Put that date – Saturday May 2 - in your diary. It will be an all day event at Knox Presbyterian Church Hall, 28 Bealey Avenue, Christchurch (Knox Church itself is being rebuilt at present – it is one of the few central city heritage buildings to have survived the 2010/11 quakathon and to be rebuilt). Make a weekend of it, because the 2014 Roger Award event is on the previous night (Friday May 1) at the same venue. There may also be a Saturday night meal or social event, at another (as yet unknown) venue. One thing I should make clear – we don’t see it as a backwards looking reunion (well, OK, maybe a bit) but primarily a forward looking “where to from here?” gathering.

I can’t tell you any details of the programme, because there aren’t any as per yet. It is a work in progress. We’ll keep you informed. But, apart from anything else, it will be great to see our members and supporters getting together to mark this auspicious anniversary. CAFCA did not adopt that name until the mid 1980s – we started off as CAFCINZ (Campaign Against Foreign Control In New Zealand). Our first major activity was the 1975 South Island Resistance Ride – hence 2015 marking 40 years. But we started planning and organising that in 1974, and soon realised that we would need more than the previous practice of a one off ad hoc committee to do so. Hence: the birth of CAFCINZ to be that permanent body (although I doubt that any of us who founded it realised quite how permanent it would become).

And the event that inspired the 1975 Resistance Ride was the 1974 Long March (by bus, I hasten to add) across Australia to the former US Navy communications base at North West Cape. A number of New Zealanders who went on to become CAFCINZ founders, including me, took part in that wild and woolly adventure. By a strange coincidence CAFCA was contacted out of the blue in 2014 by a total stranger, an expatriate Aussie living in the US who ended up with the never distributed film of the Long March. He had taken it upon himself to restore and digitalise it so that it can finally be seen 40 years later. It’s an absolutely fascinating 26 minutes long documentary, which we hope will be able to be screened at the 40th do. CAFCA has donated a small sum to help with getting it finished.

We last had one of these events for our 25th (in a building that didn’t survive the quakes), so really we should wait until our 50th. But, hey, when you get to our age, better sooner than later, and any excuse for a party (with a strictly controlled dose of wallowing in nostalgia). We think 40 continuous years of CAFCA is something well worth celebrating. In fact, modestly blowing our own trumpet, we think it’s a remarkable achievement. But don’t just take our word for it. Listen to what our enemies have to say:

”... it is a new experience for me to be writing, as the Director of one still flourishing organisation, to the Secretary of another – which is also noteworthy from our perspective as the only one that called for the liquidation of the NZSIS that has not joined the others dedicated to that cause on (to use the late VI Lenin’s term), ‘the rubbish-heap of history’!”. Who said that? Warren Tucker, then Director of the Security Intelligence Service, in a letter (30/10/08) to me, accompanying the release of the SIS file on CAFCINZ/CAFCA (one of his underlings later rang Bill Rosenberg to say that the Director had meant to say Trotsky, not Lenin. Fancy the head spook not knowing his Famous Dead Commos). So come along on May 2 and join the fun. Celebrate our past and take part in planning our future. It will be a once in 40 year event.