Zealand Culture

• Prominent artist Ralph Hotere painted a Black Union Jack series of paintings in protest of the tour.
• Merata Mita's documentary film Patu! tells the tale of the tour from a left-wing perspective.
• John Broughton wrote a stage play, 1981 examining the way The Tour divided a family.
• RIOT 111 Music of the time.
• Ross Meurant, commander of the police "Red Squad", published Red Squad Story in 1982, giving a defensive conservative view.
• In 1984 Geoff Chapple published The Tour, a book chronicling the events from the protesters' perspective.
• In 1999 Glenn Wood's biography "Cop Out" covered the tour from the perspective of a frontline policeman.

• New Zealand leftist Tom Newnham's book By Batons And Barbed Wire is one of the largest collections of photos and general information of the protest movement during the tour itself.

[edit] See also

• 1971 Springbok tour
• All Blacks
• History of South Africa in the apartheid era
• Robert Muldoon

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] Bibliography

• Chapple, Geoff (1984). 1981: The Tour. Wellington: A H & A W Reed. ISBN 0-589-01534-6. 

[edit] External links

• Online account
• A time line and references
• The 1981 Springbok Tour
• The 1981 Springbok Tour, including history, images and video (NZHistory)