Collecting Information
Blue = FQ1
Green = FQ2
Red = FQ3
Orange = FQ4
Information from: Storm out of Africa! The 1981 Springbok Tour of New Zealand
One year earlier, in April 1980, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union had come up with the idea of inviting the Springboks, the South African rugby team, to tour the country.
In April, 1980, when the tour was being formulated, the Union received a letter from the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Brian Talboys, who wrote that sporting ties with South Africa gave the appearance, however unwarranted, of confirming the apartheid policies of the South African government. Four months later, Mr Talboys told Parliament that the country would be judged in the international arena by the decisions of its sports bodies. Their actions might affect not only their own activities but the harmonious development on Commonwealth sport.
Before sitting down to applause from both sides of the House, Mr Talboys declared: “The New Zealand Rugby Union is well aware of the Government’s views. The Government must now rely on the Rugby Union Council’s good judgement and sense of responsibility when reaching a decision on the tour.”
It was obvious from the reception Mr Talboys received that the Opposition party were in accord with his views. Only the day before, Opposition leader Bill Rowling sent his own pointed letter to the Rugby Union in which he stated: “With international feeling running at its present level, and our own people sharply divided, I believe that an invitation at this stage would be a blow to New Zealand’s integrity abroad and a source of division and bitterness at home.”
New Zealand had already has its share of that over an earlier Springbok invitation in 1973.
Then, the invitation had eventually been withdrawn by Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk. But his decision had been slow in owing even though there was the threat that African countries would boycott the Commonwealth Games scheduled for the following year in his home city of Christchurch. The police had already cancelled all leave and had bought a fleet of buses to transport men around the country to deal with any trouble.
Now under great pressure, the Prime Minister had repeated to the Rugby Union that the Springbok visit would bring “the greatest eruption of violence this country has ever known.” But the Union took no notice. The tour was still on.
Only a year earlier, in 1972, while the Nationals were still in power, the Deputy Prime Minister was already making his feelings known about a possible Springbok tour. His name: Robert Muldoon.
And he told the women’s section of the Raglan National Party at that time:
“If the Springbok team comes here it will receive a reception from a (National) Government just as the Communist Chinese table tennis team did and the netballers from Taiwan.”
After his election as Prime Minister in 1975, Mr Muldoon campaigned for decisions on international sporting contacts to be made by sporting bodies and not by the Government. His idea own a great deal of support and cleared the way for a New Zealand rugby team to tour South Africa in 1976.
That tour was also to be the pacesetter for the now often-quoted Gleneagles Agreement, of which Mr Muldoon himself was one of the authors. It was formulated by Commonwealth heads of government and was officially known as the Commonwealth Statement on Apartheid in Sport, but took its popular title from the Scottish golfing resort of Gleneagles where it was passed by five Commonwealth heads. The agreement normally and ethically obliged Commonwealth governments to “take every practical step to discourage” sports contact with South Africa. Each government, the statement recognised, had to keep to the agreement in terms of its own laws and customs.
Mr Muldoon’s interpretation was simple. New Zealand would be keeping to the agreement by voicing its opposition to sporting contact with South Africa. At the same time the Government would not refuse visas to South Africans coming to New Zealand for sporting purposes.
And so, when the New Zealand Rugby Union decided to invite the Springboks to tour in 1981, Mr Muldoon did not come down heavily and say: “This tour will not proceed”. The closest he came was in his statement: “I don’t want them to come”.
But it was soon obvious that criticism and penalties were not to be confined just to the sportsmen. Already the Commonwealth was stamping its foot and looking angrily towards the New Zealand Government. If the 1981 Springbok tour was allowed, there would be deep divisions within that group of nations, and New Zealand would suffer directly. Not only that, but New Zealand also ran the risk of jeopardising its relationships with Australia.
The equation was simple. If the Springboks came to New Zealand, the black nations would want nothing more to do with that country; and if New Zealand sent a sports team to the Commonwealth Games in Australia in 1982 the black Africans would boycott the event. Australia’s alternative would be to withdraw New Zealand’s invitation to the Games.
Mr Les Martin, president of the 1982 Brisbane Games, said in Melbourne that he was “appalled” by the N.Z.R.U’s invitation to the Springboks. He later told the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand Commonwealth Games Association that they had to make sure they divorced themselves from the tour.
“Unless that happens, whether or not the tour goes ahead, the New Zealand association will be seen in a very poor light,” said Mr Martin. On the face of it, he considered, the Rugby Union had adopted a “selfish attitude”.
The Australian Government also made its feelings known to the New Zealanders by objecting strongly to the proposed tour.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said that she, too, was deeply worried about the growing rifts which the Springbok tour had opened in the Commonwealth and appealed to Mr Muldoon to step in.
Faced with sporting and diplomatic isolation, the New Zealand Government once more suggested to its errant rugby administrators that the tour be called off. However, the Government was adamant it would not block the visit by withholding visas form the South Africans.
The pressure mounted. If the tour was allowed to continue, the Commonwealth finance ministers’ conference, scheduled for Auckland as a forerunner to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Melbourne in September, 1981, would be removed to another country. There was a possibility of an embargo on New Zealand’s lamb trade with Arab nations. There was also pressure within the country to stop the tour. More than 50,000 protesters marched in cities and towns throughout New Zealand on May 1, and then the threats began. Attempts would be made, the government and the police were warned, to halt the South Africans’ visit.
But Mr Muldoon was adamant. The rights of individuals had to be protected. New Zealand unequivocally supported the Gleneagles Agreement and abhorred apartheid. On the issue of human rights, his country had a record second to none. However, the Gleneagles Agreement recognised the rights of countries to act in accordance with their own laws and New Zealand had a century of freedom for New Zealand sports bodies to associate lawfully wherever they chose.
There was another reason why Mr Muldoon was not prepared to listen to the cries to stop the tour. 1981 was election year and to cancel the tour would mean upsetting large numbers of rugby enthusiasts in areas where National Party members were just clinging to their seats. In November he faced going to an already angry and divided electorate with a majority as fragile as an eggshell. A 8-seat majority would have been reasonable in a 92-seat house, but the emergence of the Social Credit League as a third Parliamentary party altered the situation, particularly as that party now had two seats in Parliament at expense of the Nationals.
Urban seats, where most of the opposition to the tour was centred, were regarded as equal chances for incumbents of both National and Labour parties. In rural areas on the eastern side of the North Island and in the more isolated districts on the South Island, National Party members were narrowly ahead. These country areas were the bastions os support for the rugby tour. Some National Party members, worried that government intervention might deprive fans - and potential voters - of seeing their local team play the mighty Springboks, expressed support for the tour.
On July 14, four days before the Springboks were due to arrive in New Zealand, Mr Muldoon was presented with an ultimatum by the Commonwealth. Stop the tour within a week or see the Commonwealth finance ministers’ conference transferred from Auckland to Nassau, in the Bahamas. The Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, supported the ultimatum.
Gisborne, more than 500 kilometres form both Auckland and Wellington, seemed an odd part of the country to begin an important series of international rugby matches. Certainly from an overseas visitor’s point of view it looked much like any other small city, except, perhaps, for the two large replicas of Captain Cook’s ship the Endeavor balanced atop poles in the main street. But the venue had been wisely chosen. The distance would deter some of the anti-tour individuals from the large urban centres.
