Kiwi workers have West Coast settlement to thank

At last year's centenary of the 1908 Blackball miners' strike, red banners declared: "united we stand, divided we fall".

Up the misty Grey River on the South Island's West Coast, the town's population of fewer than 400 was bolstered by coal miners, unionists and politicians from around the country - not to mention an extra large cartload of beer.

"Without union members like the Blackball miners to fight for them, Kiwi workers wouldn't have conditions they take for granted today such as four weeks' annual leave, an eight-hour working day or even decent meal breaks," said Andrew Little, the national secretary of the engineers' union and now the president of the Labour Party.

It was the battle to extend their 15 minute lunch break to a half hour that prompted the Blackball miners to walk out on strike a century ago.

And it is the portrait of Michael Joseph Savage, the first Labour prime minister, that still takes pride of place over the mantelpiece in Blackball homes.

The two-storey, verandah-clad hotel was built in 1910, the same year that the railway line was officially opened and the New Zealand Labour Party was founded. But the settlement itself had been in existence since 1864, a base for transient gold prospectors that was first known as Moonlight Gully.

It later took its official name from the Black Ball Shipping Line, which opened the first coal mine.

After the mine closed in 1964, the town's population of 1200 people began to drift away.

Families sold their houses for only a few hundred dollars, or just burnt them down. But the town refused to die.

Local butcher Pat Kennedy opened the Blackball Salami Company; his wife Jane Wells bought the hotel and began a winter festival, annual Unwearable Arts Awards and murder mystery nights. The hotel was renamed "Formerly The Blackball Hilton" after a legal battle with the international hotel chain a few years back.

Descendants of six of the original striking miners still work in West Coast mines - though latterday Labour politicians are no longer quite as welcome after disputes with Coasters about mining and native logging. The West Coast finally turfed out Labour MP Damien O'Connor last year, replacing him with a National MP.