A New Book Hits the Hustings

"Searching for Charlie . . . "


We have been enjoying reading the recently published biography of Charles Upham VC & Bar.  We will endeavour to contribute some reflections and commentary on Searching for Charlie: In Pursuit of the Real Charles Upham VC & Bar, by Tom Scott [Takapuna: Upstart Press, 2020].

One question that immediately intrudes is "why bother".  Upham and the Second World War are "old hat" by now.  Maybe, but maybe not.  There has to be some reason or explanation for Scott's biography racing to the top of the charts almost within hours of its release. 

One of the characteristics of Charles was his self-identification as an "ordinary bloke".  Consequently when he was interacting with the "high and mighty" he tended to speak to the person as if they were as ordinary as he conceived himself to be.  In other words, he addressed people, regardless of who they were,  as if they were ordinary sheep farmers working in the back blocks of New Zealand. 

This egalitarian view of life displayed by Upham extended even to his view of the Queen. 

If her Majesty felt strongly about awarding Charlie a knighthood, she had numerous opportunities over the years to ask Charlie in person to accept one.  Every royal tour to New Zealand included Charlie in civic receptions or state banquets, and he and Queen Elizabeth were often seen together locked in animated conversation.  Pressed later about these exchanges, Charlie would only say admiringly, "Boy, she knows her horses, that girl." [Searching for Charlie, p.337]

We are pretty sure that Charlie Upham would not have intended any hint of disrespect for the Queen.  More to the point, his remarks about "that girl" would far more likely indicate a deep and abiding respect for the Queen.  It is, we expect, one reason why the overwhelming number of Kiwis would regard Upham to this day as both "an ordinary bloke" and, at the same time, someone to be held in deep respect.

A Bit of Auckland NZ History

Some Things Have Not Changed

An adequate armed defence of New Zealand has always been a problem.  In 1873, an account of "one of the greatest calamities that ever overtook the colonies" was published in the Daily Southern Cross.  It detailed 

. . . an event productive of grave disaster to New Zealand, and destructive of the ancient prestige of England and her boasted supremacy as Sovereign of the Seas.  That event was the sudden appearance of the hostile ironclad man-of-war, the "Kaskowiski," which took possession of the British warship lying in the waters of the Waitemata, seized our principal citizens as hostages, demanded a heavy ransom for the city, and emptied the coffers of the banks of all gold and specie they contained.

The consternation which, for a time, overwhelmed the people of the Province, who were made aware of this nefarious and barbarous transaction, which is utterly at variance with the laws and practice of modern warfare, may be understood by the reader but cannot be described here.  At this moment we are under the complete domination of Russia, our own guns in our own man-of-war being pointed against the city, ready to be opened upon us at any moment that the barbarous caprice of her captors may select.  [A W Reed, Auckland: City of the Seas (Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1955), p. 313.]

The news account went on for some length describing the depredations about to fall upon Auckland as a result of the hostile Russian man-of-war anchored in the Waitemata Harbour.

A Promise Not Realized

The Rise and Fall of Maori in New Zealand

In the late 1840's, within a decade of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Maori tribes up and down the country were actively involved in rural based industries and farming.  It was an economic "miracle".

We return to Harold Miller's account:

In 1847 the Lieutenant-Governor reported that the Maoris near Wellington were doing wonders in agriculture; they had "good barns, huts with fire-places, nicely-fenced large gardens, extensive wheatfields beautifully tilled, numerous small paddocks of grass and a variety of comforts".  He received in a chief's house a very good meal, "nicely cooked and arranged, cloth, knives and forks, plates, tea-cups and saucers, milk, bread, etc., etc., as comfortably enjoyed as could have been at many inns".  It was estimated that along a hundred miles of coast there were ten thousand acres of native crops; and steady supplies of wheat and flour and potatoes and pigs were arriving in the European settlement.

In the ten years following 1846, especially when prices rose as a result of the Australian gold-rushes, everybody was busy in the fields.  A few of the more enterprising chiefs erected flour mills; and even the ferocious Rangihaeata who had been responsible for the worst of the bad work done at Wairau in 1843, was reported to be organizing the making of a road through the Manawatu Gorge, in order to open up trade with the East Coast!

