CAFCA has been around for nearly 50 years, so, as you might expect, we've accumulated quite a bit of history in that time. The interesting thing is that it comes chasing us, not the other way around. And, despite the fact that it often involves events and people from decades ago, the inquiries about it are very recent. Here are some examples.

Owen Wilkes Book

Owen Wilkes, internationally renowned peace researcher and CAFCA founder, killed himself in 2005, aged 65 (my obituary of him is in Watchdog 109, August 2005). In late 2020 I was contacted, out of the blue, by an octogenarian Kiwi expat in Oslo, who had been a good friend of Owen's in Scandinavia in the 70s and 80s and then for most of the rest of Owen's life.

In 1978, I and my then partner (Christine Bird, a fellow CAFCINZ founder and first Chairperson of CAFCA) accompanied Owen on a "spy trip" through Norway's northernmost province, the one bordering the former Soviet Union, which gave me my first glimpse of the sort of domes with which I've become so familiar at the Waihopai spy base during the last 30 plus years (the domes that are scheduled to be dismantled and decommissioned in 2022, along with the satellite interception dishes which they conceal).

We met this expat Kiwi whilst in Oslo. In his 2020 e-mail he told me had a collection of letters from Owen and other material, and offered them to me, which I accepted (since then he and I have become regular correspondents on a whole range of subjects, and he has also made a generous donation to CAFCA).

I wrote up the Oslo package of material in Watchdog 156, (April 2021) That turned out to be only the beginning of a whole new project. In September 2021 I was contacted, also out of the blue, by May Bass, who was Owen's partner at the time of his death (they were together for a dozen years). I'd had no contact with her since the year of Owen's death.

May said: "A friend of mine rang me to let me know there was an article about Owen in the April edition of Watchdog. She sent me the magazine. It reminded me that having waited all this time since Owen's death I have still not found anyone who is interested in writing a book about him. There is a huge amount of material that he left and which I arranged to be stored in Wellington Library. I am wondering whether you might have some ideas?". I told May that I wouldn't be the writer of any such book (she was not the first person to suggest it), because I don't have the time necessary to do it justice.

But I sent her a whole lot of stuff about Owen that has come out since his death (such as various Watchdog articles, and the reissued 1980s' documentary "Islands Of The Empire"). Within a remarkably short period of time, the whole thing fell into place. I mentioned the book idea to a newly joined CAFCA member (a 1980s' Wellington peace activist and colleague of Owen's, with whom I'd lost contact for decades). He took it upon himself to contact a professional writer (Mark Derby, who has had several books reviewed in Watchdog by Jeremy Agar, most recently his "Petals And Bullets" in issue 140, December 2015).

Mark accepted with alacrity. He and May Bass will be co-editors. It is planned to be a collection of essays about Owen by a number of writers, to be published in late 2022. My 2021 Christmas holiday project was writing an 18-page essay on Owen and the anti-bases campaign - which long pre-dates the actual organisation called the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC). This is what gave birth to what is now CAFCA (Owen was a founder of both CAFCA and ABC). This book is very much a work in progress, so I can't report any more than that at present. My essay involved researching from a whole lot of sources, including good old Watchdog.

As for May Bass, she was also a leading peace activist back in the day (she and Owen were peace movement colleagues as well as partners). She was a leading figure at the very earliest Waihopai spy base protests, those held in the late 1980s before it was built, specifically the on-site 1988 women's camp that involved some of the most nationally prominent, not to mention hair raising, incidents of the whole 30 plus years of protests.

She has never been back to Waihopai since (i.e., she's never seen it since the spy base was actually built) and had also moved on from the peace movement decades ago. But, in the course of our detailed communications about the Owen book project, I also invited her, in my ABC capacity, to come and speak at the January 2022 Wahopai protest, to deliver a message of solidarity and continuity from the original Waihopai campaigners to today's ones. She accepted. But sadly, just days beforehand, ABC had to cancel the protest - for the first time since 1988 - because of the changing covid situation. So, it was not to be.

CAFCA Thesis

I can't say much about this one yet, because at the time of writing the thesis is yet to be marked, finalised and uploaded online. So, it remains confidential for now. But what I can say is that it is written by a former CAFCA Committee member, is a study of CAFCA rather than a history and - for a variety of reasons - it took ten years, rather than the usual seven. A number of the people quoted in it were contacted at CAFCA's 40th anniversary celebration, held in Christchurch in 2015.

I've read the second version of it and met the writer in person to discuss it (at the time of writing it remains to be seen whether there will be a third version). It is always an interesting experience to read material written about yourself by somebody else (by "yourself", I mean me personally and CAFCA collectively). It contains both praise and criticism and reaches conclusions that are generally positive. I would like to be able to say more about it but that will have to wait until it is finished, later in 2022.

