Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: When a riot went on

Martin Lindberg

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 16:40:02 +1300

Straw Dogs, a movie about a riot

How is Straw Dogs a movie about a riot? A lynching for sure, but a riot?

Hilary Stace

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 15:59:34 +1300

At that same time in the world of feminist struggle there were huge meetings going on in support of NZ signing up to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. The new Labour government set up the Ministry of Women's Affairs and promised to sign CEDAW, and unbelievably…

Russell Brown

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 15:45:31 +1300

No, he meant Straw Dogs, a movie about a riot. And by the way, Michael Dow was also one of two owners of Record Warehouse at the time of this quote.

Thanks, Neville. No one else has pointed that out. I'll add that to the story.

Neville Lynch

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 14:15:26 +1300

No, he meant Straw Dogs, a movie about a riot. And by the way, Michael Dow was also one of two owners of Record Warehouse at the time of this quote.

Lucy Telfar Barnard

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 09:16:45 +1300

I have another weird memory from 1984, though I can't remember whether before or after. I went to Queen St to see Supergirl (the only reason I know it was 1984...). When I came out of the film, half of Queen St was cordoned off due to a bomb threat.…

Islander

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 19:54:39 +1300

Never really got any 80s nostalgia that goes around periodically,

I HATED the 1980s -aside from Muldoon & the Labour Party reneging on it’s roots-
it was just a bloody ugly time…
EXCEPT
it was also the time Maori started the long journey to reclaiming our place – ae! Even in…

Martin Brown

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 17:12:06 +1300

In today's Canvas, DD says it cost him $12000 to defend that nonsense. Which back then was real money.

TracyMac

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 15:56:19 +1300

Thank god that part of NZ is over.

Oh yeah. Never really got any 80s nostalgia that goes around periodically, except for some (certainly not all or even most) of the music.

This extends to those who get all nostalgic about demos, and the relative lack of people on streets…

Matthew Poole

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 12:15:49 +1300

I don’t think the riot was ever going to be what destabilised that government

No. It was destabilised right from the outset.

John Madden

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 10:37:08 +1300

Some nice vignettes of the era. For someone like me, born in 1951, it was all just a continuation of "idiots versus hooligans" from the '60s. The young copper in 1969 who told me not to call him sir "in New Zealand we call each other mate" was not so…

Ian Dalziel

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:38:33 +1300

polar i sing...
Better than doing a flip-flop?
pop thongs for the revolution...?

Myles Thomas

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 03:38:11 +1300

I was in the crowd and I can see myself a couple of times in those crowd shots. I was 14 and excited to be allowed out with friends. I had a plan to meet Dad at the information centre at 8. Herbs were awesome in the sun, it felt…

Geoff Lealand

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 23:20:51 +1300

Better than doing a flip-flop?

BenWilson

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 21:17:10 +1300

But could they handle it?

You can't vandal the truth!

Dave Waugh

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 21:11:00 +1300

so the vandals took the jandals...

But could they handle it?

Jan Farr

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 19:24:38 +1300

Well thank goodness for you, Russell – that's a great piece of history recorded there! I was living in Auckland at the time and knew about it, of course – but your article has filled in a lot of gaps.

Russell Brown

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 18:53:51 +1300

don’t forget this was only 3 years after the ’81 tour, lots of people had recently faced down the police in the streets (and vice versa)

I think the hangover of the tour, its symbols and the way it fed into police practice and public perceptions all contributed, for sure.

Paul Campbell

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 18:26:52 +1300

don't forget this was only 3 years after the '81 tour, lots of people had recently faced down the police in the streets (and vice versa)

Russell Brown

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 18:24:19 +1300

And great to see all the photos in the story. A bit of time travel to see those youthful pics of Andrew Boak and you.

I protested half-heartedly about the pic of me going on Audioculture, but Murray told me it was history.

Jason Kemp

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 18:13:14 +1300

There is a paragraph in the wiki entry for Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs ( NZ movie from '77) which lends credence to the idea that was the reference intended by Mike Dow.

"The riot scenes in which police with batons and shields beat back protestors closely mirrored actions of police…

Jason Kemp

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 18:02:53 +1300

I remember being in Queen St on the day at the concert. I could see the combination of alcohol & heavy handed policing was not going to work and so like many others ( I think) I legged it out of there before it got messy.

It wasn’t so easy for…

Russell Brown

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 17:37:24 +1300

to destabilise the Lange Government.

Great story — it's been a day of them. And, y'know, I don't think the riot was ever going to be what destabilised that government ...

