Organisers
Report by Murray
Horton
Peace Researcher 33 –
November 2006
These are the relevant extracts from Murray
Horton’s annual CAFCA/ABC Organiser’s Report, presented at the September 2006
Annual General Meeting of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of
Aotearoa. The much longer full report is in Foreign Control Watchdog 113, December 2006,
which can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/13/09.htm
Waihopai Spybase Protest 2006 (& January 07)
My extremely detailed article about
the Anti-Bases Campaign’s very successful protest at the Waihopai spybase in
January 2006 was published in Peace
Researcher 32, March 2006 (“Waihopai 2006: Longrunning Campaign Gets Second
Wind”), and can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr32-129.html
So there’s no need to go over that again.
And we’re going back to Waihopai, in
January 2007, because our work is far from done. Once again I’m in the thick of
organising all aspects of it, which range from the humdrum logistics (we
checked out other campsites before deciding to stick with the Department of
Conservation’s Onamalutu reserve) to national publicity and media work. The latter can involve overseas as well as
NZ media – I recently did a live phone interview with a Melbourne
community radio station. That took me down memory lane. I haven’t been to Melbourne
since the 1980s but back then I visited that same station, more than once, for
studio interviews on my participation in Australian anti-bases protests.
Waihopai Display Has Toured Country
ABC’s Waihopai display has been a
great success and I’ve been kept very busy coordinating its movements from one
end of the country to the other (it’s been up and back several times). It
started in Auckland and Whangarei in late 2005, then came back south for us to
take to Blenheim for the Waihopai protest weekend (the Library there refused to
take it in 2005, on the grounds that it was “one sided” and that the spies had
no right of reply, in the event that they wished to exercise one – which they
didn’t); then on to Nelson Library; Wellington; and prime spot in the
Palmerston North Library, where it attracted media coverage and another
internal self-censorship row (we won). The Greens had it in their Dunedin
office window and at their national conference in Upper Hutt,
followed by some more time in Wellington.
It’s now back home, where I set about finding venues for it. In September it
was in the front window of the New Brighton Library for a fortnight and in
October/November it had a fortnight in the University
of Canterbury Library and a
fortnight each in two other Christchurch
libraries (plus a fortnight in October in Takaka, hosted by the Golden Bay
Greens). In the New Year it’s going into a café/gallery one street from my
home. Special thanks are due to Mark Roach, a
Wellington member of both ABC, who lets us use his courier account to transport
the display (Mark has his own business transporting art works around the
country. He has personally shifted the display himself in the past, free of
charge).
Peace Researcher
My regular ABC work is as editor of Peace Researcher. I’ve got out two issues in 2006. The
March one was the biggest ever, at 52
pages. I enjoy writing for PR, as it allows me to get back to the
subject matters on which I cut my teeth as a political activist more than 35
years ago – war, imperialism, intelligence agencies, et al. I have built up a
stable of regular writers – myself and Bob Leonard,
of course; Jeremy Agar is our prolific reviewer; Kane O’Connell, formerly of
the ABC committee and now ABC’s Man in Wellington,
has started writing for us this year. Each issue goes online, and we owe a debt
of thanks to ABC’s Webmaster, Yani Johanson,
who, eventually, finds time to do that (and the full range of other activities
involved in being an ABC committee member) amidst his life as a very busy
grassroots local body politician.
My wife Becky is the layout editor (of the hard copy
edition) and she does an extremely professional job. PR is the best looking, best illustrated that it ever has been.
This year we had to make a decision forced on us by the tragic 2005 death of
Ray Butterfield, who had been our long time printer (2005 was a dreadful year
for deaths). Ray had still been a vital part of the team, pre-printing the
blank covers. His sudden death (by heart attack) meant that supply would run
out this year and we needed to decide whether to find someone else to replicate
them or re-design the cover. We opted for the former and we now have several
years’ worth of pre-printed PR covers
in storage.
In my
2005 Report, I described, in great
detail, how Owen Wilkes’ suicide was a huge event for both ABC and CAFCA last
year, with both groups jointly organising a major July 4th memorial
meeting for him in Christchurch.
