Exclusive
Without even a whimper, the New Zealand League of Rights, this country’s oldest far-right pressure group, has closed its doors, unnoticed, unmourned.
For three decades, the league was the most active, effective group of its kind with the biggest membership, peddling a mix of Jewish conspiracies, anti-communism, white supremacy, Anglican Christianity and respectful hat-doffing to the Queen and the flag. It operated a bookstore off Queen Street, Auckland and held regular public meetings addressed by like-minded conservative overseas speakers and local politicians like Ben Couch and George Gair. It supported apartheid in South Africa, opposed honouring the Treaty of Waitangi and tried unsuccessfully to bring the British revisionist historian David Irving to New Zealand. But despite its long years of political activism, which included its supporters heavily infiltrating the Social Credit party, it was also an anachronism, a last ray of a colonial empire over which the sun long ago set.
When its last and longest-serving national director, Bill Daly, turned the league’s lights out for the last time, the moment appears not to have been marked in any way.
The league was an Australian import but its whakapapa dates back to Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, the British engineer who devised the absurd social credit monetary theories in the 1920s. According to Douglas, an economy produced more goods and services than there was money to buy them. Banks filled this resulting “gap” by creating credit. This gave the banks, which he claimed were controlled by Jews, enormous power. Douglas wrote a series of books in the 1920s and 1930s urging patriotic citizens and governments to wrest control of the banking system from “international Jewry.” Depression-era farmers in New Zealand, Canada and Australia flocked to public meetings Douglas held during international speaking tours, and Social Credit movements were formed in all three countries.
In South Australia in 1946, Eric Butler, an Australian follower of Douglas noted for his less than enthusiastic opposition to Hitler in the just-ended world war, formed the first League of Rights organisation to promote Douglas’s economic and political theories and to support the British Empire and the White Australia Policy that was the foundation stone of that country’s immigration policy until 1972. It barely needs saying that Butler had no time for Aboriginal rights, either, though in a country whose indigenous people were unable to vote until the 1969 elections, he was not alone.
Leagues were established in the other Australian states, then combined in 1960 as the Australian League of Rights, headed by Butler and based in Melbourne where the league opened Conservative Books, selling the various works of Douglas alongside hosts of conspiracy tomes and such infamous tracts as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 19th Century Czarist forgery used by Hitler to promote the persecution of European Jews. By 1970, the league had branched overseas, establishing brother organisations in New Zealand, Britain and Canada, with official links to like-minded bodies elsewhere, such as the John Birch Society in the United States.
The four national leagues came under an umbrella group, the Crown Commonwealth League of Rights, which was itself a member of an international grouping called the World Anti-Communist League, noted for holding conferences league members attended alongside such notables as Chile’s Augusto Pinochet.
When the New Zealand league was established, this country already had the Social Credit Political League, which had fought every general election since 1954 on a platform emphasising Douglas’s monetary theories rather than his racial ones. Socred candidate Vern Cracknell even won a seat in Parliament in 1966, though he lost it in 1969. This Social Credit organisation was the source of considerable League of Rights support through the 1970s, though this slowly dissipated after Bruce Beetham, who won the Rangitikei seat in 1978, sought out and expelled league activists. Some league supporters joined National, including the party’s candidate for a provincial seat at the 1978 election, but their influence was brief and never strong.
In Australia, Butler’s foot soldiers joined the then Country (later National) Party in droves during the 1970s in a determined attempt to take it over. The party, led by Doug Anthony, was then (and still is) the junior coalition partner of the Australian Liberal Party. Anthony had to battle ferociously to recruit enough non-league members to outvote the league supporters filling his membership rolls. Eventually he won, with the cute twist that the National Party ended up for a time with more members than the much more important Liberal Party.
The New Zealand League of Rights began its long heyday in 1979 when Butler despatched a young rising star, David Thompson, to Auckland to give the local league some beef. Thompson opened a branch of Conservative Books in the Canterbury Arcade building in Queen St and launched a New Zealand edition of On Target, the league’s newsletter.
On Target, sent to all league supporters, was used to raise the money that funded the organisation. It directed supporters’ activities and reported on their successes. It gave topics which supporters were urged to write to newspapers and phone talkback radio about. It listed the frequent meetings around New Zealand which supporters were invited to attend with friends to hear visiting or local speakers. If today’s Internet had existed then, On Target would have been an email newsletter, which it became this decade.