Nevertheless, on the day of the game come 400 demonstrators marched to the rugby park via the nearby golf course, to the horror of one man who had one of the best drives of his life, only to watch the ball disappear among the group of chanters, never to be seen again. Inside the ground the crowd of 15,000 were entertained by the antics of a man wearing a large papier-mâché kiwi head, but he quickly scuttled off the pitch when a roar form the terraces signified the appearance of Poverty Bay and the Springboks. Almost immediately two men broke away from the spectators and ran onto the pitch where they implored the Springboks to give it all away and go home. Police, wondering whether they were team officials, took no action for a full two minutes before two plain-clothed officers raced onto the ground in rugby boots and led the protestors away.
Outside, it was all beginning to happen. Three hundred shouting demonstrators surged forward on the golf course, clambered up a steep rise and managed to rip down a portion of the boundary fence. A fierce battle of fists and feet ensued in the mud and lashing rain. Clods of earth were hurled at the rugby spectators who retaliated with beer cans. In the middle of it all were the police who fought desperately to stop the demonstrators “taking” the hill, beyond which lay the huge gap in the ripped down fence.
In Auckland, six demonstrators were arrested after several hundred broke into the rugby ground at Eden Park and occupied the centre of the pitch. Wellington, too, had its troubles, when 24 demonstrators broke into the offices of Prime Minister Muldoon’s National Party and occupied the building for two and a half hours, during which time they threw documents out the windows.
Eight thousand marched through the streets of Christchurch where eggs were thrown at police and eight people chained themselves to the furniture in National Party headquarters. In Dunedin, dozens took part in an anti-apartheid rally.
On May 1, 1981, more than 80,000 people marched through the streets of Wellington, the biggest demonstration since the anti-Vietnam War protests of the early 1970’s, demanding a cancellation of the proposed Springbok tour. In Auckland the demonstration was even bigger, some 15,000 voicing their proposition to the invitation. they had marched at the request of the anti-apartheid group Halt All Racist Tours, better known as HART, now 12 years old and dedicated to the cause of cutting off all ties with South Africa. Overseas, the United Nations International Conference on Sanctions Against South Africa called upon New Zealand to deny visas to the Springboks in the Union insisted on going ahead. And then there was that question of the finance ministers’ conference again.
Mr Muldoon referred to the Commonwealth heads because they had already made threats that 22 African countries would boycott the Games in Brisbane in 1982 of the Springboks toured New Zealand.
One game had been played. The nest fixture was at Hamilton. The demonstrators there, he had been warned, would be more severe. But again, these were threats. And he was a rugby man and he had principals. The tour would proceed.
The evening before the game, anti-tour groups gathered in the city square at Hamilton for a candle-light vigil, where they listened to the speeches and sang songs of freedom.
At 1pm on Saturday, July 25, some 2000 demonstrators concluded a city rally and formed themselves into lines to march towards Rugby park. Meanwhile, at Taupo, 153 kilometres away and at almost the same time, Pat McQuarrie was ready to make his move. He turned up for his pre-arranged scenic flight three-quarters of an hour early, climbed aboard a Cessna 172 with a pilot and took off.
At 1:30pm Pat McQuarrie (who flew Spitfires in WW2) walked into the Taupo airport office of Lakeland Aviation Ltd. He asked to use a toilet and was given directions. A few minutes late staff heard the familiar chug of a Cessna engine. Looking from the airport building, they saw a 172 heading for the runway and picking up power. McQuarrie was at the controls and, as company pilot Graeme Stratton was to put it later, ”once he has it going there was no way anyone could have stopped it”.Mr Stratton was landing at the airport in a Cessna 185 as McQuarrie sped towards the runway. He dropped off the three hunters he was carrying as passengers, quickly found out what had happened, and decided to chase the the smaller plane. McQuarrie headed northwest in the direction of Hamilton, but some 10 kilometres out of Taupo he began to circle over the Wairakei area, and there he was to stay for the next three quarters of an hour.
Then the pilot, whom Mr Stratton realised was the man police had warned aircraft owners to be wary of, set off towards Hamilton where the protesters were massed in the centre of the pitch.
At Hamilton, the crocodile of chanting and whistle-blowing protestors marched down Mill Street and swung into Tristram Street, running along the northeast perimeter of the ground. Waving placards, shouting out the catch cries “Amand-la, Amandla Ngaweto” and “Remem-ber, Remem-ber So-weto”, the long snaking body moved slowly and deliberately forwards. (The African chant meant “Power, Power to the People”; while Soweto was a reference to the Johannesburg dormitory town where, in June, 1976, 78 blacks died after police fired into crowds dying riots that followed student protests against enforced teaching of Afrikaans.)
Minutes later some 30 police men standing on the bank inside the ground watched in passive amazement as the front row of demonstrators, many wearing crash helmets, suddenly turned and headed straight for the 2.5-metre-high wire fence. Quite unexpectedly, wire-cutters were produced and after a few snips and some hefty tugs, the fence was down, leaving a 5-metre gap. The handful of police rallied to stop the invasion, but it was a hopeless task. A brief and violent clash occurred between the opposing fronts before 350 protestors formed a human battering ram and charged the thin line of police. the smashed through the terraces of spectators, bowling over anyone in their way. Two young policemen fell to the ground in the force of the rush. The spear head of demonstrators, enveloped by pink smoke form bombs tossed by their supporters behind, swarmed onto the pitch. Ground officials joined police in a scramble to douse the bombs in buckets of water while others of the force, in track suits and rugby boots, showed their prowess as rugby players by tackling some of the invaders.
But the army of crash-helmeted demonstrators was too big to put down. The anti-tour group, numbering about 200, linked arms in the middle of the ground, a large wooden cross rising from their midst, the smell of stink bombs and fluorescent smoke swirling around them.
The charge onto the pitch had begun at 1.50pm.
More police in riot gear ran onto the field so that a total of 150 uniformed men now surrounded the group in the centre. The police slowly closed in. But for the crowd of rugby fans they just weren’t moving fast enough…..the lines of riot police closed in, warily encircling those on the pitch. That was how the scene was being played out on the field, but outside in the street some 2000 demonstrators were causing other problems for police. Several attempts were made to take advantage of the town fence and break through, but police and rugby fans managed to hold the invaders at bay. Frustrated, the “restless monster” moved back down Tristram Street looking for a new pace to cut through the fence. Two men managed to get into one of the tiny ticket kiosks where they started a fire, but that was quickly extinguished. Others climbed into the kiosk but they were ordered off by police and, amazingly, they obeyed. Meanwhile the crocodile of shouting demonstrators had found another portion of fencing to destroy, about 100 metres along from the first breach.
On the field it was stalemate but now Commissioner Bob Walton, dressed in civvies, had walked onto the playing area and begun negotiations with the group, asking them to move off. if the did not shift, he warned, his men would have to start moving in and arresting. But the demonstrators geld their ground, saying they would only go if the game was called off. From the officials’ control box, a loudspeaker announcement asked rugby spectators to remain calm. The game would resume shortly.
After further requests, Commissioner Walton decided that arrests were the only alternative. he could use force, he considered, but the use of force exposed both sides to danger. A sudden move by his men might provoke violence by the more extreme members of the group and somebody might be seriously hurt. No, force was not the way to deal with this situation. He would use a “hit-and-run” technique, seeing in two or three of his men at a time to pull out one demonstrator. It would take a while. But it was the only solution. he gave the order to his men. Start the arrests.
An elderly woman was hustled, resisting, from the field. And as two policemen led an ageing priest out, the crowd cursed and spat upon him.
