New Zealand’s fourth Labour Party government, which held power from July 1984 through October 1990, launched an unprecedented assault on the working class, restructuring the economy in favour of corporate and financial interests. Led by Prime Minister David Lange and Finance Minister Roger Douglas, it privatised state assets, slashed taxes for the rich, imposed mass redundancies to drive up unemployment, and carried out numerous other attacks.
The essays contained in this pamphlet outline what happened, with a particular focus on how the trade union bureaucracy, Stalinism, and the Pabloite Socialist Action League (SAL) played a crucial role in enabling the Lange government’s onslaught.
The articles include obituaries of Lange, the Stalinst Council of Trade Unions leader Ken Douglas, and Keith Locke, a founder of the SAL and later a Green Party MP. A fourth article examines the curious career of SAL member Cheryl Gwyn, who became New Zealand’s inspector-general of intelligence and security, with oversight over the country’s spy agencies.
The authors, Tom Peters and John Braddock, leading members of the Socialist Equality Group, explain the political lessons that must be drawn by workers and young people from the bitter experiences of the 1980s. They present the case for a decisive political break from the Labour Party and all its allies and pseudo-left apologists, and for the fight to build a genuine socialist and internationalist revolutionary party: the New Zealand section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
44 pp