The Long March

CAFCA's founding activity was the 1975 South Island Resistance Ride, which, in turn, was directly inspired by the 1974 Long March. Eleven New Zealanders (including Owen Wilkes and me) took part in this three-week-long bus odyssey from Sydney to protest against the US North West Cape naval communications station at the westernmost point of mainland Australia. The actual trip, let alone the protests, was an epic in itself.

For example, we crossed the Nullarbor Plain, several hundred kilometres of it, before that highway was sealed. Here's what I wrote in Canta* 13 (24/6/74): "I developed a special affection for the Nullarbor - sitting over the axle, bumping your guts out all day and night, ploughing through sheets of water, staring through dust-caked windows at twisted scrub right down to the road's edge, and then a horizonless vista of treeless plain" (*Canta is the University of Canterbury student paper. I was its Editor in 1974).

In 2014, I was contacted out of the blue by an Australian expatriate filmmaker in the US regarding a never finished film of the Long March. It had languished for 40 years. CAFCA put a small sum of $US into the film to enable it to be finished and screened it at our 40th anniversary celebration in 2015. This historic film can be viewed online.

In December 2021 I was contacted by Jo Vallentine, a veteran and indefatigable Australian peace activist. I'd shared adventures with her in Australia, NZ and the Philippines decades ago when she was an independent Senator. She sent me a solidarity message for ABC's January 2022 Waihopai spy base protest (which had to be cancelled): "Let's hope that the whole base is dismantled, and all the others, which are a stain on Aotearoa's peaceful, clean, green image!!"

"However, we in Oz. are further enmeshed than ever, sadly, with the AUKUS announcement. Three tired old, stale white males (Biden, Johnson, Morrison. MH) concocting yet another military entanglement. Shameful. So, in the west, where nuclear submarines can be ported, we are ramping up activities in opposition.... Same old, same old, but fortunately a cohort of younger activists on board!".

I asked her: "Does the Aussie Navy still have a base at Cockburn Sound? I remember protesting there on the 1974 Long March to NW Cape". She replied: "...yes. Stirling naval base at Cockburn Sound is one of the few Oz ports able to take submarines. We've already had a British one visit since the dreaded AUKUS announcement and, of course, we were at the gates again. WA is in the front line of opposition to AUKUS because of that base, only 40 minutes from my home! Amazing that you were on that Long March - I was overseas then, and missed all that hard yakka and fun!"

So, I sent her the link where she could view the Long March film. She replied: "I so much enjoyed looking at the Long March video - I hadn't seen that footage before... I've just circulated it to a few of the old die-hards, as well as to more recent activists against US bases. So much appreciated the fact that after 40 years, the footage was garnered into a very watchable record of 1974 actions - well done!

I will look forward to your book about Owen - what a champion he was!"

Here was CAFCA being able to give back, in gratitude to the Australian event that inspired our own founding event (and, hence, our existence ever since). 40 years later we put up the piddly amount of money needed to make the film of that epic 1974 trip a reality. Nearly 50 years later we were able to bring it to the attention of one of Australia's best known and longest serving peace activists, and to a new generation of Australian anti-bases activists. That is a wonderful contemporary example of trans-Tasman international solidarity.

Pine Gap

The Long March was not the only very recent example of CAFCA being able to give back to our Aussie mates in trans-Tasman international solidarity. In January 2022 we received, once again out of the blue, this request: "Dear CAFCA comrades. In the 1980s and 1990s my wife and I were active in the Alice Springs Peace Group (ASPG) and the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition, opposing Pine Gap and other US bases in the region".

"We are currently researching that campaign for a labour history symposium on international anti-imperialist solidarity in February (2022) and wondered if you have any info on the visits made to Australia by Owen Wilkes and Murray Horton, who both came to Alice in 1987-88. I know Owen died in the 2000s, but if you are in contact with Murray could you please pass this on to him. The abstract of our paper is: Anti- imperialism in Central Australia 1982-2000".

I had neither heard from, nor of, the inquirer since the 1980s. I couldn't help him about Owen Wilkes and Pine Gap (which is one of the US covert empire's top spying and warfighting bases in the world). I have no material on Owen in connection with that - I went with him on two Australian adventures, both times to North West Cape, in Western Australia, in 1974 and 1988. Not to Pine Gap.

But I most certainly could help with my own Pine Gap adventure. In the 1980s I travelled to Alice Springs more than once and developed a close working relationship with its wonderful peace group. The highlight was my 1987 visit, representing CAFCA and the former Citizens for Demilitarisation of Harewood (this was right on the cusp of the birth of the Anti-Bases Campaign).

