Don Borrie, who died in April 2016, aged 76, was a foundation CAFCINZ member (1975), dating back to when our annual membership sub was $1. He remained a CAFCINZ/CAFCA member continuously until his death, which puts him in a very select band indeed. I didn’t know Don personally and hadn’t seen him or been in touch with him for years (decades, probably). I knew next to nothing about his life. Despite being a CAFCA member for 40 years the only mention of him on our Website was for being among those putting in their apologies for the 2015 Annual General Meeting. CAFCA was only one of the myriad of groups to which Don belonged.

North Korea Solidarity

Indeed, CAFCA was not the group where I had the most to do with him. That was actually the NZ Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea Society, of which he was the leader for decades and I was a Christchurch Committee member for several years many decades ago. But we were in different cities, so hardly met, let alone actually worked together. My main contact person for that group was the late Wolfgang Rosenberg (my obituary of Wolf is in Watchdog 114, May 2007, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/14/04.htm). Don and Wolf founded the NZDPRK Society in 1972.

In 1974 I attended a public meeting of that Society and was startled from my torpor when Wolf publicly invited me to join the Christchurch Committee. I did so, with no great enthusiasm I must confess, and remained on that Committee for the best part of a decade until the misgivings that I had always had (and which have only got more pronounced) about North Korea led me to resign. I never did get a trip to Pyongyang out of it, but I did score a packet of ginseng tea (sent registered from North Korea) and a pair of fairly lethal looking steel chopsticks. To his dying day Wolf was a great fan of North Korea, despite criticisms of it from both Left and Right.

Don remained the leading figure in the NZDPRK Society until his final months. To quote Wayne Matheson, the Assembly Executive Secretary of the Presbyterian Church: “Don had a life-long passion for justice. This is most clearly demonstrated when he and others established the NZDPRK Society in 1972. Over the next 44 years he advocated a peaceful non-military solution to the division of Korea as well as a better understanding within New Zealand of the injustice international geopolitics have inflicted upon the North Korean people. He worked at promoting better relations between New Zealand and North Korea, both at Government level and with people to people exchange”.

Stuart Payne, a fellow NZDPRK Society Christchurch Committee member (we regularly held meetings in his then home), wrote to me: “I had the utmost respect for Don - we worked together on many issues besides Korea. Back in the 1970s/early 80s, Don put together a large mailing list and the two of us, at regular intervals, used to compile a range of articles/opinion pieces and mail them out under the umbrella of Frontier. Any particular mailing could cover anything from social justice, racism, feminism, the environment, world affairs, and yes, even pieces on (progressive) theology”.

“And I never ceased to admire his fight for the betterment of the common people in North Korea. I myself despaired of us making any progress through the Friendship Society because, while we in NZ were an independent non-Government group, those that we dealt with in Korea were an arm of the (repressive) Government. But Don didn’t let that get in the way of his efforts. A man of much optimism”.

Hospital Board

John Ryall, a national union leader, wrote to me: “I was involved with Don Borrie in the 1980s in the fight against the privatisation of public health services. I was an organiser for the Wellington Hotel and Hospital Workers Union and Don was living in Porirua, working I think for the Methodist Church in Porirua East. In the early days of the 1984-90 Labour government Don was involved with our union, and some other unions, such as the Cleaners Union, who were campaigning for salaried GPs in low-income communities, such as Porirua, to deliver free health care to low-income families, including many of our members. He supported the setting up of the Newtown Union Health Service and eventually a similar service in Porirua”.

“We held public meetings in Porirua and supported Don being elected as a Labour member of the Wellington Hospital Board. Don was on the Board for two terms during which the pressure started going on from the Labour government to close public hospitals, centralise services and to move continuing care services for the elderly over to private aged care facilities and close maternity hospitals. The Boards were also busily contracting out their cleaners, food services, orderlies and security services in which our union was heavily involved. Don regularly met with our members, we developed an activist group and worked with communities where services were being closed or scaled back”.

“Don was fearless in his advocacy on the Hospital Board and in the news media. While today’s politicians have been corralled in by the Chief Executive Officers and the Government-appointed Chairperson, none of these people would stop Don speaking on behalf of his constituency and other communities affected by the privatisation direction. The payment for Hospital Board members was very little, but Don was a full-time local body politician and totally dedicated to the cause of representing those who elected him. Not for him the glory of being an elected representative attending all the fancy functions. For Don it was hard graft. We set up a Labour Health Forum to hold elected Labour representatives to account and to give Hospital Board Labour representatives direction”.

