The government proceeded to carve up the national WWU into a number of local port unions. A blacklist was implemented to keep militant unionists off the docks. Drivers, freezing workers, and others also saw their unions broken up.

In celebrating the capitalists' victory, National Party prime minister Sidney Holland was forced to acknowledge the resistance they had faced. "We faced up to a bigger fight than we imagined...it has cost us many millions," he said.

For working people, the struggle mounted by the industrial unions provided a glimpse of the power of these big battalions of the working class and their ability to draw others behind them into a struggle against the capitalists and their government. At the same time, the lockout, viewed in its historical and international context, helps to illustrate the dead end of syndicalism, a weighty influence on the militant unionists who led the rearguard fight.  
 
Unions get stronger
Coming out of World War II, the New Zealand capitalist rulers were intent on dealing a lasting blow to a layer of industrial unions that, through the latter years of the war and the second half of the 1940s, was growing in strength and influence.

Strikes were infrequent immediately following the government's entry into World War II. Workers who took such action during the war risked a stiff jail term under 1939 regulations, which received the support of the Federation of Labour (FOL) leadership. In 1940 FOL official Fintan Patrick Walsh declared that "the workers don't want to gain as a result of the war. They are prepared to make equal sacrifices."

Such statements notwithstanding, railway workers, seamen, miners, watersiders, and others organized industrial action over wages and other issues from 1941 on. The 11,000 workers involved in strike action in 1943 rose to 40,000 by 1945. In his memoirs, Never a White Flag, WWU leader Jock Barnes noted that near the close of the war industrial unrest forced the government to establish a minimum wage and guaranteed holidays.

There were other signs that working people's readiness to go on delaying their demands for wage increases and other measures for the sake of the capitalists' profits and the imperialist war was reaching its limit. In one dramatic incident, thousands of New Zealand soldiers staged a mutiny during their 1943 leave from the fighting in the Middle East and demanded that they be discharged.

During the war Washington stationed tens of thousands of soldiers in New Zealand, a country of fewer than 2 million people. Racism, rife throughout the U.S. military, organized by the brass, led to attempts to exclude Maori people from bars in Wellington and Auckland. This provoked large-scale street fights in which a number of U.S. servicemen were killed. The WWU was involved in conflicts over the same issue on the wharves, where special work was done for the U.S. forces.  
 
Working people bear brunt of sacrifice
Working people's war sacrifices included a heavy toll on the battlefield. New Zealand's capitalist rulers sent some 11,500 troops--young workers and farmers in uniform, many of them conscripts--to their death, and by 1942 around 157,000 men were in the armed forces. They were sent to battle in North Africa and Europe to back London's war effort against Germany and Italy. New Zealand soldiers also fought in the Pacific war against Japan.

Despite the depletion of the labor force, the capitalists boosted their profits by stepping up exploitation of workers and working farmers. Speedup, sharp increases in working hours, and the employment of women in jobs that were previously out of bounds to them were all used to fill the gaps. Conscription of troops was accompanied by conscription of labor for industries that were deemed "essential." Women from 18 to 40 without dependent children, and men from 18 to 59, were eligible. The Minister of Labour employed wartime powers to override legally prescribed working hours and wage rates.

Consequently, the war years saw a substantial rise in the productivity of New Zealand capitalism, then, as now, based on the production and processing of meat, wool, dairy, and other products of the land.

Workers also faced restrictions on their union rights and civil liberties. In addition to its strike ban, the government decreed that the attorney general could fire any worker and deny individuals the right to union membership--including on the grounds of their political opinions. Newspapers that espoused socialist and other views contrary to the government's course faced banning or police harassment. Hundreds of conscientious objectors were subjected to harsh conditions in prison camps.  
 
Postwar expectations
Emerging from the war, working people hoped for a sharp break from these policies. Many anticipated that the Labour Party would pick up the banner of social reforms that it had demonstratively dropped during preparations for entry into World War II. First elected in 1935 at the end of the Great Depression, Labour--under intense working-class pressure--established a largely free national health service, expanded free public education, legislated to reduce the workweek to 40 hours, undertook a large-scale program to construct low-cost public housing, and carried out other reforms.

The pace of strikes and union action continued to quicken through the decade, with industrial unions like the miners and the watersiders in the front lines of resistance. On the Auckland docks, wrote Jock Barnes, "the loss of man-hours due to industrial conflict increased nearly tenfold."

But the postwar government underlined the wealthy rulers' intentions by declaring that it would seek to maintain the austerity framework of the war years. Prime Minister Peter Fraser said repeatedly that "wage increases were no good to anyone." A stabilization commission was set up in 1948 to continue the wartime wage-fixing policies.