In the air, pilot Graeme Stratton, still tailing Pat McQuarrie, radioed the position of the stolen plane. The information was passed on to Bob Walton. Suddenly, the police chief was faced with an enormous responsibility. Here were 2000 people standing in the middle of a rugby field dictating the enjoyment of 20,000 in a tense situation that was stretching the restraint of his highly-trained officers to the limit. And above, somewhere, was a man in a stolen plane who may or may not be about to fly it, kamikaze-style, into the grandstand. To announce to the crowd that they should clear the ground quickly because of the plane threat would undoubtedly cause panic. People would be trampled. Obviously he had no alternative but to request cancellation of the game and empty the park as speedily and calmly as possible. He could only hope that disaster did not occur, for at that moment he had no idea where the stolen plane was.
Pat McQuarrie had found his bearings and was headed towards Hamilton, still followed by Graeme Stratton. As Stratton said later, “I kept him in sight, though not close enough to get him excited. I kept about half a mile behind and slightly above his plane.”
But Strattoon was running out of fuel. He could not stay with McQuarrie any longer. He flew onto Hamilton airport and left a Ministry of Transport civil aviation division aircraft and a Lama helicopter to take the pursuit.
On the ground, the demonstrators who has torn down a second part of the fence ran across waste ground on the eastern side of the rugby park and, reaching a barricade of cattle trucks, began pounding the sides of the vehicles, the sound ironically like the rhythm of Zulu drums. Using vehicles as a stop-gap had been a wise tactic - they were difficult to climb and those who tried scrambling underneath found themselves facing the feet of the now very angry rugby crowd. Frustrated, the protesters sought a way past the barrier and hit on the idea of using an unattached trailer as a bettering ram. Two dozen got behind the motor less vehicle and pouched it 20 yards, building up enough speed to lift one of the trucks on two of its wheels as the trailer smashed into it. Then they pulled the trailer back and repeated the action.
Again and again the trailer rammed the truck, but now rugby fans ran up and pushed the vehicle back in position under a hail of eggs. It was a dangerous game to play on both sides. Anyone who fell in front of that trailer would have been crushed: likewise, the force of the ramming threatened to tip the truck onto the rugby people.
In the centre of the pitch, some of the protesters buried in the group began to faint. They were helped by policemen to the side of the field where they received attention from ambulance men. Others were being systematically carted off as the police continued their arrests, leading their catches through a channel in the crowd at the northwestern end.
Pat McQuarrie listened to a transistor radio as he flew around the Hamilton-Morrinsville district. A full live coverage over the air gave him every detail of what was going on below. Obviously, with so many on the pitch, the match would be aborted. Then he saw the helicopter and the plane that had been sent from Hamilton to find him. What happened next was described by 46-year-old Morrinsville race track attendant Lindsay Vallendar:
“I was siting on my tractor, pulling a wire mesh around the track to smooth it out, when I heard a plane flying low. I looked up and saw this plane coming straight for me, followed by another plane. I thought ‘Blimey, I’d better get out of the way of that fellow’. I ran over to one side of the track. the first plane, which had blue trimmings, lightly touched the grass area in the centre of the track with its engine spluttering. It took off again right away and for a moment I thought it wasn’t going to make it. but he managed to get it up and away it went, followed by the second plane. It circled and then came down again.
“This time it hit the grass quite hard, bounced about five feet in the air, came down again and stopped. The second plane came in right behind it. The pilot of the first plane climbed out, a short, stocky bloke he was, with greyish hair. He stood there for a moment, wearing a sweater or something similar he was, and a policeman came running up to him from the second plane. At the same time a helicopter landed and then a third plane came in. They appeared to put handcuffs on the man and then waited about for a while for a police car and then they took him away.”
At the rugby ground, Mr Frank O’Connor, chairman of the Waikato Rugby Union, conferred with Commissioner Walton and the other senior officers. He was told about the threat of the plane and that it was imperative the game be called off. mr O’Connor was unhappy but realised the urgency of the situation. For a while the brief conference was being held, Pat McQuarrie was still in the air.
It was 3.10 pm when Mr O’Connor announced over the loudspeaker: “Sorry to have to make this announcement, but the game is officially cancelled. We ask that you leave immediately.”
Murmurs of disbelief spread through the stands. Unaware of the plane danger, the crowd though police had given in to a group of 200 standing passively in the centre of a rugby field in the shadow of a cross. While most of the spectators expressed verbal anger, several hundred ran from the terraces looking for those responsible for ruining their afternoon.
“Come on rugby fans,” shouted one man, ducking under a barricade of trucks and charging into the crowd of protestors who had swarmed through the second hole in the fence, “come on, help me smash the bastards.” He was joined by several others who rammed fists and feet into any the caught. A middle-aged man fell crying to the ground after a vicious blow to the nose. Knuckles smacked against heads. It seems not to matter whether their targets were men or women. Punches rained. Bleeding about the face, protestors desperately ran around trying to escape. But many were trapped, for the way back to the gap in the fence was blocked by rugby people. A Maori protester called to a Maori rugby fan just before he was attacked: “You dog. What are you doing in here? You're black, like me, like your brothers and sisters in Africa. Don't you care what happens to them over there?”
Having heard the match was off, the demonstrators agreed to leave, formed themselves into short groups of 30 or 40 and, heads down, hands holding the person in front, moved towards the western corner. Wine bottles and cans were hurled from the crowd into the thick of the now terrified groups of protesters. Some lingered, hoping, it seemed, for arrest - the police had brought two paddy-wagons onto the field and arrest meant you got a ride away from all this.
Across from the rugby ground, the demonstration groups had parked a white van displaying a a red cross which was hanging in the back window crayoned on a piece of card: their first aid post. It was singled out for attack. Although a youth was lying along the front seat with blood streaming from his nose, and a young woman lay on a nearby grass verge, a group of about a dozen pro-rugby people, blind with anger, kicked the van and started rocking it violently.
Pockets of violence broke out in the city streets. In Tristram Street a car carrying a woman with blood running down her face was attacked by a group of young rugby supporters. In the main shopping area a young man with fair, curly hair lay at the kerbside, unconscious, blood oozing from his nose. A girl bent over him while a policeman took up a guard position.
“I had this wonderful impression of New Zealanders…the ones I’ve met over here are tall, innocent people; good honest types that you'd expect to come from a gentle land that raises wooly sheep and produces lovely butter. And I turn on the old box and what do I see? Brutal faces, police with raised batons, people in crash helmets giving fascist salutes - it’s ugly, ugly.”
This was a view of New Zealand that surprised the world; New Zealanders, too. Wasn’t this a land of forthright, down-to-earth, homely and dependable people? Of tea rooms, friendship groups, community halls and Plunket centres?
The country was experiencing all kinds of repercussions form having invited the South Africans to tour. For example, there was the cancellation of the New Zealand heats of the world disco dancing championships after an Australian entertainment agency withdrew its sponsorship. Mr Dalvanius Prime, competition organiser, said that as the agency handled African acts it was felt the holding of the heats at the same time as the Springboks were touring “would ridicule the championship.”
Unfortunately in many cases, the anti-apartheid issue had melted into a series of political rows. For outwardly it seemed that the majority of those demonstrating against the tour were of left-wing inclinations. Some placards displayed at Auckland, Gisborne and Hamilton blatantly admitted that Communist groups supported the anti-tour movement. And it was the clashed between police and demonstrators that were beginning to worry Labour MPs. They felt that confrontation under any left wing banner could result in greater support for the Muldoon Government. The actions of some of the demonstrators were helping the undecided voter come to a clear conclusion - that he had no wish to be associated with any party that the mob, the rabble, the trouble makers, call them what you will, were linked with.
