political party - with roots extending into every city, every suburb and every street of the nation.
Oh, how their laughter would cease when a party like that started rising in the opinion polls. And, oh,
how quickly their power would crumble when that party became linked to a militant trade union
movement, with members in every factory, in every shop, in every office, and – yes – in every
university.
"Don’t mourn", said the great American union leader, Joe Hill, as they led him out to be executed,
"organise!" And he was right.
It can be done. It has been done – right here in New Zealand. The Labour Party, in its socialist phase,
had all of the attributes that I have listed above, and it used them to transform New Zealand.
It is one of the great ironies – and the great tragedies - of our history, that it was Labour which, fifty
years after the election of Mickey Savage’s Government, set about destroying its socialist legacy.
But what they could not destroy was the shining lesson of that transformative moment. And it remains
the duty of each one of us to take the time to learn that lesson all over again.
My time for learning it came on a Dunedin motorway, one winter afternoon in July.
When and where you will learn it, I cannot predict: - perhaps it will be while fighting the lifting of the
GE moratorium; or for the right to strike; or for a new covenant between Maori and Pakeha; or even in
your long and principled struggle for free education.
But whenever and wherever your time for learning comes, you will be amazed at the lesson’s
simplicity.
In Spanish it goes like this: Los pueblos, unido, jamas sera vincido!
The people, united, can never be defeated.
But in 2004 it was expected that payments in this year ( 2018) would begin to exceed revenues in the
US retirement system.
Oh, how their laughter would cease when a party like that started rising in the opinion polls. And, oh,
how quickly their power would crumble when that party became linked to a militant trade union
movement, with members in every factory, in every shop, in every office, and – yes – in every
university.
"Don’t mourn", said the great American union leader, Joe Hill, as they led him out to be executed,
"organise!" And he was right.
It can be done. It has been done – right here in New Zealand. The Labour Party, in its socialist phase,
had all of the attributes that I have listed above, and it used them to transform New Zealand.
It is one of the great ironies – and the great tragedies - of our history, that it was Labour which, fifty
years after the election of Mickey Savage’s Government, set about destroying its socialist legacy.
But what they could not destroy was the shining lesson of that transformative moment. And it remains
the duty of each one of us to take the time to learn that lesson all over again.
My time for learning it came on a Dunedin motorway, one winter afternoon in July.
When and where you will learn it, I cannot predict: - perhaps it will be while fighting the lifting of the
GE moratorium; or for the right to strike; or for a new covenant between Maori and Pakeha; or even in
your long and principled struggle for free education.
But whenever and wherever your time for learning comes, you will be amazed at the lesson’s
simplicity.
In Spanish it goes like this: Los pueblos, unido, jamas sera vincido!
The people, united, can never be defeated.
But in 2004 it was expected that payments in this year ( 2018) would begin to exceed revenues in the
US retirement system.
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