I was a speaker at a major international conference in Alice and took part in the ensuing big protest at Pine Gap, which led to mass arrests (the most high-profile arrestee was Senator Jo Vallentine, the same veteran peace activist I was corresponding with most recently in December 2021. See the above section on the Long March).

I wrote all of this up in Watchdog 58, January 1988 ("The Siege Of Pine Gap"). When I re-read this seven-page report, I was surprised at how extremely detailed it was, in relation to people, places and events. As the online editions of these old Watchdogs are no longer readily accessible, I scanned this article and e-mailed it to the inquirer.

He was more than grateful. "(My wife) was a full-time ASPG organiser for the 1987 action, and we were both very involved with the events you describe - so involved, in fact, that when it finished, we were too buggered to write it up. Your report has been fantastic in reminding us of a lot of the detail, especially of the Beyond the Bases Conference, all the workshops held that week, and the names of some of the people we'd forgotten".

"We left Alice for good in 2002, when I got a job at (an NSW university), and unfortunately our archives don't include the material on the 1987 action which was collected and held at the ASPG office. We are still trying to track down what happened to the files when the ASPG closed shop... Once again, many thanks. Your report has given us both a huge lift, and was a great reminder of how important it is that these stories aren't lost".

So, here we have a case where material about an Australian event has been lost or, can't easily be located in Australia, even by its Australian organisers but good old Watchdog has come to the rescue. This episode made me think back to that period of a close working relationship with the then Alice Springs Peace Group, so close that they sent someone to see me at my Christchurch home and offer me a job as an organiser (I was single then and they were offering more than what I was getting as an NZ railway worker. I thought hard about it but decided to stay here. One of those "what if" moments).

Watchdog played a much more contemporary role in this story, as well. "I tracked you down through Watchdog, reading the December 2021 issue. We actually met your late comrade Aziz Choudry in 2013 in Canada, and kept up a correspondence with him until he died. We plan to dedicate this paper to him, to acknowledge how much he taught us about social movement learning and activist research" (Leigh Cookson's obituary of Aziz is in that issue, number 158).

Now, there's an illustration of Watchdog's reach. As I said, I had no contact details for this guy, so, presumably, he accessed Watchdog online, which illustrates that it reaches far more people that way then it does in hard copy. Not only did he find us via the December 2021 Watchdog, he's in it. He's cited a couple of times in Jane Kelsey's review of "Activists And The Surveillance State: Learning From Repression", edited by the self-same Aziz Choudry. Small world, eh. Watchdog once again proved its worth, both in 1988 and 2021 (not to mention all the years in-between).

Touching The Bases Tour

Anti-Bases Campaign ABC) organised the Touching The Bases Tour in late 1990, with support from CAFCA. "Waihopai was included (in the Tour), which also took in Tangimoana, Black Birch, Harewood and an Owen Wilkes-led day trip around 'secret' Wellington. The unique aspect of this information-cum-protest action was that a number of activists from the Asia-Pacific region took part, including several Filipinos and representatives from Bougainville and Fiji…It was also a great chance to meet with some of the very activists working for a nuclear-free and independent Pacific who could well have been targets of UKUSA spying" (UKUSA is now always referred to as Five Eyes. MH).

"In fact, we really understood the personal determination and commitment of our colleagues when they insisted on walking with us to the 4,500-foot summit of Black Birch ridge in snow and gale conditions. Hardy Christchurch organisers Murray Horton and Warren Thomson became concerned that our guests from tropical climes might suffer hypothermia and worked hard to persuade them to keep their layers of woollen clothing in place even when they felt warm from their strenuous climbing" ("Peace, Power & Politics: How New Zealand Became Nuclear Free", Maire Leadbeater, 2013).

ABC's Warren Thomson reported on the Tour in Watchdog 66, March 1991. For example: "Secret Wellington. With sixty-five people crammed on a fifty-seater bus we visited the places where intelligence and security operations go on night and day, year in, year out. In honour of our visit, some buildings were temporarily declared defence areas and entry prohibited while we were there. At Defence Headquarters we deposited a bag containing some of their old rubbish. They panicked and thought it was a bomb!".

This was all re-examined in January 2022 when my wife Becky, who is Filipino, was contacted by an NZ-based Filipino activist seeking information on Rita Baua, the veteran Filipino activist who headed the Filipino delegation on the Touching The Bases Tour. Rita was dying (and has since died - see my tribute to her in my Organiser's Report, elsewhere in this issue). Becky was able to do this, using that 1991 Watchdog and was also able to supply photos from my collection, including of those Asia/Pacific delegates in the unseasonal Marlborough snow on Black Birch (most of them had never seen snow before, let alone been in it).