The events in Hamilton made an impact around the world. South Africa was astonished and in London Mr Nicholas Winterton, a Conservative MP, told the House of Commons:
“We have seen some disgraceful scenes in New Zealand where a handful of protesters were allowed to rip down fences around a rugby ground to prevent 20,000 rugby supporters and enthusiasts from watching a game of rugby football. It is appalling that the police did not take action. There are occasions when I an tempted to say that we should let police turn a blind eye and allow the supporters of rugby to get these people - these trendy, long-haired layabouts and louts, these trendy extraordinary Marxist-Christian clerics who seem to encourage the breakdown of society as we know it for reasons known only to themselves. The scrapping of the Gleneagles agreement will speed up the total integration of sport in South Africa, and the more that the South Africans can travel throughout the world, playing their games, the sooner they will bring changes to their country. Those are the changes that many of us want to see.”
Website information:
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/video/game-cancelled-in-hamilton
Date accessed: 24th September 2014
In the tour opener at Gisborne, anti-tour protesters had managed to break through a perimeter fence but were prevented from occupying the field and disrupting the match.
Three days later, Rugby Park in Hamilton was packed as the Ranfurly Shield holders prepared to take on the Springboks. A total of 535 police officers were present in the city. With disrupting matches seen as a cornerstone of any protest action, the Waikato Rugby Union had taken extra precautions to prevent a possible pitch invasion.
The protest planners had also been busy, buying more than 200 tickets for the game to ensure that protesters could make their presence known from within the ground. As it was a Saturday, more people were able to protest, and around 5000 gathered at Garden Place to march on Rugby Park. Plans had been made to tear down perimeter fencing and flood the pitch with protesters. Shortly before kick-off about 350 protesters invaded the pitch, as one of them remembers.
Ripping down the fence took about 10 seconds – it was very fast, the crowd on the bank pulled away from us and a flood of people went through and onto the ground. We ran under the goalposts into the middle. I remember the priests struggling with a bloody big cross.
Police formed a cordon around this group, which had linked arms to form a solid block in the middle of the pitch. Police arrested about 50 of them over a period of an hour but were becoming increasingly concerned that they could not control the rugby crowd. Skirmishes broke out and objects were hurled at the protesters.
It was terrifying, I don’t know how big the crowd was, but they were clearly furious – bottles and God knows what else were hurled at us, and people kept trying to get onto the pitch. The police looked vulnerable as they spread out around the whole ground.
Reports were also coming in that Pat McQuarrie had stolen a light plane from Taupo and was heading for the stadium. While there was confusion as to his intentions, the police decided that the situation was getting out of hand and cancelled the match for security reasons.
The ground announcement of this decision was greeted with howls of protest and chants of, ‘We want rugby! We want rugby!’ This was also the cue for a number of spectators to attack protesters with fists, boots, cans and bottles. The police eventually ushered the protesters from the ground, with enraged spectators lashing out at them as they ran the gauntlet.
All of this drama was captured live on TV and the images were beamed around the world, including to South Africa, where fans had got up in the early morning to watch the match.
One young policeman found out what it was like to be stoned to death - “At least I have an idea,” said 29-year-old Constable Dennis Rastovich. he had one collar bone fractured, the other dislocated and a fence picket driven into his cheek after he became separated from his Red Squad colleges.
With his arms in slings after the event he said: “My hands were lifeless at my sides. My collar bones were gone. I had been spun around against a fence and had a door smashed edgewise into my back. Then bricks rained on me, tearing my back muscles. that’s when two fellows ran at me and drove a fence picket through my face. It came up under my visor.”
Information from http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/1981-springbok-tour:
For 56 days in July, August and September 1981, New Zealanders were divided against each other in the largest civil disturbance seen since the 1951 waterfront dispute. More than 150,000 people took part in over 200 demonstrations in 28 centres, and 1500 were charged with offences stemming from these protests.
To some observers it might seem inconceivable that the cause of this unrest was the visit to New Zealand of the South African rugby team (the Springboks). Although not a major sport on a global scale, rugby has established itself not only as New Zealand’s number one sport but as a vital component in this country’s national identity. In many ways the playing of rugby took a back seat in 1981, and the sport suffered in the following years as players and supporters came to terms with the fallout from the tour.
Some commentators have described this event as the moment when New Zealand lost its innocence as a country and as being a watershed in our view of ourselves as a country and people.
Despite controversies on the pitch, why should a sporting event be the source of civil unrest? What these statistics and results fail to reveal is that until 1992 the racial policies of South Africa meant that teams were selected on the basis of race.
In South Africa before 1948 the white minority enjoyed a privileged position, reinforced by a number of laws and practices that ensured there was extensive segregation of the races. When Daniel Malan’s Nationalist Party came to power that year, this separation was intensified with a policy known as ‘apartheid’ (‘apartness’ in Afrikaans) that aimed to strictly divide the races.
These policies and attitudes created obvious problems for New Zealand rugby, given the prominence of Māori in the sport. When the 1921 Springboks defeated a New Zealand Māori XV at Napier, a South African journalist described in a cable sent back to South Africa his shock and disappointment at seeing white spectators cheering the Māori team:
BAD ENOUGH HAVING TO PLAY OFFICIALLY DESIGNATED NEW ZEALAND NATIVES, BUT SPECTACLE THOUSANDS EUROPEANS FRANTICALLY CHEERING ON BAND OF COLOURED MEN TO DEFEAT MEMBERS OF OWN RACE WAS TOO MUCH FOR SPRINGBOKS WHO FRANKLY DISGUSTED.
Information from http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/video/game-cancelled-in-hamilton:
In the tour opener at Gisborne, anti-tour protesters had managed to break through a perimeter fence but were prevented from occupying the field and disrupting the match.
Three days later, Rugby Park in Hamilton was packed as the Ranfurly Shield holders prepared to take on the Springboks. A total of 535 police officers were present in the city. With disrupting matches seen as a cornerstone of any protest action, the Waikato Rugby Union had taken extra precautions to prevent a possible pitch invasion.
The protest planners had also been busy, buying more than 200 tickets for the game to ensure that protesters could make their presence known from within the ground. As it was a Saturday, more people were able to protest, and around 5000 gathered at Garden Place to march on Rugby Park. Plans had been made to tear down perimeter fencing and flood the pitch with protesters. Shortly before kick-off about 350 protesters invaded the pitch, as one of them remembers.
Ripping down the fence took about 10 seconds – it was very fast, the crowd on the bank pulled away from us and a flood of people went through and onto the ground. We ran under the goalposts into the middle. I remember the priests struggling with a bloody big cross.
Police formed a cordon around this group, which had linked arms to form a solid block in the middle of the pitch. Police arrested about 50 of them over a period of an hour but were becoming increasingly concerned that they could not control the rugby crowd. Skirmishes broke out and objects were hurled at the protesters.
It was terrifying, I don’t know how big the crowd was, but they were clearly furious – bottles and God knows what else were hurled at us, and people kept trying to get onto the pitch. The police looked vulnerable as they spread out around the whole ground.
Reports were also coming in that Pat McQuarrie had stolen a light plane from Taupo and was heading for the stadium. While there was confusion as to his intentions, the police decided that the situation was getting out of hand and cancelled the match for security reasons.
The ground announcement of this decision was greeted with howls of protest and chants of, ‘We want rugby! We want rugby!’ This was also the cue for a number of spectators to attack protesters with fists, boots, cans and bottles. The police eventually ushered the protesters from the ground, with enraged spectators lashing out at them as they ran the gauntlet.
All of this drama was captured live on TV and the images were beamed around the world, including to South Africa, where fans had got up in the early morning to watch the match.