George Gair, a prominent cabinet minister in Robert Muldoon’s 1975-84 government, and Ben Couch, another Muldoon minister and a Maori elected to the general seat of Wairarapa, were two of the league’s guest speakers. In Gair’s case it was in the New Zealand league’s early days and he probably had little idea of what it stood for. Gair was a liberal who would have been horrified by the league’s racial stance. By the time Couch spoke at a league meeting in 1981 in support of playing rugby with Apartheid South Africa, the league’s beliefs were very well known and Couch was severely criticised, the more so as he had been unable to tour South Africa during his days as an All Black because he was Maori.
The league was probably at its strongest in the 1980s, a decade of political, social and economic turmoil in New Zealand. It had hundreds of activists, more than probably any other group on the extreme fringe of politics, left or right. I know it had because its mailing list fell into my hands one day. It contained the names of many ordinary New Zealanders from one end of the country to the other, many of them familiar from letters to editors. It also had the names of some semi-prominent individuals active in pressure groups, business and politics. A journalist colleague blanched when I mentioned I had this list and I soon discovered why. His brother was on it. “I’m nothing like him,” my colleague hastily said.
David Thompson returned to Australia to take a leading role in the league there. He was replaced as head of the New Zealand league by Bill Daly, an Auckland printer. Daly was a pleasant enough man I met a number of times over the years. He always asked about my family and wished me well, despite the rather negative articles I wrote about his organisation. The last time we met, in the 1990s, the league was on the wane. The bookshop had closed and Daly ran the organisation from his printing works in Auckland’s grey industrial southern suburbs. He was busy trying to organise a tour of New Zealand by David Irving, at the time involved in a heated row in Europe over his claims that the Holocaust was a fabrication. A league affiliate in Western Australia was publishing Irving’s books. But he never got here, because the Australian Government would not let him in there, and he was not prepared to come all the way to New Zealand unless he was able to tour Australia as well.
I am not sure exactly when the New Zealand League of Rights folded. A little while ago, in an email discussion, Daly indicated he had tired of it. Eric Butler, who ran the Australian league for almost half a century before Thompson replaced him, died last year at the age of 90, still fulminating against Jewish and communist conspiracies. On Target New Zealand simply stopped coming out and New Zealand material ceased appearing on the Australian league’s website, which still functions. The league was a curious chapter in New Zealand politics, an interesting footnote that will not be missed in the dustbin of history.
19 Comments
December 13, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Good news, and a great writeup.
I have dim memories of my parents having run-ins with these guys. In early 80s Hamilton they were quite active and vigorous writers of letters to the editor of the Waikato Times, which would lead to harsh words at the dinner table and the clacking of the typewriter as Mum or Dad bashed out a reply.
I’m glad you mentioned the Social Credit connection. I’ve alluded to Social Credit’s anti-semitic roots before and had people look at me as though I’d uttered a slanderous lie.
December 13, 2007 at 4:15 pm
PS: if their thuggish successors express an interest in your family, it is out of intimidation rather than courtesy.
December 13, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Great news. Thanks for passing it on, with an excellent potted history of the NZLR. I wrote about them for the Listener in 1979 or thereabouts, and attended several meetings in Tauranga and Auckland. Very unpleasant they were, too, though not as unpleasant as wading through what they called their “literature”. I was the one who acquired the mailing list that fell into your hands, by the simple method of stealing it from their office while David Thompson’s back was turned. Unethical, yes. But what a fascinating read it was…
December 13, 2007 at 4:47 pm
A journalist’s source reveals himself! Yes indeed the list did fall from your hands to mine, Stephen! Much good use was made of it over many years.
December 13, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Howdy,
I was in high school in Chch when Eric Butler came for a speaking tour, and the listener profiled him and the NZLR. cant remember much else though
can any of you older folks tell us about the far right scene in Chch at the time, particularly the ‘New Zeal’ magazine, edited by Trevor Loudon (now an ACT supporter and blogger). I used to have copies but lost them. any info on those days would be interesting and amusing.
Mr G
December 13, 2007 at 6:43 pm
The main far-right organisation in Christchurch at the time was ZAP, Zenith Applied Philosophy, which was run by John Dalhoff out of his home in Clyde Rd, Fendalton. Dalhoff called himself John Ultimate and claimed his house was the centre of the universe.