During these ten years something like this was happening all over the North Island--in Waikato and Taranaki and the Bay of Plenty and all down the East Coast.  In the early 'fifties a remote valley near the present town of Gisborne was reported to be producing fifty thousand bushels of what and shipping them to Auckland in its own fleet of schooners.  The Maoris were turning into very good seamen and were reported in 1855 to be practically monpolizing the carrying trade along the northern coasts.  [Harold Miller, New Zealand (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1950),  p.45.]  

The significance and knowledge of Maori enterprise and labour during this period has been largely lost.  It has been lost because of the subsequent descent of Maori into poverty, economic dislocation, and alienation.  There was both an intrinsic and an extrinsic cause resulting in this drastic change for the worse.

Imprisoned In the Past

Tribal New Zealand

The tribalism of modern Maori has largely ebbed away, with a few occasional exceptions.  Life and times in the early 19th century in New Zealand was another matter.  

Everything changed when a northern paramount chief, Hongi Hika managed to get passage to England.  Harold Miller, former Librarian of Victoria University takes up the story:

In 1820 Hongi got himself carried to England to see for himself the wonders of the western world.  He was truly astonished by what he saw but one thing especially stuck in his mind: over all England there was only one ruler!  One King George over all England--why not one King Hongi over all New Zealand?  On his way home he turned the rich presents with which he had been loaded into muskets and prepared to apply the lessons he had received. . . .

Already before 1820 the Northern tribes had ravaged as far as Cook Strait; but now things were worse.  Thousands were killed or enslaved and whole tribes were driven from the lands that their ancestors had occupied for centuries.  In 1820 when a missionary visited the Waitemata district it was teeming with people.  From the top of a hill he could see ". . . twenty villages in the valley below, and . . . the largest portion of cultivated land I had ever met in one place in New Zealand".  There were, he estimated, at least four thousand people.  . . . The people were friendly but uneasy.  They asked for missionaries and were disappointed when he spoke of delay; "Our eyes," they said, "will be all dark before that time arrives and we shall never see them. . . . " In a few months, Hongi came down upon them with two thousand men and a thousand muskets swept them away.  Within a short time the whole Ngati Whatua tribe had vanished and not a living soul remained on the tribal lands. . . . And so it went on through the 1820's [Harold Miller, New Zealand (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1950), p. 11f.]

 On the surface, tribalism appears dead and buried amongst modern Maori.

A New Tune, Or An Old Dirge

The Turning of the Tide?

At this year's Waitangi Day, the New Zealand Prime Minister, Bill English gave a couple of speeches which asserted that a quiet revolution is underway in New Zealand.  One person covering the speeches claimed that what English said was "extraordinary".  

English chose not to go to Waitangi, preferring to attend a breakfast hosted by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei. When it came his turn to speak during the powhiri, which was held inside the wharenui, he began with a short mihi and then he said, “I want to tell you why I’ve come here, to this marae.”

He said it was because of what had been achieved by Ngāti Whātua and the manner of its achievement. He spoke directly to Joe Hawke, the much-loved Uncle Joe, the man who in 1976-78 led a 506-day protest “occupation” of the very land they were on that day. Hawke sat front and centre across from English, flanked by other kaumātua, many of whom were also protest veterans. He soaked it up.

Hawke is silver haired now, a thin man with the sad eyes of age, but what draws you is the whispery smile that keeps flitting over his face, creasing the skin, puckering the lips, lighting those eyes. He leaves it to others to do the talking, and none of them leaves you in any doubt of their pride at their achievements.  English understood it very well.

"Loser" Talk

Marxist Go-Nowhere Nonsense

Alan Duff
NZ Herald

A video of teenage girls rampaging inside a South Auckland superette, robbing it of cigarettes was disturbing.  The owners are Indian. The thieves have clearly grown up on the notion that stealing beats working, and very likely been taught that the Indian superette owners rip brown people off, and not that they work very hard in making a better life for their families.

A Maori rugby team I used to support in Hawke's Bay had a similar attitude to white people. Whenever they played Havelock North - a team with no shortage of Maori and Pacific Island players - the spectators would yell and scream, "Get those rich honkies! Smash them!"

Loser talk.

Same loser outlook that girl gang has. I don't know of any Pakeha girl gangs.

Roots And National Identity

Lest We Forget

In New Zealand we are amidst a referendum on adopting a new flag.  All the portents are that the country will vote against novelty.  The alternative flag put forward for consideration to replace the old flag has been given a fair go in terms of how it was chosen in the first place as the alternative and also in the way that it has been promoted and advertised around the shop. 

