New Zealand Parliament Buildings, located near Lambton Quay. Photo / 123rf
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, located near Lambton Quay. Photo / 123rf
To celebrate Labour Day on Monday, October 25, Peter Dragicevich seeks out places connected to the early days of the Labour movement in Aotearoa.
New Zealand was one of the first countries in the world to embrace the eight-hour working day, which our Labour Day holiday commemorates. It's intriguing to think that at precisely the same time the framework for the modern nation was being hashed out at Waitangi, a chance meeting took place on a boat bound for Petone that was to have major implications for workers, both here and around the world.
Petone
Our story starts on February 8, 1840, with passengers disembarking the Duke of Roxburgh at Britannia Beach (a short-lived name for Petone Beach which thankfully failed to stick). Among them was carpenter Samuel Parnell, who had just emigrated from London with his new wife Mary Ann, and shipping agent George Hunter.
Significant Labour Day figures arrived at Britannia Beach in 1840, a short-lived name for Petone Beach. Photo / 123rf
Shortly after arriving, Hunter approached Parnell to enlist him to build a store for him in the new settlement. Parnell's reply is etched in New Zealand working-class history: "I must make this condition, Mr Hunter: that on the job, the hours shall only be eight for the day. There are 24 hours per day given us. Eight of these should be for work, eight for sleep and the remaining eight for recreation . . . I am ready to start tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, but it must be on these terms or none at all."
Hunter grumbled about that not being the way things were done in London, whereupon Parnell stated the obvious: "You're not in London now, Dr Ropata" – or words to that effect. With a lack of skilled workers available, Hunter had little choice but to accept Parnell's terms. As subsequent ships docked, Parnell sought out newly arrived workers to inform them of the hours he had negotiated.
The ideal of an eight-hour working day had been percolating in Britain since at least 1817 when Robert Owen, a Welsh factory owner and early socialist, came up with the "eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest" mantra – but it had failed to gain traction. At the time it wasn't uncommon for workers, including children, to be required to work 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week.
Wellington
In October 1840, mere months after Parnell's arrival, a group of workers met outside a pub in Lambton Quay and resolved to commit to the eight-hour day – with the threat of a dunking in the harbour for anyone who broke ranks. It's unclear whether Parnell attended this gathering but exactly 50 years later – on October 28, 1890, when the first Labour Day celebrations were held in the main centres – a grey-haired and extravagantly whiskered Parnell took pride-of-place in the Wellington parade.
He died within two months of that first parade and was buried at Bolton Street Cemetery. His humble grave is included on the cemetery's memorial trail, along with those of Richard Seddon, who was Prime Minister when Labour Day was made a public holiday in 1899, and early Labour Party leader Harry Holland. Holland died unexpectedly in 1933 while attending the funeral of Te Rata Mahuta, the fourth Māori king. Greek gods have nothing on the idealised naked, musclebound figure of the common man, gazing upwards towards a brighter future, that tops Holland's memorial. The touching inscription reads: "He devoted his life to free the world from unhappiness, tyranny and oppression".
The gravesite of early Labour Party leader Harry Holland at the Bolton Street Cemetery in Wellington. Photo / Andrew Bonallack
Blackball
This small West Coast mining town is widely heralded as the birthplace of the Labour Party as it was here, in 1909, that the Federation of Labour (aka the Red Fed) was formed. You can read all about it in the outdoor displays of the Blackball Museum of Working-Class History (Mahi Tūpuna), where there's also a memorial to the 29 workers killed at the nearby Pike River Mine. Be sure to check out the trade union banners, agitprop posters and portraits of Labour luminaries in the nearby pub, which dodges multi-national lawsuits by calling itself Formerly the Blackball Hilton.
Auckland
Harry Holland's memorial seems positively understated alongside that of his successor, New Zealand's first Labour Prime Minister, the much-loved Michael Joseph Savage. Savage died in 1940 while still in office, which only reinformed his saintly image among his supporters. His benevolent, bespectacled face could be spotted among family portraits in many a Kiwi home until long after his death, especially in his constituency – what was then working-class Ponsonby and Freeman's Bay. It also conspicuously adorns the present PM's Beehive office.
The Michael Joseph Savage Memorial on Bastion Point is inscribed with a simple inscription above his grave: "He loved his fellow men". Photo / 123rf
For all its Art Deco elegance, the monumental Michael Joseph Savage Memorial on Bastion Point is summed up by a simple inscription above his grave: "He loved his fellow men". One wonders what Savage would make of the always-on-call, working-two-jobs-to-pay-the-mortgage Aotearoa of today, where Labour Day is still celebrated but the ideal of an eight-hour working day is a distant dream for many.
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