Trevor was active in ZAP and may still be – just ask him as he’s never hidden it.
ZAP was a kind of cross between Scientology and the John Birch Society. It sold self-improvement courses and John Birch books. Its leaders had a lot of small businesses around Christchurch which were not noted for paying award wages to staff.
At the 1984 election, ZAP followers created the Tax Reduction Integrity Movement (TRIM) and spent a fortune on American-style literature calling for tax cuts. The material was so bizarre, being based on a US John Birch campaign of the same name, that they made no impact.
December 13, 2007 at 7:30 pm
I remember that bookshop.
Went in there on one of my awestruck visits to Auckland bookstores from the provinces in my mid-teens.
Got out fairly quickly. It felt unclean. There were a few intriguing bookshops like that in or off Queen St in those days.
December 14, 2007 at 11:53 am
I wasted several years of my youth watching ZAPpers in the square, and used to have a large collection of info and news clippings about them. they seem to have gone quiet/respectable in the last decade or so, so they are hard to spot now. Trevor is still involved though. and dave henderson (battled with IRD, recently had a film made about him) too.
December 17, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Thanks for that write up – very interesting and good to hear that they’ve finally ended. They still pop up occasionally over here in Oz, but with next to no impact.
December 18, 2007 at 1:51 am
Very interesting information. The League came up in a conversation a few weeks ago and I had no idea about it. Full of couples who modeled themselves on the Windsors from what I understand. I remember a British Israel bookshop at the Valley Road shops on Dominion Rd – I don’t think it’s there now. It sounds like they could be part of the same network.
December 19, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Added to which, they had a tendency to riddle most fundamentalist right pressure groups in the eighties and early nineties…
Craig Y.
December 19, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Hi Craig, If I remember rightly you too spent a bit of time mocking ZAP in chch in the 80s. do you stil have info/news clippings etc about the chch far right (New Zeal/ZAP/NZLR, Integrity centre etc) in the 70s and 80s?
December 21, 2007 at 11:02 am
I went into a burger bar in Chch in about 1978 and had a copy of a book called “None Dare Call it Conspiracy” foisted on me.
They had agents everywhere.
December 23, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I thought they’d dissolved into a soggy mess after the closure of the rightist Western Destiny bookshop, and the collapse of communism in ‘91.
Must say, I’m amused to see the current ZAP libertarian pretence, as the LOR and other fascist material back in Western Destiny c the early eighties wasn’t all that anti-statist. Demonstrating that the raving right is, as ever, prehensile.
December 23, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Oh- and try Paul Spoonley at Massey Albany for old stuff about the League, ZAP, Loudon, et al.
C.
March 10, 2008 at 10:10 pm
ZAP is still about – they just got old and had makeovers. Dave Henderson of course has done the best job of reinventing himself these last 6 or 7 years – but scratch the surface and he is the same old survival-of-the fittest, take what you can and pay as few people as possible, bully-boy as he always was.
Interesting too how he has somehow managed to capture the attention of the least investigative journalists that the nation has to offer, especially those at the Christchurch Press, who seem to rush around with a camera whenever Dave so much as changes his socks.
BUT, recently even they are finding it harder to pad the ego and image of Mr Henderson and his all-consuming Property Ventures Group. Two leading stories in as many weeks early in 2008, just to tell the public that he is not going broke?
Down in Queenstown the locals have been rather more forthright for several months now. Not many weeks go by when the signboards at Dave’s “Five Mile” development are not paint-bombed or otherwise defiled, local tradesmen do not want a bar of working for him, and now we are told that the development is “in a holding pattern”
I guess it is really only a matter of time till history repeats itself!
May 2, 2008 at 12:55 am
I was a ZAP member back in the 70s . I don’t agree with all johns ways but i do have to say a lot of the things john had us learn , books we read, & courses we did have only been of GREAT help to me. Better what i learnt at ZAP than nothing, as that is what i would have had, if as a very young mum & wife i didn’t have that time with john & co .I found out a lot of informative & helpful ways of dealing with life. I am not shouting FOR john ,nor against him ,only FOR my experiance..
May 25, 2008 at 2:42 pm
As an Indian right winger, who’s witness to the lack of impact the far right is making on India’s middle class, I understand why leagues like this sputter and die out.
Most right wing organisations piss off the middle class with their outrageous theories. The average New Zealander can see that Jews and communists are not really an immediate threat to their way of life. Or for that matter even a long-term threat.