Green = FQ2
Red = FQ3
Orange = FQ4
Information from: Storm out of Africa! The 1981 Springbok Tour of New Zealand
One year earlier, in April 1980, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union had come up with the idea of inviting the Springboks, the South African rugby team, to tour the country.
In April, 1980, when the tour was being formulated, the Union received a letter from the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Brian Talboys, who wrote that sporting ties with South Africa gave the appearance, however unwarranted, of confirming the apartheid policies of the South African government. Four months later, Mr Talboys told Parliament that the country would be judged in the international arena by the decisions of its sports bodies. Their actions might affect not only their own activities but the harmonious development on Commonwealth sport.
Before sitting down to applause from both sides of the House, Mr Talboys declared: “The New Zealand Rugby Union is well aware of the Government’s views. The Government must now rely on the Rugby Union Council’s good judgement and sense of responsibility when reaching a decision on the tour.”
It was obvious from the reception Mr Talboys received that the Opposition party were in accord with his views. Only the day before, Opposition leader Bill Rowling sent his own pointed letter to the Rugby Union in which he stated: “With international feeling running at its present level, and our own people sharply divided, I believe that an invitation at this stage would be a blow to New Zealand’s integrity abroad and a source of division and bitterness at home.”
New Zealand had already has its share of that over an earlier Springbok invitation in 1973.
Then, the invitation had eventually been withdrawn by Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk. But his decision had been slow in owing even though there was the threat that African countries would boycott the Commonwealth Games scheduled for the following year in his home city of Christchurch. The police had already cancelled all leave and had bought a fleet of buses to transport men around the country to deal with any trouble.
Now under great pressure, the Prime Minister had repeated to the Rugby Union that the Springbok visit would bring “the greatest eruption of violence this country has ever known.” But the Union took no notice. The tour was still on.
Only a year earlier, in 1972, while the Nationals were still in power, the Deputy Prime Minister was already making his feelings known about a possible Springbok tour. His name: Robert Muldoon.
And he told the women’s section of the Raglan National Party at that time:
“If the Springbok team comes here it will receive a reception from a (National) Government just as the Communist Chinese table tennis team did and the netballers from Taiwan.”
After his election as Prime Minister in 1975, Mr Muldoon campaigned for decisions on international sporting contacts to be made by sporting bodies and not by the Government. His idea own a great deal of support and cleared the way for a New Zealand rugby team to tour South Africa in 1976.
That tour was also to be the pacesetter for the now often-quoted Gleneagles Agreement, of which Mr Muldoon himself was one of the authors. It was formulated by Commonwealth heads of government and was officially known as the Commonwealth Statement on Apartheid in Sport, but took its popular title from the Scottish golfing resort of Gleneagles where it was passed by five Commonwealth heads. The agreement normally and ethically obliged Commonwealth governments to “take every practical step to discourage” sports contact with South Africa. Each government, the statement recognised, had to keep to the agreement in terms of its own laws and customs.
Mr Muldoon’s interpretation was simple. New Zealand would be keeping to the agreement by voicing its opposition to sporting contact with South Africa. At the same time the Government would not refuse visas to South Africans coming to New Zealand for sporting purposes.
And so, when the New Zealand Rugby Union decided to invite the Springboks to tour in 1981, Mr Muldoon did not come down heavily and say: “This tour will not proceed”. The closest he came was in his statement: “I don’t want them to come”.
But it was soon obvious that criticism and penalties were not to be confined just to the sportsmen. Already the Commonwealth was stamping its foot and looking angrily towards the New Zealand Government. If the 1981 Springbok tour was allowed, there would be deep divisions within that group of nations, and New Zealand would suffer directly. Not only that, but New Zealand also ran the risk of jeopardising its relationships with Australia.
The equation was simple. If the Springboks came to New Zealand, the black nations would want nothing more to do with that country; and if New Zealand sent a sports team to the Commonwealth Games in Australia in 1982 the black Africans would boycott the event. Australia’s alternative would be to withdraw New Zealand’s invitation to the Games.
Mr Les Martin, president of the 1982 Brisbane Games, said in Melbourne that he was “appalled” by the N.Z.R.U’s invitation to the Springboks. He later told the New Zealand Government and the New Zealand Commonwealth Games Association that they had to make sure they divorced themselves from the tour.
“Unless that happens, whether or not the tour goes ahead, the New Zealand association will be seen in a very poor light,” said Mr Martin. On the face of it, he considered, the Rugby Union had adopted a “selfish attitude”.
The Australian Government also made its feelings known to the New Zealanders by objecting strongly to the proposed tour.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said that she, too, was deeply worried about the growing rifts which the Springbok tour had opened in the Commonwealth and appealed to Mr Muldoon to step in.
Faced with sporting and diplomatic isolation, the New Zealand Government once more suggested to its errant rugby administrators that the tour be called off. However, the Government was adamant it would not block the visit by withholding visas form the South Africans.
The pressure mounted. If the tour was allowed to continue, the Commonwealth finance ministers’ conference, scheduled for Auckland as a forerunner to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Melbourne in September, 1981, would be removed to another country. There was a possibility of an embargo on New Zealand’s lamb trade with Arab nations. There was also pressure within the country to stop the tour. More than 50,000 protesters marched in cities and towns throughout New Zealand on May 1, and then the threats began. Attempts would be made, the government and the police were warned, to halt the South Africans’ visit.
But Mr Muldoon was adamant. The rights of individuals had to be protected. New Zealand unequivocally supported the Gleneagles Agreement and abhorred apartheid. On the issue of human rights, his country had a record second to none. However, the Gleneagles Agreement recognised the rights of countries to act in accordance with their own laws and New Zealand had a century of freedom for New Zealand sports bodies to associate lawfully wherever they chose.
There was another reason why Mr Muldoon was not prepared to listen to the cries to stop the tour. 1981 was election year and to cancel the tour would mean upsetting large numbers of rugby enthusiasts in areas where National Party members were just clinging to their seats. In November he faced going to an already angry and divided electorate with a majority as fragile as an eggshell. A 8-seat majority would have been reasonable in a 92-seat house, but the emergence of the Social Credit League as a third Parliamentary party altered the situation, particularly as that party now had two seats in Parliament at expense of the Nationals.
Urban seats, where most of the opposition to the tour was centred, were regarded as equal chances for incumbents of both National and Labour parties. In rural areas on the eastern side of the North Island and in the more isolated districts on the South Island, National Party members were narrowly ahead. These country areas were the bastions os support for the rugby tour. Some National Party members, worried that government intervention might deprive fans - and potential voters - of seeing their local team play the mighty Springboks, expressed support for the tour.
On July 14, four days before the Springboks were due to arrive in New Zealand, Mr Muldoon was presented with an ultimatum by the Commonwealth. Stop the tour within a week or see the Commonwealth finance ministers’ conference transferred from Auckland to Nassau, in the Bahamas. The Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, supported the ultimatum.
Gisborne, more than 500 kilometres form both Auckland and Wellington, seemed an odd part of the country to begin an important series of international rugby matches. Certainly from an overseas visitor’s point of view it looked much like any other small city, except, perhaps, for the two large replicas of Captain Cook’s ship the Endeavor balanced atop poles in the main street. But the venue had been wisely chosen. The distance would deter some of the anti-tour individuals from the large urban centres.