But, alas, there are some historical requests that we can no longer meet. In that same Watchdog (66, March 1991), Becky spotted something related to the Touching The Bases Tour, something about which I've long forgotten. On the back page there is an article entitled "1990 NFIP Conference: Critical Analysis Available". Here is an extract:

"This issue carries a report on the November 1990 Touching The Bases Tour, which included 11 overseas delegates. Nine of them originally came here to attend the triennial Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Conference held at Auckland and Pawarenga. CAFCA has never had any involvement with the NFIP movement, so it is not for us to criticise the conference. Suffice to say, however, that responses to it were decidedly mixed, as it was dominated by the 'indigenous' agenda and a focus of 'ethnicity'".

The article pointed out that Rita Baua, the Filipino activist who was the subject of the January 2022 inquiry, was the leader of the Philippines delegation to both the 1990 NFIP Conference and the Touching The Bases Tour. Rita had written a report on the NFIP Conference. "CAFCA has the full report, and it is extremely thought-provoking material. The analysis is acute. We will supply copies to interested parties for $1 (photocopying and postage)".

As part of her research, Becky asked me where is this report. And my answer is: I haven't got a clue. I wouldn't know where to look for it. But I have a fair idea what happened to it (and a whole lot of other old CAFCA stuff). Our house, which includes my office, had its earthquake repairs done in winter 2011. The whole front of the house - four big rooms, including the office, with all of CAFCA's files - had to be 100% emptied out for that to happen. Stuff deemed essential was stored in the garage and came back inside once the repairs were done.

Stuff deemed superfluous was dumped, with the Committee's approval (after no other home could be found for it. We unsuccessfully tried the University of Canterbury library, with whom I'd previously archived non-CAFCA historic material. But it had its' own major problems in 2011 amid the chaos of citywide devastation and thousands of ongoing quakes).

From re-reading my 2011 Organiser's Report, I see that I made no mention of this at the time. So, I make a belated confession that, in extremis and with no alternative, CAFCA dumped some historic material. Sad but true. What is the most striking thing to me is that, in 1991, $1 was sufficient to cover "photocopying and postage". CAFCA prides ourselves on keeping costs down but, I'm afraid, you won't get anything from us for $1 these days.

SIS File

To the best of my knowledge, CAFCA remains the only organisation to have received the file held on it by the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), as opposed to SIS files held on individuals within CAFCA, such as myself and Bill Rosenberg. We got our file because, as an incorporated society, CAFCA is a "legal person" and therefore has legal standing when applying for such things. By contrast, ABC is simply a common or garden group with no such legal standing and is therefore not eligible to apply for any SIS file on it.

I have had my own personal SIS file for more than a decade. The CAFCA file received extensive mainstream media coverage when it was released, plus I wrote it up in great detail in Watchdog. But I've never done the same for my own file (and, to be honest, probably never will. There are plenty more pressing, not to mention contemporary, issues to be written up).

But that doesn't mean that my SIS file is of no interest. This was brought home to me when I was recently contacted by an old friend and veteran colleague who wanted access to it as part of research for a planned book on the history of State surveillance in NZ. This is all very much a work in progress, so I won't give any more details at this stage about the project.

In January 2022 we duly met in person and the researcher/writer spent several hours going systematically through the several hundred pages of my file (it fills one file box. By comparison, the SIS has said that its file on Owen Wilkes - most of which it continues to withhold from public release - occupies six volumes). I hadn't looked at it, let alone read it, for many years, so it was fascinating to see its impact on another person and to be reminded of some of its contents.

For example, there is an international dimension. It includes two 1977 letters between the Directors, no less, of the SIS and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) about me, relating to the fact that I had been recently living in Sydney and had been politically active with Australian progressive groups during a particularly turbulent time in Australian political history, following the 1975 bloodless "constitutional coup" which overthrew the Whitlam Labor government (once again the spies were obsessed with the communist connections of those groups).

And I was recently reminded that my SIS file, now decades old, is still of interest to the mainstream media. This is the opening of a December 2021 Otago Daily Times feature on spying and security agencies: "The first entry in the spy agency file on Murray Horton is from when he was 16 years old. During summer holidays in Christchurch, Horton and a school friend penned a piece on Communist China that found its way into the New Zealand Woman's Weekly. From that moment in the mid-1960s, Horton was on the radar of New Zealand's intelligence agencies".

