Obituaries

- Murray Horton

Mollie Ostler

Mollie Ostler actually died way back in May 2000, in Sydney, but we only learned of that, via personal correspondence, in early 2001. We had never met Mollie, nor spoken to her, but she had been a CAFCA member for a number of years (until ill health and old age led her to move to Sydney in the late 90s, to join her daughter, Judy Henstock). She regularly wrote to CAFCA, and during the early 90s was an extremely generous donor to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which provides my income.

I am indebted to Judy, and to Lindy Nolan, my long standing Sydney friend and comrade, who provided the notes for this brief obituary; and also to Don Ross, of Whangarei.

Mollie Suckling was born in 1918. She became an accomplished pianist, and had been about to go overseas to study music on a scholarship when she met and married Alec Ostler, before WW11. She joined the former Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ), in which Alec was a leading figure. In the late 40s she was a founding member of the Christchurch Housewives' Union, to promote women's rights. It was one of the first women's rights organisations in NZ, winning free childcare for working women, and baby feeding rooms in department stores in the 1950s. It battled for many women's rights at work.

During the 1951 waterfront lockout (which is receiving much attention in this, its 50th anniversary year), she helped waterfront people and was one of the main organisers of support activities in Christchurch. Her only child, Judy, was born in the 1950s. "She applied Communist politics of serving the people to her work in her neighbourhood". Mollie and Alec moved into a State house, always helped their neighbours, painting houses, digging gardens, laying concrete drives, helping people to move into their houses etc. They organised their neighbours to fight with local authorities, forcing them to open public parks, dairies and free kindergartens.

Mollie was an internationalist. During the darkest days of the Cold War she made people aware of McCarthyism, and tragedies such as the trial of the Rosenbergs in the US (which ended with the execution of both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, as "Soviet atomic spies"). She publicised the views of the Korean people who were fighting US imperialism, during the Korean War of 1950-53 (a war which hasn't officially ended). "She opposed the demonisation of Stalin and Lenin which began in the Cold War" (which means that she and Alec sided with those in the CPNZ who backed China when the great ideological rift developed between the Soviet Union and China). She ran Christchurch's former Co-op Bookshop.

In 1960 the family moved to Auckland, where Alec was editor of "People's Voice", the CPNZ's former paper. She developed an organisation to buy local products; joined the Auckland Housewives' Association; was involved in anti-apartheid and Maori rights movements, and the struggle against US imperialism during the 1960s & 70s Vietnam War. She set up the Fred Hollows Foundation in Auckland in her neighbourhood (she was a lifelong friend of the late Fred Hollows). She played piano for people in her community, in nursing homes and the like. Mollie ran the former Progressive Books, which was the CPNZ's bookshop. "She lived by Mao Zedong's statement of being 'a fish in a sea of people'''. In the 1970s she went back to work, part time, in various office jobs.

She and Alec were in the thick of the extraordinarily turbulent Communist politics of the time - when China and the Soviet Union became sworn enemies, in the 1960s, the CPNZ backed China (the others formed the pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party). But the Ostlers were amongst those who found themselves out in the cold when, in the late 1970s, the CPNZ dumped both China and its own national leadership, adopting Albania as its role model (that went through many twists and turns, leading to the demise of the CPNZ during the early 1990s' "defeat of Communism". It has now reinvented itself as the Socialist Workers Organisation, which has no foreign role models, and bears very little political resemblance to its predecessor).

Don Ross told us: "Mollie had given her lifetime to the Communist Party and all the varied campaigns that it was involved in, alongside her late partner Alec Ostler, and following their departure from the CPNZ due to political differences, established with others the Struggle journal of which Alec was the editor. ... Following Alec's passing, Mollie assisted with the production of Struggle...".

Alec Ostler died in 1990 and Mollie's own health deteriorated, to the point where she ended up in a nursing home. In 1997 Mollie moved to Australia to be with her daughter, grandchildren and great grandchildren. She became close to activists in the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), which continues to support China. She lived her final years in Sydney, dying of cancer in May 2000. "She was a very determined woman with a life devoted to the ordinary people of this world".

Bruce Faithful

Bruce was a CAFCINZ member through the 1970s and 80s, during which time he was also a prominent member of the broader progressive movement in Christchurch. His main affiliation was to the former Communist Party of New Zealand (now the Socialist Workers' Organisation), which he joined in 1977. In terms of the great single issues of the day, he was extremely active during the protests against the 1981 Springbok Tour. He did his bit in all the big battles of the time. At the more mundane level, Bruce was on the board of management of the former Co-op Books.