Nevertheless, on the day of the game come 400 demonstrators marched to the rugby park via the nearby golf course, to the horror of one man who had one of the best drives of his life, only to watch the ball disappear among the group of chanters, never to be seen again. Inside the ground the crowd of 15,000 were entertained by the antics of a man wearing a large papier-mâché kiwi head, but he quickly scuttled off the pitch when a roar form the terraces signified the appearance of Poverty Bay and the Springboks. Almost immediately two men broke away from the spectators and ran onto the pitch where they implored the Springboks to give it all away and go home. Police, wondering whether they were team officials, took no action for a full two minutes before two plain-clothed officers raced onto the ground in rugby boots and led the protestors away.
Outside, it was all beginning to happen. Three hundred shouting demonstrators surged forward on the golf course, clambered up a steep rise and managed to rip down a portion of the boundary fence. A fierce battle of fists and feet ensued in the mud and lashing rain. Clods of earth were hurled at the rugby spectators who retaliated with beer cans. In the middle of it all were the police who fought desperately to stop the demonstrators “taking” the hill, beyond which lay the huge gap in the ripped down fence.
In Auckland, six demonstrators were arrested after several hundred broke into the rugby ground at Eden Park and occupied the centre of the pitch. Wellington, too, had its troubles, when 24 demonstrators broke into the offices of Prime Minister Muldoon’s National Party and occupied the building for two and a half hours, during which time they threw documents out the windows.
Eight thousand marched through the streets of Christchurch where eggs were thrown at police and eight people chained themselves to the furniture in National Party headquarters. In Dunedin, dozens took part in an anti-apartheid rally.
On May 1, 1981, more than 80,000 people marched through the streets of Wellington, the biggest demonstration since the anti-Vietnam War protests of the early 1970’s, demanding a cancellation of the proposed Springbok tour. In Auckland the demonstration was even bigger, some 15,000 voicing their proposition to the invitation. they had marched at the request of the anti-apartheid group Halt All Racist Tours, better known as HART, now 12 years old and dedicated to the cause of cutting off all ties with South Africa. Overseas, the United Nations International Conference on Sanctions Against South Africa called upon New Zealand to deny visas to the Springboks in the Union insisted on going ahead. And then there was that question of the finance ministers’ conference again.
Mr Muldoon referred to the Commonwealth heads because they had already made threats that 22 African countries would boycott the Games in Brisbane in 1982 of the Springboks toured New Zealand.
One game had been played. The nest fixture was at Hamilton. The demonstrators there, he had been warned, would be more severe. But again, these were threats. And he was a rugby man and he had principals. The tour would proceed.
The evening before the game, anti-tour groups gathered in the city square at Hamilton for a candle-light vigil, where they listened to the speeches and sang songs of freedom.
At 1pm on Saturday, July 25, some 2000 demonstrators concluded a city rally and formed themselves into lines to march towards Rugby park. Meanwhile, at Taupo, 153 kilometres away and at almost the same time, Pat McQuarrie was ready to make his move. He turned up for his pre-arranged scenic flight three-quarters of an hour early, climbed aboard a Cessna 172 with a pilot and took off.
At 1:30pm Pat McQuarrie (who flew Spitfires in WW2) walked into the Taupo airport office of Lakeland Aviation Ltd. He asked to use a toilet and was given directions. A few minutes late staff heard the familiar chug of a Cessna engine. Looking from the airport building, they saw a 172 heading for the runway and picking up power. McQuarrie was at the controls and, as company pilot Graeme Stratton was to put it later, ”once he has it going there was no way anyone could have stopped it”.Mr Stratton was landing at the airport in a Cessna 185 as McQuarrie sped towards the runway. He dropped off the three hunters he was carrying as passengers, quickly found out what had happened, and decided to chase the the smaller plane. McQuarrie headed northwest in the direction of Hamilton, but some 10 kilometres out of Taupo he began to circle over the Wairakei area, and there he was to stay for the next three quarters of an hour.
Then the pilot, whom Mr Stratton realised was the man police had warned aircraft owners to be wary of, set off towards Hamilton where the protesters were massed in the centre of the pitch.
At Hamilton, the crocodile of chanting and whistle-blowing protestors marched down Mill Street and swung into Tristram Street, running along the northeast perimeter of the ground. Waving placards, shouting out the catch cries “Amand-la, Amandla Ngaweto” and “Remem-ber, Remem-ber So-weto”, the long snaking body moved slowly and deliberately forwards. (The African chant meant “Power, Power to the People”; while Soweto was a reference to the Johannesburg dormitory town where, in June, 1976, 78 blacks died after police fired into crowds dying riots that followed student protests against enforced teaching of Afrikaans.)
Minutes later some 30 police men standing on the bank inside the ground watched in passive amazement as the front row of demonstrators, many wearing crash helmets, suddenly turned and headed straight for the 2.5-metre-high wire fence. Quite unexpectedly, wire-cutters were produced and after a few snips and some hefty tugs, the fence was down, leaving a 5-metre gap. The handful of police rallied to stop the invasion, but it was a hopeless task. A brief and violent clash occurred between the opposing fronts before 350 protestors formed a human battering ram and charged the thin line of police. the smashed through the terraces of spectators, bowling over anyone in their way. Two young policemen fell to the ground in the force of the rush. The spear head of demonstrators, enveloped by pink smoke form bombs tossed by their supporters behind, swarmed onto the pitch. Ground officials joined police in a scramble to douse the bombs in buckets of water while others of the force, in track suits and rugby boots, showed their prowess as rugby players by tackling some of the invaders.
But the army of crash-helmeted demonstrators was too big to put down. The anti-tour group, numbering about 200, linked arms in the middle of the ground, a large wooden cross rising from their midst, the smell of stink bombs and fluorescent smoke swirling around them.
The charge onto the pitch had begun at 1.50pm.
More police in riot gear ran onto the field so that a total of 150 uniformed men now surrounded the group in the centre. The police slowly closed in. But for the crowd of rugby fans they just weren’t moving fast enough…..the lines of riot police closed in, warily encircling those on the pitch. That was how the scene was being played out on the field, but outside in the street some 2000 demonstrators were causing other problems for police. Several attempts were made to take advantage of the town fence and break through, but police and rugby fans managed to hold the invaders at bay. Frustrated, the “restless monster” moved back down Tristram Street looking for a new pace to cut through the fence. Two men managed to get into one of the tiny ticket kiosks where they started a fire, but that was quickly extinguished. Others climbed into the kiosk but they were ordered off by police and, amazingly, they obeyed. Meanwhile the crocodile of shouting demonstrators had found another portion of fencing to destroy, about 100 metres along from the first breach.
On the field it was stalemate but now Commissioner Bob Walton, dressed in civvies, had walked onto the playing area and begun negotiations with the group, asking them to move off. if the did not shift, he warned, his men would have to start moving in and arresting. But the demonstrators geld their ground, saying they would only go if the game was called off. From the officials’ control box, a loudspeaker announcement asked rugby spectators to remain calm. The game would resume shortly.
After further requests, Commissioner Walton decided that arrests were the only alternative. he could use force, he considered, but the use of force exposed both sides to danger. A sudden move by his men might provoke violence by the more extreme members of the group and somebody might be seriously hurt. No, force was not the way to deal with this situation. He would use a “hit-and-run” technique, seeing in two or three of his men at a time to pull out one demonstrator. It would take a while. But it was the only solution. he gave the order to his men. Start the arrests.
An elderly woman was hustled, resisting, from the field. And as two policemen led an ageing priest out, the crowd cursed and spat upon him.
