OBITUARY - CONNIE SUMMERS

Peace Researcher 38 – July 2009

- Murray Horton

Connie Summers, who died in Christchurch in December 2008, aged 89, holds a special place in the history of the New Zealand peace movement. Connie Jones, as she was then, was the only woman imprisoned in World War 2 for pacifist offences. The best recent history on this subject is Russell Campbell’s excellent 2005 documentary “Sedition: The Suppression Of Dissent In World War 2 New Zealand”. Contact Russell at Russell.Campbell@vuw.ac.nz for details. “Sedition” was reviewed by Jeremy Agar in Peace Researcher 32, March 2006, online at http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr32-120b.html.

“Constance May Jones – or Connie as she has always been called – was born on the 1^st March 1919. She was the second youngest, the third daughter of four, and the last surviving member of the ten children born to Lilian and Ernest Jones. None of us here today can remember her mother, as she died in 1939, before any of us were born. However we can remember her father, Ernie, who had a big impact on her life and beliefs. He was an ardent socialist and would bike from Oxford to Christchurch and back again in order to attend political meetings (100 km over shingle roads)”.

“She was born in Oxford where her father had also been born, while her mother came from Ashburton. Both families were of English/Welsh ancestry – and of peasant stock as she was fond of asserting. Shortly after her birth the family moved to Christchurch – Halswell Road – just a kilometre or two from where she died – appropriate for her who was very much a homebody, and proud of the fact that she’d never been outside of New Zealand.

“The family was poor, but this never featured particularly in her reminiscences. However her father’s large garden, both vegetable and ornamental did – and she inherited a love of gardening from her parents. She also, of course, inherited many other qualities, including her principles, and her Protestant work ethic – both of which she has passed on to her children. She went to Spreydon School and for three years to secondary school at West Christchurch, as Hagley was called at that time. She learnt the piano briefly – and got a medal, and won a knitting prize for a two-tone scarf, which has recently been retrieved from her extensive archives and admired, in a Christchurch-wide competition.

“At 13 she joined the Socialist Guild of Youth and went to meetings every Sunday, and by 15 she was a committed pacifist and has remained so for her entire life. At first she was a Humanist Pacifist as her father was an agnostic, but she became involved in the Baptist, and then the Methodist Church and joined both the No More War movement and the Christian Pacifist Society.

Prison

“In 1939 when she was 20 she went to Wellington and boarded with prominent pacifist Archie Barrington for about three months, returning to Christchurch just before her mother died. She often talked about how she came back to organise her mother’s funeral. When she returned to Wellington she boarded with the Reverend Ormond Burton, another very prominent pacifist, and had a variety of jobs as work was hard to get. She worked at the Centennial Exhibition, but of course, it being war time, the exhibition was a big flop. She also worked for an importer of German-made pharmaceutical display stands, and lastly and most successfully, as a ledger keeper for Turners and Growers.

“1941 was a defining year for her. Two years into the war, freedom of speech, the right of dissent, had been curtailed in the interests of the war. Christian pacifists who tried to influence public opinion were arrested – yet on Friday nights, week after week, activists climbed on their soap boxes and spoke for peace. And so it came to her turn. She climbed on the box – a young constable pleaded with her not to do it. She managed a few words: ‘The Lord Jesus Christ tells us to love one another…’ Chief Inspector CW Lopdell, the Wellington Police chief, arrested her…” (family eulogy at her funeral, delivered by her daughter, Bronwen Summers).

“Though she lived a further 67 years, she never regretted her action on the street corner that Friday evening. Neither did she regret the public vilification she attracted and the many times she was punched and jostled, as she walked the town wearing a sandwich board bearing anti-war slogans…. Two of Summers’ brothers were conscientious objectors in the war. One served a month’s imprisonment at Paparua, near Christchurch… Looking back in 1986, she told the Press she wished she had done more to oppose the war. By then she had also protested against the Vietnam War, from 1965 to 1973…” (Press, 17/1/09, “Frank pacifist stuck to anti-war beliefs”, Mike Crean).

“She was simply charged with obstruction under the emergency regulations, spared the additional Supreme Court appearance for attempting to hold a meeting, which had earned the others another 12 months’ gaol. ‘When I asked Lopdell why he’d only charged me with the one offence, he insultingly replied that he was being kind to me’… She told the Magistrate’s Court in 1941 that the State had no right to make her follow a law that she didn’t believe in. (the magistrate) didn’t agree. She got three months hard labour. She was 22.

“She served her sentence at the Point Halswell Reformatory, immediately above the girl’s’ borstal. ‘It wasn’t actually hard work, but the food was poor’. She was locked up for 14 hours a day without a toilet. Working in the hard land of the prison garden in winter, she froze in her thin prison clothes. ‘For the first time in my life I had chilblains, on my ears and hands’” (Listener, 3/9/94, “A matter of principle: Lifelong pacifist Connie Summers is armed with her beliefs”, Bruce Ansley).

“She recalled the matron of the reformatory saying to her ‘I suppose, Constance, you won’t sew the uniforms for the Army’. And we can hear her firm reply ‘certainly not’ – as that would have been helping with the war effort. After prison she returned to Christchurch in August and by late September (1941) had married Dad – and yes, I think it’s generally well known that she did the proposing” (family eulogy).

Marriage, Bookshop

“John Summers, surprisingly, went to war, on medical duties only. ‘He still believed in pacifism’, says Connie, ‘but John had a pretty violent side to his temperament. He knew about this and he didn’t feel that he could claim to be a pacifist in the true sense of the word while that side of him flourished. So he felt he had to compromise. We were married just over a year when he went overseas (he served in North Africa and Italy) and he was away near enough to three years. But, there was never one word of difference over his going to the war.

