Peace Researcher 30 – March 2005
These are the relevant extracts from
Murray Horton’s annual CAFCA/ABC Organiser’s Report, presented at the September
2004 Annual General Meeting of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of
Aotearoa. The much longer full report can be read in Foreign Control Watchdog 107,
December 200, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/07/12.htm.
I
am co-employed by the Anti-Bases Campaign, which takes up less of my time than
CAFCA. The busiest part of my ABC work occurred in January 2004 when ABC held
its annual Waihopai spybase protest. We hired a van and trailer and
drove up on the Friday. We camp out in a private vineyard, which is walking
distance from the base. The owner was so relaxed that he went away for a week
and left us in charge. We had about 30 camping out and for the first time in
years we had a Wellington contingent in attendance. These are young people who
got active during the 2003 Iraq War protests. People came from all over, from
Auckland to Dunedin.
We got good media beforehand – I
did four radio interviews in 24 hours. For the first time ever we had a Friday
night activity in Blenheim – a public meeting, attended by up to 70 people, of
whom about half were locals. The speakers were a Marlborough District
Councillor (our first ever local speaker); Green MP Keith Locke, and me. In the
blazing heat of Saturday morning we held a rally in Blenheim’s central Seymour
Square, with the speakers being ABC’s Bob Leonard, Green Co-Leader Rod Donald
and Mike Treen of the Alliance. Plus some street theatre. In 2003, a
combination of the impending Iraq War, the District Councillor’s organising
work among locals, and free front page publicity in the Marlborough Express, led to it being described as the biggest
protest in Blenheim since the 1981 Springbok Tour. No such factors applied in
2004 and we were down to our usual numbers of 50-60. Following our ever popular
vegetarian sausage sizzle (we hire a barbecue), we held a noisy and colourful march
through Blenheim.
In the
afternoon, about 50 or so people convened at the base and were allowed to march
to the inner gate, after Uncle Sam (aka Bob Leonard) had checked and stamped
our Undemocratic Republic of UKUSA* passports (they remain very popular, real
collectors’ items). I MCed both events on the Saturday and there were more
speakers at the base. Some of the Wellington contingent stripped off and formed
a naked peace sign on the boiling hot asphalt. That got the media’s attention
(but as I was on the phone to a reporter at exactly that moment, I couldn’t see
or describe to her what was happening). There must be something in the tropical
climate of Wellington – some of those same people held a naked anti-genetic
engineering action in Parliament grounds in 2003. We had a national strategy
session on Sunday morning (which agreed to incorporate Waihopai into the
national anti-war movement). After we were on our way home, some of the younger
folk drove up to the outer gate and dumped off a symbolic trailer load of rocks
and logs, to blockade it. I did newspaper, radio and private TV interviews
during the weekend and continued to do media interviews after I got home. * The 1940s’ UKUSA Agreement is New Zealand’s
most important, and secret, international intelligence agreement. It divides
the world up for signals and electronic intelligence gathering purposes,
between the relevant agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ.
My Waihopai work is primarily organisational,
handling all aspects (right down to booking the Portaloos) and ensuring that it
happens. Plus I did extensive media work before, during and after. For several
years now, Waihopai protests have run to a formula (one which works very well)
but, for 2005, we decided to take a break from the same old same old and try
something different. We will hold two days of action in Wellington, over
Easter. A seminar on the bases, a field trip to Tangimoana (the neglected
spybase), a protest at the Government Communications Security Bureau’s HQ, and
Nicky Hager has agreed to train somebody to run one of his famous Tours of
Secret Wellington. As a first step we got a Wellington organising committee set
up. Kane O’Connell, who spent a year on the ABC committee, has permanently
moved up there and is our local coordinator.
This duly took place, at Easter 2005. Report in next issue.
Wearing
my ABC hat, I made my first visit to the North Island for more than a year. It
was my shortest ever visit to Wellington, I was away from home for less than 12
hours, up and back on a Sunday. I spoke at an anti-war forum, along with Nicky
Hager, on American Independence Day, in July.
In 2004, I also produced a new ABC generic leaflet, pulling together material
from various other one off leaflets and our Website (I had done the same for
CAFCA in 2003). We have distributed that extensively with publications such as Red and Green, and The Big Picture, plus to the Alliance. We have a mailout booked in
with the March 2005 issue of New Internationalist
(indeed that issue of NI will include
both the generic ABC leaflet, and the one advertising the Easter activities in
Wellington and at Tangimoana). I am responsible for our international links,
such as with anti-bases groups. And I do the ABC’s regular media work, such as
it is (there is a bit, in addition to the Waihopai coverage).
As the Iraqi war of national liberation drags on
(with increasingly disastrous consequences for the Americans and their local
collaborators – I get no great pleasure from saying, “I told you so”), the huge
2003 anti-war protests have dwindled away. But there was one, in March 2004,
through central Christchurch. ABC was there with banner and leaflets and Bob
Leonard was one of the speakers. Plus ABC was on the streets again during the
November 2003 militant protest against the Labour Party Conference. I spoke on
that occasion. We had the peculiar experience of one of our committee
colleagues, Yani Johanson, being inside as a delegate while we were outside
protesting. And ABC has taken part in various marches and pickets protesting
the shameful imprisonment without trial of Ahmed Zaoui (I also met with his
lawyer when she visited Christchurch).