Geoff Lealand

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 17:18:14 +1300

(As I posted elsewhere....) we had just returned from four years away in the US and UK and I recall having a conversation in Wellington with a slightly crazed American who was attempting to argue that the riot was engineered by the CIA, to destabilise the Lange Government. Heady days!

Russell Brown

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 17:10:50 +1300

A recollection from Dylan Horrocks on Twitter

Oh the memories! We left the gig before the trouble started, but back home my flatmate's boyfriend (a young cop) was watching the riot on TV, furious he was missing the chance to "break some heads." The memory of him grumping about missing…

Bart Janssen

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 17:09:13 +1300

I was at Uni at the time and I remember walking down Wakefield street after labs thinking I'd vaguely heard there was a free concert on in the square. We wandered down the street to where it joined Queen Street just as the first baton charge took place. I remember…

Russell Brown

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 17:04:29 +1300

Russell, just a small factual error in your story: presumably it was Split Enz’s 10th anniversary in 1984, not 20th ?

Gah. I'll get that changed.

Ian Dalziel

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 16:33:22 +1300

pumping irony?
only in a Kiwi riot :-)
so the vandals took the jandals...

carolijn guytonbeck

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 16:04:35 +1300

"I think it’s also worth knowing about the way that the local music business itself was almost swallowed up in the moral panic that followed the riot."

Shortly after the riots I planned an outdoor concert and was called into a serious meeting with our local head of police and…

Don Christie

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 16:02:39 +1300

Great article. I know it's a serious topic but this:

This time, I lost a jandal in the retreat

only in a Kiwi riot :-)

kiwicmc

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 15:52:18 +1300

I remember being advised by the deBretts bouncer to stay in the pub for a bit which was nice as it was already closing time. When we did eventually staggered out (they kept the bar open) and wandered up Queen St, the carnage was quite staggering. A few knots of…

Grant McDougall

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 15:52:10 +1300

Russell, just a small factual error in your story: presumably it was Split Enz's 10th anniversary in 1984, not 20th ?

Duncan McKenzie

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 14:29:23 +1300

I look back on this in the context of the times – the eighties and not long after the Labour govt was elected. I worked for the Ministry of Works – Roger D would have been plotting our demise at the time – out of the Bledisloe Building alongside Aotea…

Dave Patrick

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:59:05 +1300

I was in the centre of town that night, with a couple of friends – we hadn't gone to the concert, but were walking back up Queen Street to our car (parked somewhere up the back of Mainstreet) when we met the police line at the Wellesley Street intersection -…

Ian Dalziel

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:49:11 +1300

Straw Dogs was quite controversial around that time.
Would have led to a much bloodier ending for the riot though....

Russell Brown

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:41:48 +1300

And too many young people had seen things like Straw Dogs and it exploded.” [was he meaning Sleeping Dogs?]

Ah! It puzzled me — but maybe that's it. Although Straw Dogs was quite controversial around that time.

Ian Dalziel

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:37:18 +1300

Life’s a riot…
and, as I recall, after it all settled down we realised we had absolutely no idea where the Rip It Up van had been parked – we had to go walkabout round the area to find it, several blocks away from the running fracas thankfully….

EDIT: nice…

Grant McDougall

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:34:19 +1300

BFM used to play audio of a clearly very, er, "merry" then Auckland mayor Cath Tizard banging on at the previous week's concert about how great it was that Aotea Square was being used for big public gigs, etc. It's pretty hilarious listening.
Wonder if said audio's on the web…

peter mclennan

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:30:01 +1300

cheers for the linkage, Russell. Love the RIU scans,esp the Queen St Retail Association member Michael Dow saying how crowd turning round to see the police "And too many young people had seen things like Straw Dogs and it exploded." [was he meaning Sleeping Dogs?]

Alec Morgan

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:26:41 +1300

Hard to fault account here by Russell. Auckland Metro did a couple of articles too if I recall correctly, one focused on the specifics of Dave Dobyn’s court case.

This riot was at the back of an ugly few years in NZ history, the fag end of the 70s, dawn…

Robyn Gallagher

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:07:34 +1300

The day after the riots, I was visiting my whanau in Auckland and I remember having a conversation with my cousin (we were both aged 9) about the riot. We weren't entirely sure what had happened, but we knew it was bad. The next day my family drove down Queen…

Rich of Observationz

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 12:57:12 +1300

What was the cause? Youthful disillusion? Or a paper by an American academic objecting to "Whaling" as a thinly disguised attack on People Of Size?

Russell Brown

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 12:39:34 +1300

Scans of the original Rip It Up pages. Click to embiggen.

Public Address

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 12:39:33 +1300

Discussion from blog post.