“John was not an easy person. Very quick tempered, very bad tempered. Anyone who knew both John and I would know it wouldn’t be an easy marriage, because of the strength of the convictions. When I get a conviction it’s strong, it’s not something I drop by the wayside. But I loved him very dearly for over 50 years that we were married…I love my children very dearly. Full stop. They are not my life. But when John died (in 1994), my life died. John was my life. It didn’t matter what the difficulties of my marriage were” (Listener, ibid.).

“It was an extraordinary marriage, built, so they said, on faith – which gave rise to the name of their first born. Faith was born in 1942 just before Dad went overseas as a medical orderly. She flatted in Hereford Street until he came back in 1945 when they moved to Hororata where he worked in a saw mill (they had seven kids. Ed). In 1958 they went into business, setting up in a bookshop in Chancery Lane. They subsequently moved to Manchester Street and finally to Tuam Street. Dad always said that Mum was the brains of the business and tempered his otherwise rash decision-making tendencies. Mum always worked in the shop – in early days, taking the bus home around 2 p.m. in order to get the dinners ready” (family eulogy).

“Her husband was an art collector and critic, a writer and a lover of books. Summers supported him in running a Christchurch bookshop and worked in it for many years… It became a ‘hang-out‘ for arty and literary types and political radicals (I was one of the latter category of customers. Ed.)… A former customer, who asked not to be named, says Summers ‘tended to be grumpy’, possibly because of her husband’s frequent ill temper. She was always frank and forthright. Her integrity, consistency and generosity won her wide respect” (Press obituary, ibid.).

“In 1968 they moved to the Domain Terrace house. Throughout all this time a wide variety of artists, poets and writers visited them at home – often staying for meals and talking late into the night. They were also collecting art works, always purchased very inexpensively through their friendship with artists who were still establishing their reputations such as Colin McCahon, Toss Woollaston, Tony Fomison and others. Thousands of books also made their way home. Regular outings were made to art show openings, and concerts – Mum was particularly appreciative of women singers such as de los Angeles, Schwarzkopf and Mahalia Jackson. They also saw Paul Robeson in concert – being a big fan not only of his singing, but his social conscience. The bookshop was finally closed in 1983 when Mum was 64. Once she had more time, Mum spent a lot of it in her garden, which gave her a lot of pleasure.

Arrested Five Times During 81 Springbok Tour

“Also during this time there were social issues to be involved in – the Vietnam War was a prominent one – and both Mum and Dad took part in many demonstrations. She hit her stride again in 1981, during the Springbok Tour, when they participated in many demonstrations, and in the course of which she was arrested five times. As a consequence of explaining to the judge her long-held beliefs, she was discharged without conviction on all charges. Well the judges weren’t stupid were they!

“Although intensely political, and a keen listener to Parliament when it was sitting, she did not join any political party because they all believed in the necessity for a defence force. She was proud of not voting for winners in elections – commenting quite recently that her father had never voted for a winner in any election. To her it was more important to vote for the one she most believed in – regardless of their likelihood of getting into Parliament. During this most recent election (2008) there were two billboards on her fence – one for the Greens, the other for the Alliance. In earlier years the New Labour Party put up their billboards, until Jim Anderton became persona non grata and was sent the inevitable letter!” (family eulogy).

Unyielding Principles

“’I’d go to the bloody stake for my beliefs; it doesn’t matter that they’ve hurt me a good deal’. In one (1981 Springbok tour-related) court appearance, she read a passage from Bram Fischer, sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa. ‘Were I to ask for forgiveness today I would betray my cause. That course is not open to me. I believe that what I did is right’” (Listener, ibid). “She expected her family to follow her lead, even though it caused difficulties, even alienation, among them. She admitted she was openly critical of family members and had many rows with them” (Press obituary, ibid.).

An extraordinary insight into just what this meant can be found in Bruce Ansley’s 1994 Listener profile of her, specifically the relationship between Connie and her son, Llew Summers, the famous sculptor. “’My son Llew has said our marriage was a bloody disaster. Well, at least I stayed married and Llew didn’t’… Llew is one of their seven children, but he hasn’t seen much of his mother since 1977. That year, a divorced man with children, he took up with Rose. She has been his partner for 17 years. But Connie wouldn’t let Rose in her house. They were not married and that was that. Rose’s name is not mentioned during our conversation” (Rose died in 1998, of cancer, aged 49. Ed.).

“’My children’, says Summers, ‘look upon me as unbending. I know it. I say, yes, but what about the other person. They’re going in the opposite direction from me. Are they unbending? Or am I the only one? Llew lives in a way I don’t agree with…When Llew told me he was going to do this, I said to him, well, you must live your life and I hope you find the living of your life easier than I know I’m going to find mine. I’m his mother, and I hoped the beliefs I hold very dearly had infiltrated enough for him to live by them. But, if they haven’t, and he doesn’t believe in them, well stuff it…Llew came to see me one night after John’s death and said he supposed now I would change my mind, now there’d been a death. I don’t believe a death is any reason to change what I believe. Well, he said, as he went out the door, it was just a bloody nuisance. I’m not setting out to be a bloody nuisance. I’m just continuing to live the only way I know how to live’” (Listener, ibid.).

“No overview of her life would be complete without a word or two about her principles. And to quote from Mum herself: ‘Being arrested has nothing to do with bravery. We have certain temperaments we’re given. I have the background of these people, my grandmother, my father, who gave me these strengths’. And then referring to her marriage to Dad, she said: ‘He thought I was malleable. After we were married, he thought it was the biggest joke of his life. The only woman jailed, as I was, malleable!’” (family eulogy).

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