“In the late 1980s the Hospital Board, under heavy financial pressure from Government, employed Deloittes to advise them on what services to close. Out of this report came a proposal to close Porirua Hospital. The health unions, newly set up under a Wellington Combined Health Employees Committee, forced the Board to have a special meeting around the proposal and after the unions organised buses to bring members into the meeting, made the Board hold it in the Overseas Passenger Terminal with an attendance of nearly 1,000 people – a far cry from the up to ten members of the public who used to attend Board meetings in the Hospital Board building. While Don didn’t stop Porirua Hospital from being scaled back, he did force community mental health services to be set up and did stop the closure of Kenepuru Hospital”.

“In 1990 the Hotel and Hospital Workers Union promoted Don to become the Labour candidate for the safe seat of Porirua after long-time MP Dr Gerard Wall stood down. The selection meeting in Porirua East was full of people with about six candidates standing for the position, including Ken Gray and Graham Kelly (who was supported by the other union Labour affiliates). We had about 100 members present to vote for Don and with other supporters there we won the floor vote, but the Labour Electorate Committee managed to get a majority for Graham Kelly (in order to shut out Ken Gray, favoured by the then Labour leadership) to offset our win on the floor. I think if Don had been elected he would have left the Labour Party with the formation of New Labour”.

Activist Clergyman

In his day job, Don was a Methodist clergyman and indeed he was something of a “turbulent priest”, hence his nickname of “the Red Reverend”. Brian Turner is a fellow Methodist clergyman and current member of the CAFCA Committee. Brian wrote to me: “Three vivid memories I have of Don: Firstly, when seeking election (re-election?)  as a Porirua City Councillor, he wanted to put his billboard on the fence of the Methodist Service Centre in East Porirua and I ruled it out as our Wellington Regional Methodist Social Service policy was not to endorse any particular candidate; he went ahead and when I told him to take it down said it must have been put up by some over enthusiastic supporter... yeah right!”

“Secondly, when he applied to become General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, he took control of the interview to tell us all the things we were doing wrong! (I was on the interviewing panel). Predictably he didn't get the appointment! And thirdly, as the Methodist Conference was convening in Napier in 1982 (?) Don told me he had eight notices of motion and none had gone through his regional synod which is the normal course of events unless something urgent comes up between synod and Conference... and then normally only one NOM per person is presented. Predictably Don got knocked back, but it never dampened his enthusiasm for the causes he advocated for”.

DON BORRIE

- Robert Reid

On 21 April 2016, the “Red Reverend” Don Borrie passed away at his home in Titahi Bay, Porirua.  Don had suffered from Parkinson’s for a number of years. He was well known to many social justice activists, firstly in his role as General Secretary of the Student Christian Movement (SCM) in the early 1970s; second as a minister, City Councillor and social activist in Porirua for four decades; and thirdly as secretary of the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korean friendship society for the same period. I was a long-time friend of Don’s. This is the tribute that I made at the funeral. I began with a reading from St Matthews Gospel:

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to Him, and He began to teach them, saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the Earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Student Christian Movement

I first met the Reverend Ian Donald Borrie at a Student Christian Movement school student camp on the Taieri Plains, just south of Dunedin in 1970. One of my teachers at Kaikorai Valley High School, Seognagh Stevens, had invited me to come. I was 17 years old. I had also been the son of the manse (like Don) until my father died five years before. I was interested in politics so had joined the Young Nationals, my family’s political party, but was starting to look for other ways of understanding the injustices that I saw in New Zealand and overseas. I was introduced to the new General Secretary of the SCM a fresh, almost baby faced, Don Borrie.

I knew nothing about this Don Borrie. But he very easily struck up a rapport with those of us who attended the camp. We learnt that he had graduated from Knox College a couple of years back and that he and his wife, Lyndel, had just come back to New Zealand after volunteering with the World Council of Churches for a year and, before this, doing post-graduate study in the States. He started with the SCM in 1969.

Don had strong views on the evils of apartheid in South Africa and war in Vietnam. And he also had this new and “strange” (for us) view that New Zealand was a racist country and that we Pakeha benefited from this “institutional racism” which made us racist as well. When many of us had different or unthought-out views on these issues Don would not judge us but would patiently discuss his views and analysis with us. Little did I know at the time that Don would become a life-long friend as well as a religious and political mentor and guide.

The SCM had been an institution in the universities of New Zealand for many years and had become the leading liberal religious and political body on all campuses. Its liberalism had led to the formation of an alternative Evangelical Union which embraced fundamentalist Christianity. But even the SCM was not prepared for Don Borrie, or as the media started to refer to him, the Red Reverend. In talking to Lyndel after Don’s death, she said that both of them also found it strange coming back to NZ from the political ferment across the US universities in the late 1960s: civil rights, anti-war, shootings at Berkeley, to find their middle of the road views within the US student movement had become far left in a New Zealand context.

