New Zealand’s chapter of shame in Sāmoa

Many New Zealanders know barely anything about our country’s colonial rule of Sāmoa. It’s a history of shameful action and surprising resistance that should be better understood, writes Maire Leadbeater, in this extract from her new book.

 

An unexpected find in Archives New Zealand was a record of their surveillance of the citizens who mounted an opposition to the New Zealand government’s colonial rule in Sāmoa.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, a vibrant solidarity movement championed Sāmoan rights, inspired by the Mau campaign of opposition to New Zealand rule. Mau adopted the motto “Samoa mo Samoa” — Sāmoa for Sāmoans — and their resistance was predominantly non-violent. The Mau campaign has an important role globally in the history of peaceful resistance movements. Its leaders were influenced by the precedent set by the people of Parihaka in the 1880s.

The European colonial project was still in full swing, and the prevailing attitude of white entitlement was widely accepted, so the degree of sympathy in New Zealand for the cause of Sāmoan resistance and nationalism seems surprising. The movement was notable for the broad spectrum of people involved — lawyers, business people and church leaders, as well as left-wing political activists from both the Labour and Communist parties.

How did people come to form these critical views? There was good press coverage of the issue, but by and large, it reflected a pro-government perspective. The New Zealand Herald was positively hostile to the Mau Movement and its advocates, especially Labour leader Harry Holland and European Mau supporters in Sāmoa.

Fortunately, alternative sources of information were on offer: open-air meetings in civic spaces, more formal town hall meetings, and trades hall meetings for left-wing and union supporters. The meetings were unashamedly partisan; for example, a Friday lunchtime meeting in Civic Square on March 16, 1928 had the subtitle “Thou Shalt Do No Murder”. Union journals, the labour movement newspaper the New Zealand Worker (formerly the Maoriland Worker), the New Zealand Samoa Guardian and various pamphlets offered a rich array of information from an alternative perspective.

Detectives kept a watching brief on such meetings, particularly after the formation of the Samoa Defence League in 1929. Detectives assiduously recorded attendance numbers, speech content and resolutions, perhaps adding notes to the effect that the proceedings “were orderly” and that there were “no seditious utterances”.

New Zealand was given a League of Nations mandate to govern Sāmoa in December 1920, but New Zealand administration of that country dates back to 1914, when a New Zealand force, at Britain’s behest, took over the German radio station in the hills behind Apia.

Successive administrators thereafter viewed Sāmoans as inferior and “childlike”, and acted as though their role was to bring Sāmoans into the light of western civilisation. The Mau uprising confounded them, and they were aghast when Sāmoan and European leaders began to work together. Journalist Michael Field suggests: “It was almost impossible for New Zealand politicians of the day to acknowledge that Samoans were a people who had existed for much longer than they had, with a notion of who they were and where they were in the world.”

Peaceful Mau Movement enjoys majority support

In 1926, a well-attended public meeting in Apia, chaired by Ta‘isi O.F. Nelson (hereafter referred to as Ta‘isi) and attended by Europeans and Sāmoans, elected a Citizens’ Committee to represent and advocate for both communities.

Ta‘isi who had Sāmoan and Swedish heritage and was classed as “European”, devoted his resources, business acumen and influence in the European world to the Sāmoan cause. The Mau or Samoa Welfare League, established in 1927, soon gained the support of most of the Sāmoan population. While its members wanted more control over their lives and to reinforce their traditional forms of matai or chiefly governance, the initial aims of the movement were relatively modest. The Mau founding declaration stressed respect for constitutional authority, while calling for equal participation in the process of government.

The Mau instigated a systematic programme of non-cooperation with the administration: taxes went unpaid, the mandatory collection of rhinoceros beetle pests was ignored, and so too were obligations to register births and deaths. Mau members showed their allegiance by wearing a distinctive purple lavalava with a white strip.

Ta‘isi and his fellow Citizens’ Committee members Edwin Gurr and Alfred Smyth were deported to New Zealand in early 1928 with no prior trial. The news of the deportations engendered considerable press coverage in New Zealand and public protest meetings were organised in Auckland and in Wellington, where a Labour Party meeting crowded out the Empress Theatre to hear Harry Holland condemn the authorities’ actions.

The war of words also played out in the alternative media. Holland published a pamphlet, The Revolt of the Samoans, expressing the view that New Zealand was fortunate that its maladministration of Sāmoa had not so far led to a violent uprising: “That there has been no outbreak of violence we owe mainly to the counsels of Mr. Nelson and the Samoan chiefs and other opponents of the Government who are among the victims of its methods.”

A day after the pamphlet was published, the government released the report of its Royal Commission Concerning the Administration of Samoa, which unsurprisingly backed New Zealand’s administration and blamed the unrest on Europeans who were said to be stirring up disaffection.