Labour demonstrated its commitment to such priorities by spearheading a frontal attack on the Carpenters Union, which it deregistered in 1949, and by its support for the employers on other fronts. These moves deepened opposition among the workers who had backed the party, drastically undercutting its electoral base. But the leaders of the militant wing of the unions did not chart a course to build a political vanguard of working people independent of the Labour Party and its pro-capitalist leadership. The National government elected in late 1949 swung the antiunion cudgel handed it by Labour with even more singleness of purpose, and stepped up the red baiting of those who dissented; for their part, workers went toward the looming confrontation without a political party of their own, and with a labor movement weakened by deep divisions.

The profit drive of the capitalists and the interests of working people were on a collision course. The point of impact came on the wharves in 1951, when the government set out to smash the watersiders and all who rallied to them.  
 
Rulers prepare for war abroad
This approaching confrontation in New Zealand was also fueled by the imperialist powers' drive toward new military aggression. In each of the allied imperialist countries that had emerged victorious from the war, the class struggle at home and their preparations for war were joined together in potentially explosive combinations.

In Australia, the other "Anzac" power, workers came out of the war with a similar desire for improvements in their conditions of life and work, and organized to defend their interests through their unions and on the streets. In the United States, a massive strike wave broke out, and the unions won many new members. The U.S. armed forces were infected by the same mood of class resistance. U.S. troops stationed in the Pacific, Asia, and Europe mounted a "bring us home" movement that blocked Washington's immediate plans to intervene against the Indochinese and Chinese revolutions.

Elsewhere, revolutionary struggles were on the rise. Colonial powers like Britain and France faced growing nationalist rebellions in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere. Massive anti-imperialist mobilizations in India and China--one the "jewel in the British crown" and the other the victim of 100 years of imperialist incursions and exploitation--stood at the forefront of this revolutionary wave. By the end of the 1940s the Chinese workers had defeated the pro-imperialist Kuomintang forces and established a workers and farmers government.

Even Europe presented a mixed picture from the standpoint of Washington and its allies. Although, thanks to Stalinist betrayals, revolutionary openings in Greece and Italy had been drowned in blood, the Red Army occupied much of Eastern Europe. As Washington, backed by London and other imperialist allies, increased pressure on the Soviet Union, the Stalin regime gave the green light to working-class mobilizations that enabled the overturn of capitalist property relations in a number of countries. In Yugoslavia, the working-class partisan movement led a socialist revolution.

"U.S. imperialism came out of [World War II] fully intending to use whatever military might was necessary to maintain and consolidate what it had won," wrote Jack Barnes in Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium. "Having successfully completed the 'trial run' of the atomic bomb against the peoples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. rulers planned to keep their armed forces strong in Asia. They intended to block the Chinese revolution and establish U.S. dominance in the Pacific region over the weaker and retreating British, French, and Dutch colonial powers. The U.S. government was also preparing to finish the job German imperialism had failed to achieve--the big task of overturning the gains of the Bolshevik revolution, initially by at least preventing the spread of Soviet property forms anywhere else in the world. Washington and its allies were marching toward a third world war."  
 
New Zealand rulers shift alignment
The New Zealand rulers participated in these war preparations, and simultaneously sped up their shift in alignment from London to Washington. New Zealand had entered the world scene as a junior imperialist power after the consolidation of a nation-state at the end of the nineteenth century. The government of the day had successfully petitioned London to allot them some Pacific Island territories as colonies.

Britain's decline as a world power, and the post-World War II supremacy of the United States in the imperialist pecking order were behind the shift. It was codified in the ANZUS military alliance with the United States and Australia, signed two months after the end of the waterfront lockout.

The New Zealand rulers prepared to contribute cannon fodder to a confrontation with Soviet forces in the Middle East that was at one point anticipated by both Washington and London. In 1948 the New Zealand Labour government promised to send an army division and five air force squadrons to the region in the event of war. The next year they rammed through a "yes" vote in a referendum on "peacetime" conscription. The WWU's monthly paper, the Transport Worker, campaigned against the proposal. Sidney Holland, the prime minister elected in 1949, reaffirmed the Middle East commitment in a February 1951 visit to Washington, pledging to send 35,000 troops to the region in the event of war. In the same month the shipowners and government began the lockout of the watersiders.  
 
Imperialist assault on Korea
The New Zealand rulers' attack on the unions in the late 1940s and early 1950s coincided with their backing for Washington's war on Korea. As workers and peasants consolidated a popular regime in the north and rose up in the south, Washington mounted a massive land, air, and sea assault, aiming to defeat the revolutionary upsurge, impose a puppet government on the peninsula, and position imperialist forces next door to the new Chinese republic in preparation for fresh aggression.