Don Was NOT A Liberal. He Was A Radical

He believed that there was a “time to rend” as well as a “time to sew”, a “time to tear down” as well as a “time to build up”. He was confronting while trying not to be confrontational. Some good Old Testament justice mixed in with love and hope from the New. For Don and for many members of the SCM his first two to three years as General Secretary was a difficult time. However, by 1971/72 a new generation of students had arrived on campus. Many of us were attracted to Don’s politics and theology.

The SCM National Office became the HQ for a number of movements for justice of the time, especially anti-apartheid and anti-war. It spawned organisations such as the Organisation to Halt Military Service (OHMS), Release all Vietnamese Prisoners of Conscience (RAVPOC) and South Pacific Action Network (SPAN). Don continued to promote his anti-racism work in New Zealand through organisations such as the Action Committee on Racism and Discrimination (ACORD).

The night after hearing of Don’s death I put the following post on Facebook:

A reflective night tonight after hearing during the day that my mentor and friend Don Borrie had died yesterday after battling Parkinson’s for a number of years. Don was a significant influence on scores of students who passed through university in the late 1960s and 1970s.  As General Secretary of the Student Christian Movement he confronted us relatively privileged students with the injustices of the time; the Vietnam War, apartheid, Korea and to confront the white institutional racism in Aotearoa that we Pakeha all benefit from.

For Don the Christ of the gospels was the revolutionary, the liberator. Although a number of us moved on to embrace more recent revolutionaries and liberators this was not a rejection of what we had discovered with Don's help, rather a continuation of a thirst for justice and love that can never be extinguished and continues to drive many of us in the work we do and the lives we lead.

Condolences and arohanui to Lyndel, Grant and Fiona and their families.

Go well Don. Peace be with you. Hoa Binh.

DR RANGINUI WALKER (1932-2016

- David V Williams
(Professor, University of Auckland)

CAFCA joined with all those paying tribute to Ranginui Walker when he died in February 2016, the day before his 84th birthday (uniquely, we found ourselves in company with John Key). We were proud to have had Ranginui as a CAFCA member continuously from 1993 until his death. He was a generous one too, more often than not (including in 2015) adding a sizeable donation. From 1996 until January 2016 (the month before his death) he was a regular sizeable donor to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account which provides my income.

In addition to that, he was a Roger Award judge for two consecutive years (2002 & 03. For the record, 2002 was one of several years the Award was won by the late unlamented Tranz Rail; in 2003 it was Juken Nissho). The only time I ever met Ranginui was at the (2003) Auckland event for the 2002 Roger Award. What more CAFCAesque setting could there be than a Roger Award event for such a meeting? Thanks Ranginui for being part of CAFCA, along with everything else for which you were much better known and so rightly acclaimed. Ed.

In the days following his death on 29 February 2016 many hundreds of people gathered at Ōrākei Marae to farewell Dr Ranginui Walker. He was a most distinguished leader of Māoridom and of Te Whakatōhea. Over the days of the tangihanga he was praised for his many contributions by a wide range of people. Yet even though he came to be acknowledged in many quarters for his lifetime of achievements, he was never one who sought honours.

He sought recognition for the strength of his arguments for the proper recognition of the rights of Māori. When he was honoured, he did not make a big thing of it. Thus, almost all of the Distinguished Companions of the New Zealand Order of Merit who were honoured in the period 2000-09 chose to “upgrade” to becoming a Knight Companion when the National Party government restored knighthoods. Ranginui was made a Distinguished Companion in 2001 but he was one of the very few who refused the “upgrade”.

Most of those who gathered at Ōrākei spoke of the contributions Ranginui had made as a Professor of Māori Studies at the University of Auckland, as a member of the Waitangi Tribunal and as a member of many committees and commissions in recent years. There were some, however, who reminded listeners of the Ranginui Walker who had stood so often to speak truth to power. I was fortunate to meet Ranginui (more usually just ‘Rangi’ in those days) in 1974 when he and Dr Patu Hōhepa were a dynamic duo in the leadership of the Auckland District Māori Council - though the New Zealand Māori Council at the time was a conservative body - National Party-oriented and publicly in favour of sporting tours to and from South Africa.

The Auckland District Council took a very different line. In 1975 the Honourable Matiu Rata appointed him to chair an Advisory Committee to the Minister of Maori Affairs on social and welfare needs of Maori and Pacific Islanders in Auckland to which I was also appointed. I became immediately aware of his incisive thinking and his determination to challenge structural inequalities whenever he could. I was impressed too with the role he created for his skills of analysis.