Owen has not been forgotten by us in 2006. There was a memorial tree planting
for him as part of the January 2006 activities at the Waihopai spybase. May was
the first anniversary of his death and to commemorate it, a fellow employed by
the Christchurch City Council to take guided walks (he calls himself a
“walktologist”) led one through Beckenham, the suburb of Owen’s childhood. That
Sunday morning was a brief spell between vicious southerlies, so numbers were
down, but the Mayor and his wife were there. It turns out that Garry Moore knew
Owen, and contributed several Owen anecdotes (hilarious stories about Owen as a
1960s’ City Council dustman) to the few hardy souls who took part. He was
amenable to the suggestion of both ABC and CAFCA that there be a Christchurch
memorial for Owen and we’re currently negotiating the details with the designated
Council bureaucrat (she screamed with laughter when I told her that what we
wanted was a statue of Owen, at the airport, wearing his leather shorts and
peering through his binoculars into the US base out there. It’s more likely
that we’ll get a plaque or a tree or some combination of both).
ABC Is Alive And Well
Let’s take September and October for example. I had
two letters in the Press
urging on the Australians in their desire to have Christchurch’s American base
(Harewood) transferred to Hobart – the Press
gave the first one lead letter status with the headline for the page (there was
the minor matter of their headline being factually incorrect, describing
Harewood as a “spybase”. ABC has never claimed Harewood to be that, and that is
not its function at all). It provoked an outraged correspondent to accuse me
and ABC of “Stone Age anti-Americanism”. Bob and I went out to Rolleston to
speak to a meeting of the Rakaia Greens about Harewood and Waihopai, showing
them a couple of mid-90s videos on those two bases. Jeremy Agar
and I set up the Waihopai display in the front window of the New Brighton
Library, then it was off to Takaka for a couple of weeks. I had extensive dealings with several Christchurch
libraries in preparation for their histing the display, and I offered it, once
again, to the Marlborough Public Library. I did a phone interview with Auckland
student radio about the Waihopai protest. I liaised with our colleagues in Australia,
campaigning to close the Pine Gap spybase (see my article elsewhere in this
issue), sending them solidarity messages.
For a change, the committee has been unchanged in the
past year, although our two youngest members gave been present in spirit more
than in the flesh. Frances Mountier has gone
on leave to concentrate on saving Happy
Valley but has promised to return.
Lynda Boyd is a very busy union official who is now temporarily in Auckland
running Unite’s McDonald’s campaign. On one or two occasions ABC meetings have
consisted of Robyn Dann and I meeting in town over a coffee, when our American
members – Bob and Yani – have been away in the States visiting family.
I am
the media spokesperson for ABC and sometimes they ring me for the darnedest
things – for example, the Sunday Star
Times asked for personal information for a profile on the newly appointed
head of the Security Intelligence Service (Warren Tucker, who was the head of
the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau, the electronic spy agency
which runs Waihopai). Why would I know anything personal about the country’s
top spy? Because this is a very small country, where everyone has some
connection to everyone else. He is the former brother-in-law of the Wellington
mate with whom I regularly stay (who himself is an old friend and comrade
dating back to our mutual membership in the Christchurch Progressive Youth
Movement, in 1969. He’s been an ABC and CAFCA member for many years). So, while
I’ve never met the spy boss, I have met two of his siblings (one of whom sailed
a protest yacht to Mururoa Atoll when France
resumed nuclear testing there in the 90s) and two of his kids….
Organiser Account In Its Best Ever Shape
The CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which
provides my income, is in the healthiest state it’s ever been. There’s nearly $12,000
in the operating cheque account (still held at Westpac, for totally pragmatic
reasons) and nearly another $9,000 on term deposit at Kiwibank. There are 50
regular pledgers, with a couple of new ones having started very recently
(replacing two who stopped), and a flow of donations, large and small. It’s
been so good in the past year that I have been given two pay rises, firstly to
$11 per hour gross, and then to $12.50 (plus it pays all of my phone rental and
nearly all of my broadband access fee). The Account has been running so long
(since 1991) and so successfully that it is seen as a model by other
organisations wanting to free themselves from the tyranny of having to raise an
income for their worker or workers. Once again, my heartfelt thanks to all of
those of you who keep supporting my work, and therefore that of CAFCA and ABC,
by your generosity.
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