In the air, pilot Graeme Stratton, still tailing Pat McQuarrie, radioed the position of the stolen plane. The information was passed on to Bob Walton. Suddenly, the police chief was faced with an enormous responsibility. Here were 2000 people standing in the middle of a rugby field dictating the enjoyment of 20,000 in a tense situation that was stretching the restraint of his highly-trained officers to the limit. And above, somewhere, was a man in a stolen plane who may or may not be about to fly it, kamikaze-style, into the grandstand. To announce to the crowd that they should clear the ground quickly because of the plane threat would undoubtedly cause panic. People would be trampled. Obviously he had no alternative but to request cancellation of the game and empty the park as speedily and calmly as possible. He could only hope that disaster did not occur, for at that moment he had no idea where the stolen plane was.
Pat McQuarrie had found his bearings and was headed towards Hamilton, still followed by Graeme Stratton. As Stratton said later, “I kept him in sight, though not close enough to get him excited. I kept about half a mile behind and slightly above his plane.”
But Strattoon was running out of fuel. He could not stay with McQuarrie any longer. He flew onto Hamilton airport and left a Ministry of Transport civil aviation division aircraft and a Lama helicopter to take the pursuit.
On the ground, the demonstrators who has torn down a second part of the fence ran across waste ground on the eastern side of the rugby park and, reaching a barricade of cattle trucks, began pounding the sides of the vehicles, the sound ironically like the rhythm of Zulu drums. Using vehicles as a stop-gap had been a wise tactic - they were difficult to climb and those who tried scrambling underneath found themselves facing the feet of the now very angry rugby crowd. Frustrated, the protesters sought a way past the barrier and hit on the idea of using an unattached trailer as a bettering ram. Two dozen got behind the motor less vehicle and pouched it 20 yards, building up enough speed to lift one of the trucks on two of its wheels as the trailer smashed into it. Then they pulled the trailer back and repeated the action.
Again and again the trailer rammed the truck, but now rugby fans ran up and pushed the vehicle back in position under a hail of eggs. It was a dangerous game to play on both sides. Anyone who fell in front of that trailer would have been crushed: likewise, the force of the ramming threatened to tip the truck onto the rugby people.
In the centre of the pitch, some of the protesters buried in the group began to faint. They were helped by policemen to the side of the field where they received attention from ambulance men. Others were being systematically carted off as the police continued their arrests, leading their catches through a channel in the crowd at the northwestern end.
Pat McQuarrie listened to a transistor radio as he flew around the Hamilton-Morrinsville district. A full live coverage over the air gave him every detail of what was going on below. Obviously, with so many on the pitch, the match would be aborted. Then he saw the helicopter and the plane that had been sent from Hamilton to find him. What happened next was described by 46-year-old Morrinsville race track attendant Lindsay Vallendar:
“I was siting on my tractor, pulling a wire mesh around the track to smooth it out, when I heard a plane flying low. I looked up and saw this plane coming straight for me, followed by another plane. I thought ‘Blimey, I’d better get out of the way of that fellow’. I ran over to one side of the track. the first plane, which had blue trimmings, lightly touched the grass area in the centre of the track with its engine spluttering. It took off again right away and for a moment I thought it wasn’t going to make it. but he managed to get it up and away it went, followed by the second plane. It circled and then came down again.
“This time it hit the grass quite hard, bounced about five feet in the air, came down again and stopped. The second plane came in right behind it. The pilot of the first plane climbed out, a short, stocky bloke he was, with greyish hair. He stood there for a moment, wearing a sweater or something similar he was, and a policeman came running up to him from the second plane. At the same time a helicopter landed and then a third plane came in. They appeared to put handcuffs on the man and then waited about for a while for a police car and then they took him away.”
At the rugby ground, Mr Frank O’Connor, chairman of the Waikato Rugby Union, conferred with Commissioner Walton and the other senior officers. He was told about the threat of the plane and that it was imperative the game be called off. mr O’Connor was unhappy but realised the urgency of the situation. For a while the brief conference was being held, Pat McQuarrie was still in the air.
It was 3.10 pm when Mr O’Connor announced over the loudspeaker: “Sorry to have to make this announcement, but the game is officially cancelled. We ask that you leave immediately.”
Murmurs of disbelief spread through the stands. Unaware of the plane danger, the crowd though police had given in to a group of 200 standing passively in the centre of a rugby field in the shadow of a cross. While most of the spectators expressed verbal anger, several hundred ran from the terraces looking for those responsible for ruining their afternoon.
“Come on rugby fans,” shouted one man, ducking under a barricade of trucks and charging into the crowd of protestors who had swarmed through the second hole in the fence, “come on, help me smash the bastards.” He was joined by several others who rammed fists and feet into any the caught. A middle-aged man fell crying to the ground after a vicious blow to the nose. Knuckles smacked against heads. It seems not to matter whether their targets were men or women. Punches rained. Bleeding about the face, protestors desperately ran around trying to escape. But many were trapped, for the way back to the gap in the fence was blocked by rugby people. A Maori protester called to a Maori rugby fan just before he was attacked: “You dog. What are you doing in here? You're black, like me, like your brothers and sisters in Africa. Don't you care what happens to them over there?”
Having heard the match was off, the demonstrators agreed to leave, formed themselves into short groups of 30 or 40 and, heads down, hands holding the person in front, moved towards the western corner. Wine bottles and cans were hurled from the crowd into the thick of the now terrified groups of protesters. Some lingered, hoping, it seemed, for arrest - the police had brought two paddy-wagons onto the field and arrest meant you got a ride away from all this.
Across from the rugby ground, the demonstration groups had parked a white van displaying a a red cross which was hanging in the back window crayoned on a piece of card: their first aid post. It was singled out for attack. Although a youth was lying along the front seat with blood streaming from his nose, and a young woman lay on a nearby grass verge, a group of about a dozen pro-rugby people, blind with anger, kicked the van and started rocking it violently.
Pockets of violence broke out in the city streets. In Tristram Street a car carrying a woman with blood running down her face was attacked by a group of young rugby supporters. In the main shopping area a young man with fair, curly hair lay at the kerbside, unconscious, blood oozing from his nose. A girl bent over him while a policeman took up a guard position.
“I had this wonderful impression of New Zealanders…the ones I’ve met over here are tall, innocent people; good honest types that you'd expect to come from a gentle land that raises wooly sheep and produces lovely butter. And I turn on the old box and what do I see? Brutal faces, police with raised batons, people in crash helmets giving fascist salutes - it’s ugly, ugly.”
This was a view of New Zealand that surprised the world; New Zealanders, too. Wasn’t this a land of forthright, down-to-earth, homely and dependable people? Of tea rooms, friendship groups, community halls and Plunket centres?
The country was experiencing all kinds of repercussions form having invited the South Africans to tour. For example, there was the cancellation of the New Zealand heats of the world disco dancing championships after an Australian entertainment agency withdrew its sponsorship. Mr Dalvanius Prime, competition organiser, said that as the agency handled African acts it was felt the holding of the heats at the same time as the Springboks were touring “would ridicule the championship.”
Unfortunately in many cases, the anti-apartheid issue had melted into a series of political rows. For outwardly it seemed that the majority of those demonstrating against the tour were of left-wing inclinations. Some placards displayed at Auckland, Gisborne and Hamilton blatantly admitted that Communist groups supported the anti-tour movement. And it was the clashed between police and demonstrators that were beginning to worry Labour MPs. They felt that confrontation under any left wing banner could result in greater support for the Muldoon Government. The actions of some of the demonstrators were helping the undecided voter come to a clear conclusion - that he had no wish to be associated with any party that the mob, the rabble, the trouble makers, call them what you will, were linked with.