But a large section of the public are unmoved.  This has been bitterly disappointing to many amongst the Chattering Classes who have approached the issue as if the debate over a flag was in fact a debate about marketing strategies.  In fact, the Prime Minister who has led the charge to change the flag, has overtly  approached the question of a replacement flag as a marketing tactic for NZ Inc.

All the polls indicate that the referendum will result in the old flag being retained, and the alternative rejected.  We imagine this will come as a great shock to many.  After all, many talking heads and celebs have been co-opted into the change campaign.  TV ads have been run with opinionistas urging us to change.  We have remained unmoved.  It's a good feeling to be part of the silent majority for a change.

One opinionista has blamed petty politics for the rejection.  Audrey Young has a point:

The First Criminal Sitting of the Supreme Court

Justice Versus Colonialism

In November 1841 a terrible murder of five people occurred in New Zealand--a woman, a servant, and three children--occurred in the Bay of Islands.  The murderer was one Maketu; his victims were pakeha and Maori.  The date is significant because it closely followed on the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in the North.  Signatures were still being secured in parts of the country further south.

Missionary, Richard Davis who had arrived in Paihia in 1824, was by now a very fluent Maori speaker.  In a letter he describes what subsequently happened:

It was Maketu's own father who came forward and gave him up.  A meetings of chiefs was called at Paihia, and Wake Nene, Heke, Tawai (Tawhai), Patuone and Pomare, all leading chiefs of the Ngapuhi tribe, discussed the situation.  Heke was furious at the surrender; he would not in the least have minded the Maoris shooting the murderer, but to pass over the whole adjudication to the British Government, was, he thought, to give up his independence.  But the others insisted that the young man should be tried according to the law that by treaty they had accepted, and sent a letter to Hobson, expressing their loyalty to the Queen and their confidence in British justice. [Cited by Florence Keene, By This We Conquer, (Keene: Whangarei, 1974), p.34.]

This incident is significant insofar as it shows how the majority of Ngapuhi chiefs understood that the signing of the Treaty meant a ceding of sovereignty to, and government by, the British Crown.  Hone Heke (of the flagpole fame) was of a different mind.  The subsequent trial was the first of the Supreme Court of NZ.  Davis was asked to be an interpreter of the proceedings for the Maori witnesses and attendees at court.

Tricks Upon the Dead

The Webs of Deceit

The cynic, Voltaire gave us a bon mot about the discipline of history.  We have often had cause to mention it in the pages of this blog.  "History," he said, "is the living playing tricks upon the dead."  He meant that history is made up and told to serve the interests of those who write, not those they write about.  He would have known.  He was part of one of the greatest mythological revisions of Western history we have yet seen.  As one of the Enlightenment philosphes he was one of the scribblers re-writing history to glorify ancient paganism and demonise the Christian faith.  He was grinding his own axe, and he knew it.  Consequently, he was cynical about the entire enterprise of historical research.

For all serious and professional historians, a good adage is, "Beware the revisionists".  It beholds anyone to inquire about any particular axes being ground.  Revisionist causes are alive and well when it comes to New Zealand history.  Central are contentions now trumpeted as infallible truth about the Treaty of Waitangi. 

Here is the debate in a nutshell.  Firstly, for the revisionists:

Memorial Stones

Humble Heroes of the Faith

Missionary endeavour and the acceptance of the Gospel by Maori have been pretty much air brushed out of recent accounts of New Zealand history.  Secular humanism is a trick the living of our day are attempting to play upon the dead.  We Christians have a duty to ensure that the past is not lost.  To that end, Keith Newman's Bible and Treaty: Missionaries Among the Maori--A New Perspective [London: Penguin Books, 2010] is a much needed corrective to the current whitewashing. 

Contained in Newman's book is a gripping story of one Taumata-a-kura, an East Cape, Ngati Porou tribesman.  He had been taken as a slave during a raid by the northern Ngapuhi tribe, but in the early 1830's found his way to the mission school at Waimate, where he learned to read and write, and was instructed in the basic doctrines of the Gospel.  He eventually made his way back to his family and tribe.

One account describes the reunion of Taumata-a-kura with his people as "aioio ana te noho a te iwi" (black with people who hung onto his every word).  Ngati Porou believed he had been lost forever but now here he was, as if he had returned from the dead.  Rumours of his return, along with his message of an "atua hou" (a new god), had reached up into the Waiapu Valley before he even set foot in his homeland.  [Newman, p. 118.]