Steve Braunias discusses the controversial statue of Captain John Hamilton

Hamilton City Council removed the bronze statue of Captain John Hamilton from Civic Square On June 12 ahead of a threat by a Ngaruawahia man to forcibly remove it.

Steve Braunias

Hamilton City Council, as the world now knows, has cancelled the statue of Captain John Hamilton. The decision to remove it from Civic Square was made after a request from Waikato-Tainui. As well, Huntly kaumātua Taitimu Maipi threatened to tear it down during a Black Lives Matter march.

I've once or twice eaten sandwiches and drank good, rich instant coffee from my thermos at Civic Square and kept my eye on the statue of Captain John Hamilton. It was a strange-looking thing. It looked furtive. There was nothing around it, just space; Civic Square exists as a vacant lot. Many visitors to Hamilton mistakenly regard the city as very boring.

In 2012, Hamilton City Council voted in secret to accept the statue of Captain John Hamilton. It was offered to the city by the Gallagher Group to mark the company's 75th anniversary. (Bill Gallagher invented that thrilling symbol of New Zealand life: the electric fence.) The public were excluded when council voted in favour of it. "I don't recall anyone saying, 'Oh, this is terrible, this is going to cause all kinds of ructions,' because it was about the history of how the city got named," former mayor Gordon Chesterman told the Waikato Times.

Gallagher commissioned sculptor Margriet Windhausen to make the statue of Captain John Hamilton. She cast it in bronze. The very nature of statues is their aristocracy, their regal bearing; Hamilton descended from the old Derbyshire family of Heathcote, including Sir Gilbert Heathcote (1652-1733), who amassed fabulous wealth – he began business as a trader of Spanish wines – but history records him as a cheapskate. Biographical detail includes the gossip that he complained of the charge of a few lousy shillings as fees for the burial of his brother. Alexander Pope immortalised him in mocking verse: "The grave Sir Gilbert holds it for a rule/ That every man in want is knave or fool."

There was no trace of grim determination or military vigour in the appearance of the statue of Captain John Hamilton. Windhausen has said that she wanted to portray him in a peaceful pose. Hamilton captained an invading imperial force to kill Māori and take their land at the famous battle of Pukehinahina-Gate Pā on April 29, 1864, when about 230 Māori repulsed 1700 Pākehā. "It was a trap," announces the always excitable James Belich, in his great TV series The New Zealand Wars, "a killing ground, to which the British were invited." Buddy Mikaere, co-author of Victory at Gate Pā?, rejects Belich's exciting thesis, and instead focusses on a remarkable code of conduct that Māori drew up and presented to the British: "The humanity of the Māori defenders at Gate Pā is what makes that battle stand out from every other colonial conflict in this country." The first rule of conduct: "If wounded ... he will be saved."

The hairline was perfectly in place and the forehead was smooth as marble in the statue of Captain John Hamilton. The Daily Southern Cross chose to write his death as bad fiction: "Captain Hamilton sprung upon the parapet, and shouting 'Follow me, men!' dashed into the fight. That moment was his last. He fell dead, pierced through the brain by a bullet." Captain Gilbert Mair, who fought in the Waikato Wars, contributed another, more panoramic version of his death. "They [the British forces] were all crowded into a small space and appeared to have lost control, and a panic ensued, caused, it is said, by a subaltern calling out, 'My God, here they come in thousands!'…The dead body of a sailor lay in the second trench, the head split in two across the face by a tomahawk blow, entirely emptying the brain. Another had his head severed from crown to lower jaw by one cut from a tomahawk, the cut passing straight through the nose. Captain Hamilton lay with a gunshot wound in the temple through which the brain was protruding, but still alive."

A truck came and took away the statue of Captain John Hamilton. His belt and his sword are kept at the Waikato Museum. Maybe his bronze likeness will end up there, too, shoved into the kind of place where all our shames are stored: in a dark corner.