The events in Hamilton made an impact around the world. South Africa was astonished and in London Mr Nicholas Winterton, a Conservative MP, told the House of Commons:
“We have seen some disgraceful scenes in New Zealand where a handful of protesters were allowed to rip down fences around a rugby ground to prevent 20,000 rugby supporters and enthusiasts from watching a game of rugby football. It is appalling that the police did not take action. There are occasions when I an tempted to say that we should let police turn a blind eye and allow the supporters of rugby to get these people - these trendy, long-haired layabouts and louts, these trendy extraordinary Marxist-Christian clerics who seem to encourage the breakdown of society as we know it for reasons known only to themselves. The scrapping of the Gleneagles agreement will speed up the total integration of sport in South Africa, and the more that the South Africans can travel throughout the world, playing their games, the sooner they will bring changes to their country. Those are the changes that many of us want to see.”
Website information:
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/video/game-cancelled-in-hamilton
Date accessed: 24th September 2014
In the tour opener at Gisborne, anti-tour protesters had managed to break through a perimeter fence but were prevented from occupying the field and disrupting the match.
Three days later, Rugby Park in Hamilton was packed as the Ranfurly Shield holders prepared to take on the Springboks. A total of 535 police officers were present in the city. With disrupting matches seen as a cornerstone of any protest action, the Waikato Rugby Union had taken extra precautions to prevent a possible pitch invasion.
The protest planners had also been busy, buying more than 200 tickets for the game to ensure that protesters could make their presence known from within the ground. As it was a Saturday, more people were able to protest, and around 5000 gathered at Garden Place to march on Rugby Park. Plans had been made to tear down perimeter fencing and flood the pitch with protesters. Shortly before kick-off about 350 protesters invaded the pitch, as one of them remembers.
Ripping down the fence took about 10 seconds – it was very fast, the crowd on the bank pulled away from us and a flood of people went through and onto the ground. We ran under the goalposts into the middle. I remember the priests struggling with a bloody big cross.
Police formed a cordon around this group, which had linked arms to form a solid block in the middle of the pitch. Police arrested about 50 of them over a period of an hour but were becoming increasingly concerned that they could not control the rugby crowd. Skirmishes broke out and objects were hurled at the protesters.
It was terrifying, I don’t know how big the crowd was, but they were clearly furious – bottles and God knows what else were hurled at us, and people kept trying to get onto the pitch. The police looked vulnerable as they spread out around the whole ground.
Reports were also coming in that Pat McQuarrie had stolen a light plane from Taupo and was heading for the stadium. While there was confusion as to his intentions, the police decided that the situation was getting out of hand and cancelled the match for security reasons.
The ground announcement of this decision was greeted with howls of protest and chants of, ‘We want rugby! We want rugby!’ This was also the cue for a number of spectators to attack protesters with fists, boots, cans and bottles. The police eventually ushered the protesters from the ground, with enraged spectators lashing out at them as they ran the gauntlet.
All of this drama was captured live on TV and the images were beamed around the world, including to South Africa, where fans had got up in the early morning to watch the match.
One young policeman found out what it was like to be stoned to death - “At least I have an idea,” said 29-year-old Constable Dennis Rastovich. he had one collar bone fractured, the other dislocated and a fence picket driven into his cheek after he became separated from his Red Squad colleges.
With his arms in slings after the event he said: “My hands were lifeless at my sides. My collar bones were gone. I had been spun around against a fence and had a door smashed edgewise into my back. Then bricks rained on me, tearing my back muscles. that’s when two fellows ran at me and drove a fence picket through my face. It came up under my visor.”
Information from http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/1981-springbok-tour:
For 56 days in July, August and September 1981, New Zealanders were divided against each other in the largest civil disturbance seen since the 1951 waterfront dispute. More than 150,000 people took part in over 200 demonstrations in 28 centres, and 1500 were charged with offences stemming from these protests.
To some observers it might seem inconceivable that the cause of this unrest was the visit to New Zealand of the South African rugby team (the Springboks). Although not a major sport on a global scale, rugby has established itself not only as New Zealand’s number one sport but as a vital component in this country’s national identity. In many ways the playing of rugby took a back seat in 1981, and the sport suffered in the following years as players and supporters came to terms with the fallout from the tour.
Some commentators have described this event as the moment when New Zealand lost its innocence as a country and as being a watershed in our view of ourselves as a country and people.
Despite controversies on the pitch, why should a sporting event be the source of civil unrest? What these statistics and results fail to reveal is that until 1992 the racial policies of South Africa meant that teams were selected on the basis of race.
In South Africa before 1948 the white minority enjoyed a privileged position, reinforced by a number of laws and practices that ensured there was extensive segregation of the races. When Daniel Malan’s Nationalist Party came to power that year, this separation was intensified with a policy known as ‘apartheid’ (‘apartness’ in Afrikaans) that aimed to strictly divide the races.
These policies and attitudes created obvious problems for New Zealand rugby, given the prominence of Māori in the sport. When the 1921 Springboks defeated a New Zealand Māori XV at Napier, a South African journalist described in a cable sent back to South Africa his shock and disappointment at seeing white spectators cheering the Māori team:
BAD ENOUGH HAVING TO PLAY OFFICIALLY DESIGNATED NEW ZEALAND NATIVES, BUT SPECTACLE THOUSANDS EUROPEANS FRANTICALLY CHEERING ON BAND OF COLOURED MEN TO DEFEAT MEMBERS OF OWN RACE WAS TOO MUCH FOR SPRINGBOKS WHO FRANKLY DISGUSTED.
Information from http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/video/game-cancelled-in-hamilton:
In the tour opener at Gisborne, anti-tour protesters had managed to break through a perimeter fence but were prevented from occupying the field and disrupting the match.
Three days later, Rugby Park in Hamilton was packed as the Ranfurly Shield holders prepared to take on the Springboks. A total of 535 police officers were present in the city. With disrupting matches seen as a cornerstone of any protest action, the Waikato Rugby Union had taken extra precautions to prevent a possible pitch invasion.
The protest planners had also been busy, buying more than 200 tickets for the game to ensure that protesters could make their presence known from within the ground. As it was a Saturday, more people were able to protest, and around 5000 gathered at Garden Place to march on Rugby Park. Plans had been made to tear down perimeter fencing and flood the pitch with protesters. Shortly before kick-off about 350 protesters invaded the pitch, as one of them remembers.
Ripping down the fence took about 10 seconds – it was very fast, the crowd on the bank pulled away from us and a flood of people went through and onto the ground. We ran under the goalposts into the middle. I remember the priests struggling with a bloody big cross.
Police formed a cordon around this group, which had linked arms to form a solid block in the middle of the pitch. Police arrested about 50 of them over a period of an hour but were becoming increasingly concerned that they could not control the rugby crowd. Skirmishes broke out and objects were hurled at the protesters.
It was terrifying, I don’t know how big the crowd was, but they were clearly furious – bottles and God knows what else were hurled at us, and people kept trying to get onto the pitch. The police looked vulnerable as they spread out around the whole ground.
Reports were also coming in that Pat McQuarrie had stolen a light plane from Taupo and was heading for the stadium. While there was confusion as to his intentions, the police decided that the situation was getting out of hand and cancelled the match for security reasons.
The ground announcement of this decision was greeted with howls of protest and chants of, ‘We want rugby! We want rugby!’ This was also the cue for a number of spectators to attack protesters with fists, boots, cans and bottles. The police eventually ushered the protesters from the ground, with enraged spectators lashing out at them as they ran the gauntlet.
All of this drama was captured live on TV and the images were beamed around the world, including to South Africa, where fans had got up in the early morning to watch the match.