We continue to work with the local anti-war movement – we came up with
the idea of them campaigning against a Christchurch company, which is profiting
from supplying the US military in Iraq – and we have picked up young committee
members from that movement, firstly Kane O’Connell and now Claire Dann. ABC
transcends political differences – of our three sub-30 committee members, Yani
is an activist for Labour, Kane for the Alliance and Claire for the Greens.
My regular ABC work is as editor of Peace Researcher. I can only commit to
get out two issues a year (a far cry from PR’s
original frequency) and even that is a struggle (as evidenced by the fact that
this issue should have been published before the end of 2004). It’s a job that
involves me doing much more actual writing than for Watchdog. PR is a much
smaller undertaking than Watchdog,
with a smaller mailing list. The two publications used to have different
emphases but there is much more overlap now, what with the Iraq War and the
“War on Terror”. PR has come to specialise in intelligence matters and we have the
luxury of time to follow a story for years. We followed the Choudry/SIS &
Small/Police cases right through their many twists and turns. Now we have one
of the protagonists, David Small, writing up the Zaoui case for us as it weaves
its tortuous way through the courts and the Intelligence “oversight” system. PR is online and Yani Johanson does an
excellent job as ABC’s Webmaster. Check out www.converge.org.nz/abc.
Unlike the CAFCA/Watchdog sites, it has
lots of photos and he has added more attractive features to it in the past
year….
Usually the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which
provides my income, rates a brief mention in my annual Report. Not this time. It had been noticeably declining for several
years and hit crisis point at the beginning of 2004. Some time ago CAFCA had
decided that once that account (which is independent of both CAFCA and ABC)
dropped below $2,000, we would have to do something about it. It actually
dipped below $1,000, which meant that, if left unchecked, it would very soon
have run dry. Faced with the terrifying prospect of my having to get a real
job, both groups sprang into action. We had run a narrowly targeted direct mail
appeal a couple of years earlier, when the Organiser Account had last run into
trouble, but in 2004, for the first time ever, we sent an appeal letter and a
partly pre-filled in automatic payment form (which was the idea of my wife,
Becky, and she created the form) to all members of both organisations. In the
past, all costs incurred by the Organiser Account, such as printing, copying,
etc, have been paid by that Account. This time, the crisis was deemed so
serious that CAFCA and ABC paid the costs of that mailout.
The response was astonishing. Donations poured in
from members all around the country and even overseas. They totalled more than
$10,000 (which was double the highest amount which the Account had previously
held, and that was years ago). They were still coming in months later – one
supportive organisation sent two $1,000 cheques; another organisation donated
$1,000. More importantly, for the long-term sustainability of the Account,
people responded to having the automatic payment forms placed in front of them.
The number of regular pledgers increased from the 20s to the 40s, with some
existing pledgers increasing their payments. For example, there are now four
payments per month of $100 or more. What was deeply encouraging was the
outpouring of support from members and supporters, who wanted to say just how
much they support the work done by myself and the two organisations for which I
work. This special appeal was actually an important campaign in its own right.
For several months at the beginning of 2004 it took up a lot of my time, but it
put our support to the test and we came through with flying colours.
That astonishing response has transformed the
Organiser Account, putting it onto a very sound footing. At the time of the
appeal, my hourly rate was the $8.50 minimum wage. We were able to match the
minimum wage increase to $9, and then, for the first time ever, pay me more
than the minimum wage. I now get $10 per hour, which (believe it or not) is the
highest pay rate I’ve ever had (in my last “real” job, as a Railways labourer,
in 1991, I got $9 per hour). The Account has been able to break some of its
ties to Westpac and put the bulk of the money into a term deposit with
Kiwibank, thus earning interest, which it wasn’t previously doing (true to
form, Kiwibank initially stuffed us around. You need the patience of a saint to
deal with them). I hasten to add that the Organiser Account still needs
donations and welcomes new pledgers.
There was a downside to this (isn’t there
always?). I’ve crossed a fatal earnings threshold and now have to pay
provisional tax (in advance, estimated on previous earnings). This means that,
in the first year, my tax bill doubles. I have to pay for the previous year, as
usual, plus for the year to come, at the same time. Hence, I need to pay around
$5,500, in regular installments, by March 2005. And if you’re superstitious,
it’s worth knowing that this is my 13th year in the job.
CAFCA/ABC ORGANISER ACCOUNT 2003/04
Balance on 31/3/03 $3,581.29
Balance on 31/3/04 7,659.50
Net change +4,078.21
Expenses
Murray's pay 18,224.10
Cash to Murray 1,450.25
Other cheques 214.00
TOTAL
19,888.35
Income
One-off donations 10,245.17 Donations 49%
Cash to Murray 1,450.25
Pledges 12,269.88 Pledges 51%
Interest 1.26
TOTAL 23, 966.56
43
pledgers as of August 2nd 2004 bank statement
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