Born in 1953, Bruce's childhood was spent in Conway Flats (north Canterbury), followed by secondary education at Papanui High School, in Christchurch. When I first met him, in the early 1970s, he was a phone technician with the former Post Office, a job he held for 19 years (until that metamorphosed into Telecom and was sold to the Yanks, with huge job losses). Bruce was a union delegate there, and also served on the rank and file committee of the then union. After the Post Office, he worked at the freezing works and at BICC Cables.

Bruce was struck down, far too young, by a malignant brain tumour. They are singularly nasty things, which can cause major and disturbing changes in personality and behaviour, en route to killing their victims. Bruce lived a year after being diagnosed (it started with eyesight trouble), but it was a terrible year, with him losing the ability to speak and walk. He died, in December 2000, at the tragically early age of 47. I hadn't seen him for years and, frankly, I prefer to remember him as he was in his prime. We offer our deepest condolences to Elaine Lally (who nursed him throughout his illness) and their children, Amy and Sean. You were a good bloke Bruce, you didn't deserve this. We won't forget you.

Many thanks to Don Archer, a friend and comrade of Bruce's, who supplied the notes for this obituary.

Frank Clarke

We never met Frank Clarke, although he rang me regularly, and we know absolutely nothing about him personally. Frank, who died in October 2000, of emphysema, was the leading figure in Auckland's Fair Deal Coalition. Throughout the lean and mean 1990s the FDC was amongst the most active groups anywhere in the country fighting the Tory inheritors of Rogernomics. They fought on all the poverty fronts - housing, health, education, unemployment, benefit cuts, etc, etc - and they fought the big foreign control issues, such as the illfated MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment). CAFCA and FDC worked on common causes for several years, and it was FDC which organised my 1999 visit to Auckland (as part of a North Island speaking tour). In that case, the actual nuts and bolts work was done by John Miller. We mainly knew the FDC by its idiosyncratic newsletter, with wonderfully archaic cartoons, which arrived in an envelope stuffed to overflowing with inserts. Frank would ring me to find out what we thought about the latest issue.

We haven't had any dealings with FDC for a couple of years now and are not sure if it still functions. But even if it doesn't, it gave birth to some wonderful offshoots, such as the magnificent Water Pressure Group, which is very much alive and fighting, at every step of the way, Auckland's corporatised pay as you go domestic water supply. That particular group is an inspiration to the rest of us. So thanks, Frank, we never knew you but we were in the same fight. One that was well worth it.

Sumner Peace Group

The demise of the Sumner Peace Group, which decided to discontinue in February 2001, marks the end of an era. In the golden years of the New Zealand peace movement, the 1980s, every town and every suburb in all the cities had its own peace group. This was one of the major secrets of the success of that movement in getting New Zealand nuclear free. But Sumner carried on long after virtually everyone else had long since disbanded (there are now no other geographic peace groups in Christchurch; I personally am aware of only a handful in the country as a whole). Probably the reason that Sumner lasted so long was that its members lived in a compact physical area, with a strong sense of identity (I have a keen memory of attending a packed public meeting in Sumner, in the early 1990s, on an environmental/foreign control issue, and not being allowed to vote because I was one of those "from over the causeway"). That core group was also more stable and committed than most other peace groups; at its birth, in 1981, it could call on a number of people, already middle aged to elderly, with a long background of activism in political parties and a whole raft of social justice groups. The collective age of its membership was what led to its demise, one which has been charted in individual Watchdog obituaries, most recently for Mary McAlpine (see number 95.Ed.) and Dulcie Stocker (#92). Whole families were in the group and whole families have died - for example, both Peter Stocker and Bruce McAlpine predeceased their wives.

The Sumner Peace Group was a Christchurch institution throughout the 20 years of its life. Yet it was a most modest institution, never pushing itself forward. I never once attended one of its meetings, nor did I ever personally meet more than a few of its active members. It was a CAFCA member from 1989 until its demise, but our relationship went back further than that. For the first decade of its life, the Stocker family was CAFCA's point of contact with the Group. For many years, up until its demise, it pledged $25 per month to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which provides my income (something which Dulcie Stocker also did individually). It had a much appreciated close relationship with the Anti-Bases Campaign, contributing some quite superb desserts to various ABC fundraisers held throughout the 1990s. It donated money to ABC activities, such as Waihopai spybase protests.

And its members continued to be involved with all manner of other groups - Mary McAlpine, for example, was a tireless worker for Jim Anderton, the New Labour Party and the Alliance from the time he quit Labour in disgust. Corso could not have done its innumerable mailouts from that freezing bloody old building in Barbadoes Street without the continued active involvement of the "little old ladies" of the Sumner Peace Group. Dulcie Stocker put her heart and soul into Corso, working as a volunteer nearly up until her death, and always making sure those mailouts were fed with her wonderful homemade bran muffins.