Listener Columnist

He helped to organise the Young Māori Leaders Conference in 1970 from which sprang the radical activism of Ngā Tamatoa. He was not at the forefront of the activism on the streets. His role was to use the power of the pen in an uncompromising and critical tone. From 1973 he had become a regular columnist in the New Zealand Listener. It is hard to remember what an influential weekly journal of public debate the Listener was in those days. He contributed a column called Kōrero .

For 15 years his sustained critical comments ensured that no Pākehā could slip back into the complacence of the 1960s when our leaders had assured us that New Zealand was the happiest multiracial society in the world, and that anyway we are “all one people” here. Those Kōrero columns might have been difficult to track down except that Ranginui had many of them published as “Ngā Tau Tohetohe: Years of Anger”(Penguin, 1987).

There one can read his regular flow of contributions aimed at enhancing and promoting Māori self-determination. During those 15 years Ranginui made the most of his post in the Centre for Continuing Education. This was an academic hinterland really but Ranginui took every possible opportunity to advance what we would now call a kaupapa Māori approach to teaching, learning and research. His text “Ka Whawhai Tonu Mātou: Struggle Without End”(Penguin, 1990 – revised 2004) was at the heart of his courses in Continuing Education.

He was certainly more than just an academic though. In a number of court cases in which Ngā Tamatoa and other activists were facing criminal charges, it was to Dr Walker they would turn to provide expert evidence in support of their actions. A particularly significant example was his evidence to the court in support of “He Taua” in 1979 when a group of Māori students physically confronted the engineering students in what became known as the Haka Party Incident.

As Hone Harawira said at the tangihanga at Ōrākei, Ranginui was able to define the issues behind every major protest or occupation of the 1970s and 1980s: colonisation, treaty, injustice, institutional racism. Yes, he was a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, he was awarded a Prime Minister's Literary Award, and he received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Auckland. Yet he was a heck of a good critic and conscience of society. Those who Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa should certainly remember him for that.

Larry Ross Memorial Plaque Unveiled In Christchurch

- Murray Horton

Larry Ross, who died in 2012, was one of the giants of the New Zealand peace movement and the true father of nuclear free New Zealand. For full details of his fascinating life, see my obituary of him in Watchdog 120, August 2012, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/30/17.html. His Auckland-based daughter Laurie recently decided to honour his memory by getting a memorial plaque installed on a Christchurch park bench.

This was following in the footsteps of the Christchurch memorial plaques already installed on park benches for two other leading peace activists (and veteran colleagues of Larry’s), namely Owen Wilkes (see Peace Researcher 35, December 2007, http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr35-155.html) and Bob Leonard (PR 48, November 2014, http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr/48/pr48-012.html). Both of those had been organised by the Anti-Bases Campaign, with assistance from CAFCA, and both groups were happy to help Laurie in areas such as publicity, appealing for funds and with a modest donation from each (the initial sum that the Christchurch City Council asked her for was outrageous. Fortunately it was significantly reduced and she raised enough to pay for it and not be left personally out of pocket).

It wasn’t a straightforward process (these things never are; I speak from the experience of having done it twice before). ABC had got Owen and Bob’s plaques onto benches in areas that held great personal significance to each of them, in suburbs where they had lived – in Beckenham Park for Owen, and Centaurus Park for Bob. Larry lived in New Brighton for 40 years and worked there for decades as a fulltime peace activist, so Laurie’s first hope was to have the memorial plaque installed on a bench there, facing the sea. But that didn’t work out, followed by another false start, before the matter was settled. And it really was third time lucky, because Larry’s plaque and bench are in the best, and most appropriate, spot – in the Botanic Gardens, on the Avon River bank, and very close to the Peace Bell.

It was officially opened on a gloriously sunny Sunday morning in late April. A good crowd attended; there was music; the Peace Bell was rung; well known peace activist (and friend of Larry’s) Kate Dewes was MC; and there were a number of speakers, including Laurie and three current or former politicians – Christchurch’s Mayor Lianne Dalziel, wearing her nuclear free shirt (she knew Larry from her previous life as a Labour MP); Christchurch Labour MP Ruth Dyson, (who also read a message from Labour Leader Andrew Little), and former Christchurch Labour MP Margaret Austin. Lianne Dalziel, who performed the actual unveiling with Laurie, also read a message from Wellington’s Mayor Celia Wade-Brown.

It was just the sort of occasion that Larry would have loved and at which he excelled. Next time you’re in the Gardens, pay Larry a visit (and make a trip to the suburbs to visit Owen and Bob). And when you’re sitting on their benches, remind yourself of the huge contribution that Christchurch people (others include the incomparable Elsie Locke) have made to the local, national and international peace movement.