Aotearoa through the Great Depression

Isn't YouTube a trove of information? Last year I ran across a partial episode from the documentary series, Frontiers of Dreams. This episode was about how the Great Depression played out in New Zealand.

I think most of us are aware that on Black Friday in October 1929, the US stock market experienced a catastrophic crash which wiped out the wealth of many individuals, corporations, banks, and even nations, affecting economies for a decade around the world (SMC History, 2016).

Although I knew intellectually that the Napier earthquake had occurred in 1931, I had not realised that the international economic climate had already affected New Zealand trade so badly that the Great Depression was biting VERY badly by the time of the Napier quake (SMC History, 2016). The reason that we were hurting economically was that our trading partners - even 100 years ago - could not afford buy our produce. As a nation, New Zealand could not afford to buy in those things we needed: electrical goods, fuel oil and fuels, and capital. The banks in the UK which we relied on to extend us credit were unable to fund us... or anyone else, for that matter. As a nation we were further worried about those UK banks calling in our loans: and of us being unable to pay (SMC History, 2016). The conflation of an economic AND a physical collapse must have been appalling for the whole East coast around Napier.

The video reminds us that the Great Depression scarred us mentally: as "it destroyed deeply ingrained expectations about New Zealand as God's own country" (SMC History, 2016, 0:42), and disillusioned us against our government, which "had helped workers into happy homes with cheap mortgages [but which] now stood by as the unemployed had their homes sold up by their creditors" (6:18). The "evictions were often brutal and humiliating" (6:30) with the result that "losing the security of our 'happy homes' [- as the government loans from the 1920s was termed -] would affect us for generations" (6:37).

While unemployment in Aotearoa was less than some nations, the social impacts were still significant. There was no 'social welfare' as we know it today; and the government was hamstrung by having no line of credit to borrow against. At that stage we had "an ingrained belief that there should be no pay without work" (SMC History, 2016, 3:46), so there were 'relief schemes', work camps run by local and central government, which were pretty grim. The situation was serious enough that, from a policy point of view, the coalition Government of the day called a cross-party meeting to discuss potential solutions (SMC History, 2016). In what has been a recurring theme throughout our history, Māori were largely left to fend for themselves (7:58), with an explanation by Dr Ranginui Walker.

What is also interesting is how the Great Depression made the Labour movement more mainstream. 

This twenty minute clip is well worth a watch.

Sam

References:

SMC History. (2016, April 28). The Great Depression in New Zealand [in Frontier of Dreams: The story of New Zealand]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/R0UW_j1A6x4