In March, Ta‘isi addressed the New Zealand Natives Association, who gave him a sympathetic hearing. Although its name might suggest otherwise, this organisation had a Pākehā membership — the “native” referred to “native born” rather than Indigenous.

Ta‘isi briefed them on Sāmoa’s history, reminding them that Sāmoans had initially accepted the new administration, so long as it left them alone. However, feelings had changed when the 1918 influenza epidemic claimed the lives of a fifth of the population. New Zealand was to blame, he said, not only for introducing the illness but also for turning down much-needed help offered by American Sāmoa.

As Ta‘isi explained, administrator Major-General George Richardson overdid the pace of change. Improved health and education standards were welcomed, but Richardson’s autocratic style and his determination to impose orderly structures paved the way for confrontation.

High chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III earned the ire of the administration in 1924 for the trivial offence of refusing to cut down his hibiscus hedge when ordered to do so. Richardson punished him by banishing him to a distant village and stripping him of his title, causing grief and anger to a people who considered chiefly genealogy to be sacred. Tamasese subsequently became a leader in the Mau Movement and soon faced new trials at the hands of the administration. In December 1928, heavily armed military police descended on his home in the early morning. He was charged with resisting arrest and non-payment of tax and shipped off to serve a six-month sentence in Mount Eden jail.

Ta‘isi, who was in Auckland at the time of his arrival, was barred from greeting Tamasese at the wharf. A supportive letter he sent to Tamasese was intercepted by the police. Detective Jim Nalder was assigned the task of finding a “reliable” Sāmoan translator who would keep its contents secret. When it became apparent that the letter had been leaked, he was asked to provide his boss with a list of all the Sāmoan-speaking people he had consulted in the course of finding a translator. Nalder ended his report on the incident plaintively:

“If information of this letter has reached Mr Nelson I cannot suggest what source he received it from . . . It will be recognised that someone had to be trusted in this matter. Mr Nelson no doubt knows all persons in Auckland who could have made this translation.”

On February 27, 1929, more than 1,000 Aucklanders attended a meeting in the town hall to hear from Tamasese’s wife, Masiofo Tamasese. This was the founding meeting of the Samoa Defence League, which declared its aim as “effecting a settlement of the difficult problems that have arisen since New Zealand took over the mandate”. After the meeting, the newly formed organisation set out to conduct a series of outdoor meetings all over Auckland. By April, they estimated that nearly 10,000 people had attended a meeting and backed the resolutions to release Tamasese and cancel all such banishments and deportations.

Sir Maui Pomare, at the time a government MP, visited Tamasese in jail and was moved at meeting with one he regarded as an ariki, a patriot and a martyr. He told Tamasese that he should see his imprisonment as a “crown of glory” and said he was reminded of his Taranaki tūpuna and the peaceful resistance led by Te Whiti-o-Rongomai.

For Sir Maui, the Sāmoan issue was intimately tied to his belief that Māori could never regain the sovereignty they had lost. His hope was that his “Polynesian kinsman” might not suffer similar loss.

Tamasese returned to Sāmoa in June 1929, where he was met by six fautasi (traditional long boats) as well as a further summons for the unpaid tax for which he had just served a prison term.

The Black Saturday Massacre

On December 28, 1929, a Mau procession set out for the Apia wharf to welcome trader Alfred Smyth who was returning home from exile. Smyth was accompanied by Alfred Hall-Skelton, the inaugural president of the Samoa Defence League. As the marchers approached the wharf, the police sought to arrest the Mau secretary, Mata‘ūtia Karaunu. The marchers protected Mata‘ūtia and additional police were sent in to assert colonial authority. In the resulting mêlée, some police fired their revolvers and some Mau members began throwing stones.

As the police retreated towards their station, Constable William Abraham was seized by the marchers and clubbed to death. Police Sergeant Waterson fired a Lewis machine gun from the balcony over the heads of the crowd, and other police fired at the crowd with rifles. Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III was mortally wounded. At least seven other marchers were also killed.

Tamasese had arrived on the scene dressed in white and calling for peace. “They are few. We are many. They are guests in our country.” He was shot in the thigh and died the next day, after making a heroic death-bed appeal: “My blood has been spilt for Samoa. I am proud to give it. Do not dream of avenging it, as it was spilt in maintaining peace. If I die, peace must be maintained at any price.”

In the days and weeks following the massacre, the New Zealand media and concerned public struggled to get a clear picture of what had happened. The official reports were received with scepticism, but it was difficult to get alternative perspectives as the government moved to ban private radiograms — the only means of rapid international communication in that era. Alfred Hall-Skelton managed to get some radiograms out to Ta’isi in New Zealand and to Prime Minister Joseph Ward, who dismissed him as “partisan”.

On January 20, almost three weeks after the event, when the Tofua brought Hall-Skelton and other witnesses to Auckland, it became clear that Mau leaders had tried to restrain their followers after shots had been fired.