"He did not see the file until about 2010. By then, the New Zealand Security and Intelligence Service (SIS) had started releasing information. So, he sought the files held on himself and on the Coalition (sic) Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA), of which he is the organiser. The five file boxes revealed Horton and others were followed for decades, organisations were infiltrated, and everything was noted down".

"'When they released it ... it contained all sorts of tittle-tattle about third parties who were nothing to do with us ... 'So and so is fond of a drink', 'So and so is having an affair' - these were named individuals,' Horton exclaims" ("Spying On Whom?", Bruce Munro, 6/12/21) There are some factual errors in just that short extract, so if you want to refresh your memory about the SIS spying on CAFCA, and me, check out my article "SIS Spied On CAFCA For Quarter Of A Century" in Watchdog 120 (May 2009).

As for my schoolboy co-author of that "piece on Communist China", being named in my SIS file hasn't done him any harm. He is now a highly respected academic at the prestigious Stanford University in the US. When I showed him the clipping in the file, his only response was: "God, it's that photo of me with the dorky glasses". However, it would appear that fashion crime is not sufficiently heinous to get you spied upon. There is no SIS file on him.

The OIC's Stephen Dawe

Watchdog readers are very familiar with the Overseas Investment Office (OIO), which is the Government body charged with "regulation and oversight" (read "rubber stamping") of foreign investment applicants. It flies below the radar with a vanishingly low public profile, for such an important body. There is no one public figurehead - its newsletter comes to us from the rivetingly titled Head of Regulatory Practice and Delivery, Land Information New Zealand. The monthly Decisions are sent to us by Operations & Capability, Overseas Investment Office, with no named humans involved.

It was not always thus. Before the OIO there was the OIC (Overseas Investment Commission), which was part of the gung-ho Reserve Bank (the changeover came in 2005, when the Clark Labour government amended the Overseas Investment Act - something the Ardern Labour government has just done again).

And, from 1994 until 2005, the OIC definitely had a front man, a Chief Executive Officer no less. His name was Stephen Dawe and he was no shrinking violet. He didn't simply oversee the rubber stamping; he championed the cause of the rubber stamped. He was a tireless public supporter of foreign investment. He wrote letters to publications such as the Listener and appeared on prime-time TV shows in that capacity.

For years CAFCA butted heads with Dawe and the OIC over all aspects of the foreign investment regime, such as the legal requirement for foreign investors to be of good character. We secured case files from the OIC which showed the lengths that it went to, under his leadership, to urge Ministers to approve applications from foreign investors who were most definitely not of good character, with copious evidence to prove that.

As far as CAFCA was concerned, Stephen Dawe personified what we were up against. We referred to him in Watchdog as Open Dawe or the Daweman, because that was the laissez faire policy of the OIC to foreign investment. To put it in the contemporary language of one school of thought about NZ's covid response, the OIC wanted to "let it rip".

Over those 11 years we had plenty to do with Stephen Dawe, although we only ever met him once - he came to my home (which is also the CAFCA office) one time in the 1990s, at his request, to meet Bill Rosenberg and me. He was a perfectly personable fellow. And then he was gone - the OIC became the OIO in 2005 and he left the country to take up a senior position with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC, where he remains today. CAFCA got on with dealing with the OIO, which also continues to this day.

In my 2005 Watchdog obituary of Green Party Co-Leader Rod Donald MP, I mentioned the number of tributes to Rod that CAFCA received, with requests to pass them on to his family. "The most surprising one came from Stephen Dawe, the former Chief Executive Officer of the OIC, who is now with the International Monetary Fund in the US. In the more than a decade that he and I had been communicating, on behalf of CAFCA and the OIC, we had never exchanged a personal message. But he e-mailed me, expressing genuine sorrow at Rod's death and asking me to pass that on to his family. I'll give the man full credit for that".

And that was that. Until New Year's Day 2022, when I was astonished (to put it very mildly) to receive, by e-mail, the Dawe family generic Christmas letter, full of news and photos of him, his wife, kids, parents, family, even the cats. It contained detailed descriptions of his health issues, work, travels, family achievements, you name it. In short, it was a completely private communication intended for his family and friends. There was no explanation of who any of these people were, it was obviously intended for insiders who already knew that.

I very much doubt that CAFCA was among the intended recipients. Considering that it had been 16 plus years since we'd had dealings with him in his OIC capacity (we've never dealt with him in his IMF one, let alone his personal one), I'm surprised that we were even still in his e-mail address book. Presumably, it was sent by mistake and he's probably unaware that it went to us. It served as a reminder that we're all human. And it provided a specific answer to that universal generic question: "I wonder where old (insert name here) is now?" I definitely now know more about my old adversary Stephen Dawe than ever before.