New_Zealand_Listener_09_14_2019

28 LISTENER SEPTEMBER 14 2019

I

n 1981, Trevor Richards was one of

the small number of people who

most New Zealanders instantly rec-

ognised and either loved or hated.

With his luxuriant long locks and

trademark moustache, 31-year-old

Richards was almost a daily pres-

ence on television or in newspapers,

as he addressed supporters on a loudhailer

or led protest marches. For decades, rugby

contact with South Africa had been a

political hot potato. Māori players were

excluded from All Blacks tours to South

Africa until 1970 – and were then allowed

only because South Africa granted them

“honorary white” status. Along with John

Minto and Tom Newnham, Richards was

the driving force and public face of the

anti-tour movement set up to stop sport-

ing contacts with apartheid South Africa.

Halt All Racist Tours (HART) took on

successive governments and a rugby-mad

public in its efforts to pressure the South

African government to end apartheid.

Major battle lines had been drawn three

times since HART’s founding: first, against

the 1973 Springboks tour of New Zea-

land, resulting in its cancellation; second,

against the 1976 All Blacks tour of South

Africa, which went ahead with the bless-

ing of then Prime Minister Rob Muldoon

and resulted in 28, mainly African, coun-

tries boycotting the Montreal Olympics in

protest at New Zealand’s presence; third,

the Springboks tour here in 1981.

The tour divided the nation as no

other issue before or since. The Hamilton

RIgame was cancelled after a pitch invasion

CH

AR

D

S^ F

AM

ILY

C

O

LL

EC

TI

ON

;^ B

RU

CE

C

ON

N

EW

;^ J

AN

E^ U

SS

HE

R

SHELF LIFE

THE RUGBY-MAD

REVOLUTIONARY

A hero of the anti-apartheid movement is marking

a 50-year milestone by looking at the past, present

and future of protest. photograph by KEN DOWNIE

CLARE

DE LORE

by protesters; razor wire and containers

were used to protect other grounds; a

light plane dropped flour bombs on Eden

Park to disrupt a test and specialist police

squads, equipped with batons, beat pro-

testers in Wellington’s Molesworth St. The

tour, with its unprecedented protest and

violence, propelled Richards to new levels

of public recognition.

Fifty years after forming HART, Richards

is planning a symposium in Wellington to

examine the role, limits, and challenges

facing protest movements in New Zealand

today.

Richards was born 72 years ago to

Ruth and Bill Richards and has a younger

sister, Shirley. He and his partner, Patti

O’Neill, returned to New Zealand three

years ago after 12 years living in Paris,

where O’Neill worked for the OECD. From

1985, Richards worked for the Public

Service Association and Volunteer Service

Abroad. During three years as a fellow at

Victoria University of Wellington’s Stout

Research Centre, he wrote Dancing on Our

Bones: New Zealand, South Africa, Rugby

and Racism. Richards received the Queen’s

Service Medal in 1989, is a distinguished

alumnus of the University of Auckland,

and in 2004 was appointed a Supreme

Companion of OR Tambo, the highest

honour granted by South Africa to foreign

citizens.

Shelf Life visited Richards at the couple’s

high-rise apartment in central Auckland, a

book-filled home that is usually occu-

pied only during New Zealand’s warmer

seasons.

Why are you here now? It’s warm in Europe,

where you spend part of each year ...

We’re getting the symposium organised or

we wouldn’t be here. I hope that people

who were involved in the past will come

and that it will also bring out young

activists who are concerned about human

rights in New Zealand today. Patti has

observed that if we hadn’t had the ’81 pro-

tests, we probably wouldn’t have ended

up with the very strong anti-nuclear and

homosexual law-reform protests that fol-

lowed. The first half of the 80s saw an end

of what I’ve described as “a battle for the

soul of New Zealand”. By 1985, inter-

nationalist values first promoted in the

1960s had largely triumphed over values

predating World War II.

Your childhood was pretty much grounded in

the old ways, wasn’t it, especially sport?

My father was very keen on sport and

my parents would have loved their son

to become an All Black. But during the

HART years, I described myself as a pacifist

by physique – and playing rugby wasn’t

really my thing. I liked running, though

“For the short-back-

and-sides people who

supported rugby, long

hair was a symbol of wild

living, sexual promiscuity

and revolutionaries.”