Protest meetings were organised across the country over the following months, particularly in Auckland where the Samoa Defence League was based. Sunday evening meetings took place in Quay Street in downtown Auckland, but town hall meetings were also held. To varying degrees, the major newspapers began to probe the government cover-up.

Detective Nalder attended a Quay Street meeting of the Samoa Defence League on March 2, 1930. The main speaker, Alfred Hall-Skelton, had spent days with the bereaved families and followed the inquest. It was a well-attended meeting with an audience in the hundreds. Nalder recorded, apparently verbatim, Hall-Skelton’s account of the events of Black Saturday. Hall-Skelton firmly believed that the violence was premeditated, and was adamant that the Sāmoan marchers used force only after the police had fired their weapons:

“There were 3 Police snipers with 303 rifles on the Police veranda. Tamasese fell with a bullet in his leg just below his groin. Deliberate coldblooded premeditated murder . . . Samoans ran to the assistance of Tamasese and they were shot down by machine gun fire. One of these men had seventeen bullet wounds and another man had thirteen bullet wounds. I counted their wounds”.

The meeting resolved, among other things, to demand the recall of administrator Stephen Allen and a New Zealand Supreme Court trial for the police responsible for the murder of Tamasese.

There was only one judicial inquiry into the events of December 28, 1929. This was a coronial hearing in Apia in early January 1930 before Judge John Luxford. Luxford ruled that the bursts of fire from the Lewis gun operated by Sergeant Waterson did not cause any of the casualties, and that the police were “justified” in the lethal use of their revolvers when the Mau marchers resisted the arrest of Mata’ūtia. However, he found that the injury-related deaths of high chief Tamasese and two other men were the results of rifle fire from the balcony of the police station. Here, the judge came to an ambiguous conclusion:

“The evidence does not show that the rifle-fire was necessary, however, in circumstances as then prevailing it is inevitable that some action will be taken which may appear at the time to be justified, but when inquired into subsequently will be found to have been unnecessary.”

New Zealand Mau supporters targeted

The Mau Movement was designated a seditious organisation and the wearing of the Mau uniform, badge or insignia became illegal. Hundreds of Mau members fled into the bush, but repressive measures failed to quash the movement, with the Women’s Mau staging demonstrations in the place of their menfolk.

The New Zealand Seamen’s Union declared that it would not work any vessel transporting military police to Sāmoa. In September, a number of public figures, including professors, clergy and mayors, sent a joint appeal to the government calling for an independent inquiry into Sāmoan affairs. Sir George Fowlds, a former minister of education, Roman Catholic bishop James Liston and Auckland University history professor Joseph Grossman were among the notables.

In New Zealand, political police detectives were on high alert for “seditious utterance”, and were kept busy reporting on Labour Party and Samoa Defence League meetings. They were hunting particularly for a “seditious leaflet” put out by the CPNZ-dominated Labour Defence League entitled “Hands off Samoa”. The one-page leaflet advocated mass action to ensure arms and soldiers could not be shipped to Sāmoa and called for a one-day protest strike. In Christchurch, a detective staked out the home of a man suspected of taking delivery of copies of the Wellington-produced leaflet, while a constable on special duty mingled with the unemployed at the city’s labour office and public squares to see if the leaflet had been circulated. A detective on the West Coast tried without much success to follow up the distribution of the leaflet in Blackball, even after the proposed date for the one-day strike had passed uneventfully.

In Sāmoa, the police intercepted Ta‘isi’s mail and raided his wife’s home (he himself was still exiled in New Zealand), where they found papers hidden in the chicken house. In Auckland, copies of two August editions of the New Zealand Samoa Guardian were seized and destroyed in the incinerator of the Post and Telegraph Department. The postmaster claimed Section 34 of the Post and Telegraph Act 1928 gave him the power to open postal packets and seize material that was of a “libellous, blasphemous, indecent or immoral nature”.

Editor Percy Andrew politely asked the chief postmaster to review the next edition before it went to print and agreed to remove a paragraph the postmaster considered to be libellous. He also planned to send his subscribers copies of the suppressed issues in plain envelopes, which he believed would evade the ban. Harry Holland told Parliament it was wrong for a postmaster to have the power of “judge and jury” to determine what was and was not libellous.

In March of 1931, another edition of the New Zealand Samoa Guardian was seized by the post office. Percy Andrew became very concerned that he would not be able to distribute his booklet Samoa in the Shadows, a “pictorial record” of recent events in Sāmoa. He asked the postmaster to advise him if the books were likely to be detained but the postmaster would neither confirm nor deny. The books were indeed seized and destroyed, leaving Andrew with unsatisfied customers. He offered to send them spare copies in plain envelopes while stocks lasted if they sent 3 shillings.