"I admire the part the U.S.A. is playing in Korea," said Prime Minister Holland during a trip to Washington in February 1951, the month in which his government launched the assault on the watersiders. "Tell me what else I can do and I will do it." The words echoed the sentiment in the 1939 declaration of war on Germany by Prime Minister Michael Savage. "Where [Britain] goes we go; where she stands we stand," he had said.

As part of their aggressive stance at home and abroad, the New Zealand rulers and the big-business media stepped up their red-baiting efforts throughout the 1940s, taking their cue from the administration of President Harry Truman and, later, such rightist politicians as Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The rhetoric was aimed not so much at the Stalinist Communist Party as at the thousands of struggle-minded workers around New Zealand. The capitalists sought to intimidate and silence the opposition to their anti-working-class course.  
 
Assault on watersiders
The assault on the watersiders was keenly observed by the rulers, as well as class-conscious workers, on both sides of the Pacific. At the forefront of the offensive against the Watersiders Workers Union and other militant unions in 1951 stood both the New Zealand government, representing the interests of the country's most powerful ruling families, and the shipowning capitalists.

The shipowners, seeking to maximize their profits from the country's rising international trade after World War II, were itching for a showdown with the 8,000-strong watersiders union--especially its largest and most battle-seasoned branch in Auckland. From their standpoint, the union's actions and campaigns for improved wages, control of hiring, and safety on the job increased the costs of loading and unloading ships and cut into their profits. The shipping company owners exposed their greed halfway through the lockout, when, to widespread outrage among working people and grumbling among fellow capitalists, they increased freight charges by 50 percent.

The National Party government, like its Labour Party predecessor, backed the shipowners in their disputes with the watersiders. It also acted in defense of the interests of the ruling capitalist families as a whole. The most class-conscious exploiters recognized that the actions of the unions reflected deeper discontent, and potential opposition, among working people.

A number of the WWU's political stances provided further motivation for the hostility of the capitalists--including the union's opposition to New Zealand involvement in imperialist wars in Korea and Malaya.  
 
Worker faced array of forces
The government took the initiative in the early stage of the 151-day confrontation. They mobilized formidable forces to back the lockout, sending soldiers to load and unload ships, passing gagging and antiunion regulations that exceeded the wartime measures in their severity, and giving the police a free hand against unionists and their supporters. The big-business newspapers and government radio stations chimed in as apologists for the assault.

Capitalist politicians joined the propaganda blitz, urging the cabinet to greater efforts. One National parliamentarian drew a disapproving parallel with the Korean War, saying, "New Zealand troops in Korea were engaged in a shooting war against the communists.... In Korea, Communists were being shot--but in New Zealand they were given the freedom of the country."

The response by the 8,000 watersiders, the 12,000 miners, freezing workers and others who launched solidarity strikes, and those who helped organize the unions' relief organizations had a considerable impact. At one point the cabinet had to send naval ratings to move coal out of mines to avert a looming power crisis. Tens of thousands of people found ways, in the midst of intense polarization, to defy the regulations and aid the embattled workers. Isolated rural mining communities stood firm for months, in spite of being placed under siege by the cops.

The role of the class-collaborationist FOL officials was decisive in ending the solidarity strikes and undercutting the social movement that had begun to arise against the lockout. In 1960 Keith Holyoake, who succeeded Holland as National prime minister, said that "the task would have been impossible without the Federation's aid."

When, after five months of pressure, the WWU agreed to accept Holland's onerous terms, the government proceeded to break up the key unions. The capitalists' victory helped lay the basis for them to take advantage of the boom in international trade and capitalist profits that developed in the 1950s.  
 
Syndicalist traditions
Those who gave their all in the fight did not lack for militancy or a sense of solidarity. These and other qualities were evident in abundance, and not only among those who were locked out or on strike. But these fighters faced a handicap: the leadership of the WWU and other key unions did not represent a revolutionary class-struggle wing of the labor movement.

While Stalinist forces held positions of influence, the central leaders of the WWU were politically shaped by the syndicalist traditions that had put their stamp on working-class struggle and politics in a number of imperialist countries during the first half of the 20th century. In New Zealand, militant syndicalism was a major influence among the forces who, during the decade leading up to World War I, led in building the industrial unions organized in the "Red" Federation of Labour.

The industrial unionism and class political independence advocated by the "Red Feds" spoke to a pressing need among working people at that time. The craft union leaderships that largely predominated in the labor movement had proven increasingly unable to respond as New Zealand imperialism began to assert itself and prepare for war against workers and farmers at home and abroad.

