Blackball centenary
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4:32 pm, March 25th, 2008 - 10 comments
Categories: labour, workers' rights -
Tags: labour, workers' rights
The weekend marked the centenary of the Blackball miners’ strike. TV3 reported that: “Politicians flocked to Labour’s spiritual home on the West Coast to celebrate the centenary of a miners’ strike which helped build the country’s Labour movement into a political force.”
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“not a national politician in sight”
funny that
Helen Clark was nowhere to be seen either – funny that.
Yes she was Burt, there is a picture of her on the blackball hiltons dart board. Put there soon after she called west coasters feral.
But then you wouldn’t expect a middle class farmers daughter from the waikato to understand working men would you?
SOLIDARITY FOREVER, SOLIDARITY FOREVER, SOLIDARITY FOREVER FOR UNION MAKES US STRONG!
YAYYYY
Solidarity forever for union makes us strong! I love it! Man I can’t wait until may day!
Helen Clark was nowhere to be seen either – funny that.
Burt, we’re agreed on that one. I was stunned at her no-show.
Tane, you are either being disingenuous or a very poor follower of national events. Clark is not welcome on the west coast anymore. Think Timber, mining, the use of the word feral and you can probably work out why.
Oh dear Bil me old mate. I spend quite a bit of time on the coast and bro, you’re wrong. Nice try though.
T & BB:
Give her a break – was Easter. Can you imagine what her calendar looks like. She has just about every organisation in this country trying to get on it, plus the diplomatic, plus.. plus…… Then of course there are all of the political commitments.
Looking up on google, it looks like she was visiting her parents and getting a break before the campaigning starts in earnest.
Tell me – what did you do over easter?
I’ll tell you what I did. I went down to Blackball for the centenary of the ‘crib-time’ strike. What a blast. What a place. Eerily evocative little W. Coast mining village tucked up under bush-covered hills, housing a vigorous community, many working at the Roa mine further back up the valley, others making excellent salami and running the country’s best rural hostelry, all of them out in force for this great occasion. They had to pull back the folding screens dividing off the meeting area of the Working Men’s Club from the bar area, to fit in everybody who attended the day-long historical seminar on Sunday, and I can testify that plenty of them were locals and miners at that. There were even two sheepish local National politicians sitting there. But no Helen, although she would have LOVED it. At the hop on down at the hall on Sunday night, the run-of-the-mill covers band from Hokitika offered the stage to two talented unionists from Wellington, and played along to a thumping version of Solidarity Forever. I’ll be that didn’t happen at the Clark family reunion.