The political police were also concerned that Percy Andrew had sent a set of larger pictures, including cartoons, to the League against Imperialism in Berlin to be part of an exhibition against jingoism. Two of Andrew’s letters appear in the police archive, but they were not intercepted in New Zealand. Instead, they were sent to the New Zealand commissioner of police by the head of an unnamed overseas liaison agency.

The liaison agency covering letter is withheld “on security grounds and to protect the entrusting of information to the Government of New Zealand on the basis of confidence”. Andrew’s letters explain that his pictures illustrate “a ghastly example of what blatant Jingoism plus military force can do to a peace-loving and lovable people”. This correspondence seems to have prompted Detective Nalder to dig a little deeper into the business arrangements of the New Zealand Samoa Guardian and its editor, who was a “well known sporting writer” and neither a communist nor one who associated with communists.

Charles Cole, a Christchurch bookseller and the secretary of the local branch of the No More War Movement, also wrote to the League against Imperialism offering his view of what was happening in Sāmoa. His letter was intercepted by a “confidential source” and was considered so serious it was sent to the minister of external affairs with a police request for “discreet enquiries” to be made. The commissioner of police was supplied with a detailed report on Cole’s family, job history and political interests and connections. The report concluded: “He is not known to be a man with Communistic tendencies but is said to be a man with peace at any price ideas.”

Ta‘isi returned to Sāmoa from exile on May 16, 1933 and the lavish welcome ceremony was largely composed of some 3,000 Women’s Mau, as most of the men had been forbidden to leave their villages. Ta‘isi tried to keep a lower profile but he continued to write for the New Zealand Samoa Guardian, including its Sāmoan language supplement. His home was duly raided and documents seized, and Ta‘isi was charged with sedition. During the lengthy trial, it became clear that the administration had planted spies in private gatherings.

The judge determined that Ta‘isi’s association with members of the Mau (now deemed seditious) was proven and in March 1934 he was sentenced to eight months in jail and 10 years in exile for aiding the Mau. He arrived in Lyttelton on March 19 and was sent to Paparua prison, before being released on bail. During this exile, Ta’isi wrote long, detailed letters to Sāmoan leaders, keeping them up to date with political events internationally. Several of his letters were intercepted, translated and filed by the administration.

Labour government turns the tide

The Labour Party victory at the polls in November 1935 changed the dynamic and in 1936 the Mau was recognised as a legitimate political organisation. Ta‘isi was allowed to return home for good. Sāmoans were granted the right to elect their own officials to the Fono of Faipule, and the number of Sāmoans on the Legislative Council was increased. The Samoan Offenders’ Ordinance was repealed, ending banishments and title deprivations.

After World War II, New Zealand committed to promoting self-government for Western Sāmoa, with Sāmoan custom and tradition as an important foundation. The territory became a United Nations trusteeship with New Zealand as the administering power under UN oversight. Sāmoa did not attain full independence until 1962.

Twenty years later, Prime Minister Robert Muldoon spearheaded legislation that stripped New Zealand citizenship rights from Sāmoans who were born between 1924 and 1948, during the New Zealand administration. In 1948, legislation had introduced New Zealand citizenship as distinct from British citizenship, and Sāmoans alive at the time were included in the transfer. However, Muldoon was uncompromising in his desire to limit Pacific Island immigration. His Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act 1982 remains on the statute books. At the time of writing a bill proposing the Act’s repeal is before parliament.

In 2002, Prime Minister Helen Clark formally apologised to the people of Sāmoa for events related to the “inept and incompetent early administration of Samoa by New Zealand”. She singled out the decision to allow the “influenza” ship Talune to dock in Apia in 1918, as well as the 1929 shooting of non-violent protesters by New Zealand police, resulting in the deaths of Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III and at least eight others. The saga of surveillance and sedition charges outlined here could well be added to the list.

In 2016, Sāmoans in Auckland commemorated Black Saturday with a march from the Sāmoan consulate to Māngere Mountain, reminding us that Sāmoans remember the Mau Movement and its martyrs with pride and gratitude.

For New Zealanders, this chapter in our colonial history is one of shame that should be far better known and understood. The New Zealand Samoa Defence League was ahead of its time, and thankfully so.

 

This is an extract from The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of State Surveillance in Aotearoa/New Zealand by Maire Leadbeater Published by Potton & Burton;  $39.99 RRP Out now.

Maire Leadbeater is a veteran peace and human rights activist and happily retired social worker. In her early years, both her parents were members of the Communist Party and closely watched by the security services. From the age of ten, the SIS kept records of Maire’s activities. Her three siblings also came under scrutiny, particularly her brother Keith, a Green Party Member of Parliament for twelve years. Maire was active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament for many years, and in the 1990s was spokesperson for the Auckland East Timor Independence Committee. She is currently active in West Papua Action Auckland.