Upon being informed of the group's demise, I asked Jean Stroud, its secretary, for some material for this obituary. Her reply was succinct and worth including in full:

"The Sumner Peace Group was formed in 1981 and disbanded in 2001. The group was largely a support for other activist groups. Among our activities were

  • lobbying MPs on issues as they arose.
  • donating money to a range of peace and justice organisations.
  • attending marches and demonstrations as a group.
  • sharing concerns about peace and disarmament issues with a group of likeminded people (the fellowship was important to us).
  • remaining focused on issues - sharing information.

"Jean Thompson ran our meetings for 20 years, in an efficient and friendly way. Others in the group were Marjorie Ockenden, Ferne Every, Eric Johnson, Ailsa Jackson, Dorothy Perkins, Eileen Witherford, Peter Mower, Alison Dalley, June Stroud and many others who are no longer with us".

Modest to the end. Without groups and individuals such as them, the peace and social justice movements in this country could not have achieved half of what we have done. Many thanks for the years of anonymous but vital work. And enjoy your retirement. We'll miss you.

Kate Sheppard Women's Bookshop

We note with sadness the closure, in March 2001, of the Kate Sheppard Women's Bookshop. For the 19 years of its existence (15 of which were on the Manchester Street site), it was a Christchurch institution. Named after the 19th Century mother of New Zealand women's suffrage, it was an excellent specialist bookshop run by, for and of women. It was also a very good progressive bookshop. In recent years it was one of three Christchurch bookshops to stock Watchdog (although it must be said that it never sold anywhere near as many as the other two. That didn't matter - I regarded it like a compulsory savings scheme, somewhere I knew that I could always retrieve a couple of spare copies if we ran out). The shop, and the genial manager, Ann Rowlands, wore its political heart on its sleeve. Whenever I called in there to deliver new issues or collect money (or unsold copies) she was always ready to discuss the general state of the world, and point me in the direction of new reading material. She regularly provided tables of books at the succession of GATT Watchdog and APEC Monitoring Group public meetings held in Christchurch throughout the 1990s.

Running a specialist bookshop in an out of the way part of the inner city eventually became too much of a grind, and the decision was made to close. Sadly there were no takers to set up a new bookshop on the site. Kate Sheppard lasted a very long time for a shop of that kind, and it served the city well during its two decades of life. Ann is off for a well earned overseas holiday, and we wish her well for the future.

NZ Trade Union Federation (TUF)

Isn't it interesting, sitting here in the first year of the 21st Century that ends in 1, to reflect on how many significant events in 20th Century New Zealand history happened in years that ended in 1? In 1941, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Those two events led directly to the defeat of both Germany and Japan, and the birth of the Communist Bloc and the American Empire, both of which were to have profound ongoing effects on New Zealand for the next half century. 1951 saw the much mythologised waterfront lockout, which was a titanic struggle, ending in defeat for NZ militant unionism. 1981 saw the equally mythologised Springbok Tour protests, which also ended in short term defeat for the anti-tour movement, but was a vital part of the global war that eventually saw apartheid destroyed. Both 1951 and 1981 are being heavily commemorated and dissected this anniversary year.

Then there was 1991, which was the year of the Employment Contracts Act (ECA) and the intended death blow for all New Zealand trade unionism. Nobody is commemorating its tenth anniversary, nor is the corporate media running rose tinted reminiscences about it. Perhaps it's all a bit too recent and raw. 1991 was the zenith of the Douglases - Sir Roger and Ken. Whilst the Black Knight and his successor disciples (including Think Big convert, Bill Birch, the ECA architect) Rogered everything in sight, "Communist" Ken lay back and thought about Mother Russia. 1991 was the last year in which Kiwi workers, in their hundreds of thousands, were politicised, organised and ready to fight, specifically by way of a general strike (I know, I was a grassroots union official that year). But no, the NZ Council of Trade Unions (CTU), under Ken Douglas' "leadership" proclaimed that "you can't fight the Government", and rolled over and very convincingly played dead.

That craven capitulation had catastrophic results for both NZ workers and unions. Under the impact of the ECA (which remained in place until 2000), some unions disappeared altogether, all were hobbled, union membership plummeted, and a whole generation of workers grew up who knew nothing of unionism. They had to take their chances in the "take it or leave it" world of contracts, casualised work and mass unemployment that was the 1990s.