In a country that is still over 80 per cent European in terms of numbers, it’s not easy to scare the public.
I strongly believe that a country should remain mostly homogenous. Japan and the Scandinavian countries etc are among the few leading nations that have zero social clashes because they are over 95% ethnically uniform. Same with China. These countries can concentrate on economic growth without being distracted by all sorts of issues.
In my country, India, which has taken PC too far, you see illegal immigrants changing the demography of hundreds of constituencies. The upshot: politicians pander to illegal immigrants and Muslims, riding roughshod over the rights and sentiments of the majority Hindus, the most tolerant and prosperous group.
That is something that could happen to the Europeans in New Zealand. As non-performing groups (i don’t want to name them, as I’m a journalist based in Auckland, and need to get around the city!), play kingmaker in elections, you’ll see the politicians trying to appease the minorities. To the frustration of the silent majority.
You’ve already seen a Muslim leader say that Christian symbols like the cross displayed publicly in Palmerston North (or was it Queenstown) are offending Muslim sensibilties.
In America, some schools have stopped celebrating Christmas because Muslims protested!
As always, there are no easy answers. Most countries turn a blind eye to illegal immigrants: the Americans need illegal Mexican workers for fruit picking and corn harvesting; the 450 million Indian middle class can’t think of waking up in the morning and not finding their Bangladeshi domestic servant doing the dishes, cleaning their house, and washing their cars; and who will drive the Auckland taxis, and take the Foodtown/Pak n Save checkout jobs and man the gas stations?
These are the selfish personal reasons why the right wing loses out in the final reckoning despite touching a spot deep in our hearts.
The New Zealand right wing should tell the people only one thing: It’s the economy, stupid!
August 11, 2008 at 10:32 am
Thanks for the clear and concise synposis on the NZLOR. And I agree with the previous comments that far-right organizations such as the NZLOR cannot sustain themselves as they invariably lack support from the targeted country’s middle class. Even if some or many middle-class people are ideologically in sympathy with some proposals from the various League of Rights from around the Commonwealth, on immigration or concessions to indigenous peoples or even anti-socialism/anti-Marxism for instance, some of the wilder conspiracy theories are just too hard to credit for a targeted and relatively well-educated middle class.
However it should be remembered that the Leagues of Rights were very much products of their time. The South Australian League of Rights, the founding league, was set up by Eric Butler in 1946, right after the Second World War, and the various state leagues coalesced into the Australian League of Rights in 1960 at the height of the Cold War. The 1940s to 60s were when there was often a fine line between conservatism, ultra-conservatism, and the radical right, when many more extreme ideas were annunciated, countenanced, and justified in the name of anti-communism.
Everything is relative: many ideas, proposals, or policies that were considered mainstream and completely politically and socially acceptable in the 1940s throught to the 1960s, especially the 1960s before the mid-decade period of 1964-66, would be considered in more recent decades and certainly today as ‘ultra-conservative’ or ‘extreme’ or ‘hardline’ right-wing ideas, proposals, or policies.
Like capitalism, the nature of conservatism has changed and indeed has divided, the most obvious division in recent years being into neo-conservatives and the more traditional paleo-conservatives; though I would venture to suggest, that even contemporary paleo-conservatives are not nearly as hardline and uncompromisingly big ‘C’ Conservative as political Conservatives were in the 1945-65 period, a period when Conservatism in the English-speaking West flourished for a time before it began to decline and concede its predominance to liberalism as the basis of the Establishment in the English-speaking West.
And the Conservatism of the 1940s, 50s, & 60s was a much more uncompromising, hardline, and different animal to the small ‘c’ conservatism of the late 1970s & 1980s onwards which is what informs and pervades ‘conservative’ parties today, and Conservatism informed and formed the basis of the political-economic-social Establishment of the West back then. Since the collapse of communism in Europe especially, today’s ‘conservatism’ is much less conservative than it was in the previous decades specified. And today’s Establishment is no longer conservative, but liberal.
That said, even in the late 1970s and 1980s the various Leagues of Rights were anachronistic, if not yet full-blown anachronisms (and indeed, this anachronistic or nostalgic quality may have been part of their appeal to some). The collapse of East European communism and the demise of the Soviet Union removed the principal ideological enemy of the Leagues of Rights. That the NZLOR had lasted as long as it did would be quite surprising to some.