Major industrial battles of the period included a victorious miners' strike on the West Coast of the South Island in 1908, and a national miners strike in 1912. The following year struggles by watersiders, miners, and others led to a general strike. The workers faced police repression and brutal vigilante attacks organized by the government.

After the unions had gone down to defeat in the 1912-13 battles, Red Fed leaders stepped up their efforts to draw together different elements in the labor movement into a political party. Many became leaders of the Labour Party, formed in 1916 as a result of these efforts. A number were jailed during World War I for their union activities, and for speaking out against the war. Former Red Fed leaders were among those at the helm of the party two and half decades later, when it led working people into the slaughter of World War II.

The watersiders leaders fought the rightward trajectory of the Labour leadership, including as party members themselves. Calling the Labour leaders "penitent sinners," they contrasted their course in government with their earlier record as union militants and antiwar socialists. At the same time, Barnes and others not only failed to confront the syndicalist shortcomings of the earlier leaders, but drew on the tradition they represented.  
 
The international roots of syndicalism
The fact that syndicalism is an obstacle to revolutionary struggle has been played out in a number of countries, including Spain, France, and Italy. Internationally and historically, the forebears of the syndicalist leaders were anarchists, who organized in opposition to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and other proletarian leaders of the international working-class movement of the mid-19th century onwards.

Anarchists opposed Marx's unequivocal statements that the fall of the capitalist state and the rise of the dictatorship of the proletariat--the workers state--were equally inevitable; that no other road forward out of capitalist barbarism was possible; and that workers must lead a massive social movement of the oppressed to overthrow capitalist rule. To this line of march the original anarchist leaders counterposed methods of individual terror and the construction of communes and cooperative societies that did not directly challenge the capitalist state. State power, they said, was reactionary per se.

Offshoots of this current with deeper roots in the defensive struggles and organizations of the working class, the anarcho-syndicalists, fought for the formation of revolutionary unions and posed the general strike as the weapon of revolutionary struggle.

The syndicalist leaders in the New Zealand of the first and second decades of the 20th century often took their political lead from militant currents in the labor movement of the United States. They included the wing of the Socialist Party represented by Eugene Debs, who for a period collaborated with union militants from the syndicalist movement who were drawn to socialism, and the syndicalists organized in the Industrial Workers of the World.

Despite their call for "one big union" on the industrial front, and one big working-class party in the political arena, the American IWW syndicalists ended up devoting most of their energies to ultimately unsuccessful attempts to build revolutionary unions. They abandoned work in the political field to other, mostly reformist, forces.

Socialist Workers Party leader Farrell Dobbs, a central leader of the fight to build the Teamsters Union in the United States in the 1930s, discussed the role of the IWW and other syndicalist currents in the United States in the early 20th century in his book Revolutionary Continuity: The Early Years: 1848-1917. Rejecting all political activity, the most extreme syndicalists aimed to build "revolutionary unions...with the object of abolishing capitalism by direct action on the economic field," wrote Dobbs. They "failed to perceive that a workers' victory could be achieved only through revolutionary political struggle to wrest state power from the capitalists; that the new state then had to be organized as an instrument for defense of the revolutionary conquests.... They sought to steer the workers away from their most vital political task in the fight to overthrow capitalist rule--the building of a revolutionary vanguard party."

The example of the Russian Revolution, the first socialist revolution in history, and the decisive role of the Bolsheviks, led by V.I. Lenin, won a number of syndicalist figures in the United States to the perspective of building just such a vanguard party. James P. Cannon was one former IWW cadre who broke with syndicalism and helped found the Communist Party. After their 1928 expulsion Cannon and others continued to defend the Bolshevik program and perspectives, helping to form what later became the Socialist Workers Party.

Despite the very real impact of the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik-led Communist International, workers in New Zealand were never able to forge such an organization through their struggles in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. A small Communist Party, separate from the mass forces that looked to the Labour Party, was not consolidated until the late 1920s. By that time Stalinist thuggery dominated politics in the Soviet Union and the Communist International. No minority arose within the CP in New Zealand to defend the Bolshevik program. Not until the late 1960s did new forces arise who set out to organize a communist party.

As the ruling-class offensive today against working people in New Zealand meets resistance from unionists, the unemployed, working farmers, and young fighters against oppression, the opportunity to prepare for the coming showdown battles with the capitalists and their government by building a proletarian party is open once again. Conquering the lessons of the antiunion lockout will be a part of the construction of such a leadership.

Michael Tucker, from Auckland, New Zealand, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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