But out of those ashes arose a new union grouping, one dedicated to defending workers' rights and advancing their interests. The NZ Trade Union Federation (TUF) was born before the decade was half over, comprised of mainly blue collar unions that could no longer stomach the gutlessness of the then CTU leadership. From Day One, although it had a membership of thousands, TUF knew that it would struggle in terms of numbers and money. The biggest unions (such as the Engineers and the Public Service Association) remained firmly in the CTU, and wedded to its non-political, partnership-with-employers, service model of unionism. TUF was committed to being both political and an organising model of unionism, building links with the broader progressive movement, and actively campaigning on issues.

Throughout that entire period, we had nothing to do with the CTU, but TUF was in the thick of everything. Wearing my various hats, I had numerous connections with it - TUF was a member of both CAFCA and the Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA). TUF was a major partner of GATT Watchdog and the APEC Monitoring Group in all aspects of the fight against the cargo cult of unrestricted free trade (one which still has its slavish adherents at the highest levels of the present Government). TUF was involved in all the campaigns that arose out of the bungled 1996 break-in at Aziz Choudry's house by agents of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS). TUF and the National Distribution Union (NDU) waged a major, successful, campaign to preserve remaining tariffs on textiles, footwear and clothing after National/New Zealand First destroyed the car assembly industry with the stroke of a pen, in 1998, and the Tory ideologues' policy was for all tariffs whatsoever to be dropped. TUF fought the conversion of prisons to factories, producing prison labour footwear to undercut what was left of NZ's shoemakers. TUF was our partner in many campaigns that were both fun and effective - its last President, Maxine Gay, was a Roger Award judge for several years (including this one), and was the guest speaker at CAFCA's 25th birthday party, in 2000. When PSNA toured Leonor Briones, the then President of the Philippines' Freedom from Debt Coalition, through NZ in 1995, TUF was involved. Both Leonor and I had the privilege of speaking to its national conference, in Wellington. In 1999, when PSNA toured Crispin Beltran, chairperson of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU - May First Movement), TUF was the co-organiser (the NDU played a major role in that tour). In 2000, PSNA donated $1,0000 towards sending Michael Gilchrist, TUF Secretary, to the annual KMU May Day activities, in the Philippines.

As the 1990s wore on, there arose more and more CTU/TUF cooperation (although only at the regional, never the national level. Memories were too bitter to permit that). A united approach was needed to confront the relentless attacks on unions and workers. Eventually, thank God, the CTU leadership changed - Douglas left, along with the equally lamentable Angela Foulkes (Maxine Gay presented a stark contrast to Foulkes, in every conceivable way). Ross Wilson (a leader of my old union when I was a railwayman) is now CTU chief, and there has been a marked change of emphasis. The CTU has rediscovered struggle; it has rediscovered strikes and pickets (see the article on the wharfies' struggle against Carter Holt Harvey elsewhere in this issue. Ed.); it has rediscovered the organising, rather than the service, model; it has rediscovered union unity; and it is re-examining its shameful acceptance of globalisation, unrestricted foreign investment and free trade. It's got a long way to go (in areas such as still putting faith in the Labour Party), but it's the most encouraging news to come out of the union movement in more than a decade.

As the Millennium ended (the very last day of it being marked by the death of Christine Clarke on a Lyttelton union picket line) and the Labour/Alliance government replaced the ECA with the better (but not by much) Employment Relations Act, the boot came off the throat of the Kiwi worker a bit. Throughout its existence, TUF had been struggling with the shortage of both money and members. So a decision had to be made. There was an obvious parallel - New Labour, led by Jim Anderton, had split from Labour, disgusted by Rogernomics, and given birth to the Alliance, which was Labour's fierce rival for the Left and Centre vote throughout the 1990s. But, in time for the 1999 election, Labour got back into bed with the Alliance, having promised to clean its teeth and use underarm deodorant more often. They forged the Coalition that saw them win power that year. 2000 was the year that the CTU and TUF spent negotiating a reunion - it came into effect in 2001 (to be ratified by a reunification conference later this year). TUF Secretary, Michael Gilchrist, got a job with the CTU; the former TUF unions comprise a Left ginger group within the CTU. Indeed TUF's greatest legacy to NZ unionism can be seen in the CTU's rediscovery of struggle, of militancy, of politics.

So the TUFfies are gone, but far from forgotten. Some deserve to be singled out - for instance, Dave Morgan, Maxine Gay, Robert Reid, Michael Gilchrist, Paul Watson, and they are just some of the ones with whom we have had regular dealings. The unions in the KMU bloc in the Philippines emphasis that they are "genuine, militant and democratic". The same claim could be made for TUF. That in one of the darkest hours of 20th Century NZ unionism it kept aloft the torch of real trade unions, of real workers' struggle. "Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we'll keep the Red Flag flying here". They did. We can't begin to thank them enough.


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Foreign Control Watchdog, P O Box 2258, Christchurch, New Zealand/Aotearoa. April 2001.

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