Chris Trotter is a living fossil. He is one of the few “old unionists” left: the educated (generally self-deucated) sons and daughters of workers who made up the bulk of union activists and were the backbone of the Labour party from its formation until the politics of personality took over.

Chris is a Dunedinite. He believes that wealth and philanthropy is not part of the NZ way of life: as he said on his comments page

You raise an interesting point about the status of philanthropy in New Zealand. And you’re right – New Zealanders are not philanthropists in the same way that the British and Americans are philanthropists.

The reason for this is, I believe, related to my statement about the sort of people who settled in New Zealand.

A great many of them – the Highland Scots, for example – had no reason to love the wealthy landowners and businessmen responsible for clearing them off their ancestral lands. The same could be said for the Irish and many of the English working class emigrants who sailed for New Zealand.

In the decade before the colonisation of New Zealand there had been a fundamental shift in the way the poor were treated in the United kingdom. The old Poor Law (which had its roots in the communitarian traditions of the Middle Ages) had been replaced by the “New Poor Law” of 1834.

The new legislation introduced the infamous workhouses (a sort of super-work-for-the-dole scheme) made famous in Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”. The whole system was administered by boards of middle class “guardians” and was heartily detested by its principal victims – the rural and urban poor.

When these folk came to New Zealand they moved swiftly to establish a system that took the responsibility for “looking after” the poor out of the hands of the wealthy and placed it instead in the hands of a democratically controlled state.

From “cold as charity” to “from the cradle to the grave” you might say. Or, from private philanthropy to collective welfare.

I’m not sure if Chris is right. Logan Campbell gave most of his land to Auckland for public parks. The Sey Hoys and the “Tartan Mafia” of Dunedin have built halls and kirks, funded research: the same groups are helping fund the Dunedin Stadium. Chris is tapping into a thread of conservative wowserism that has run through the chapel, union hall and ratepayer’s association: that is not the only thread that makes up the cloth of New Zealand. He also forgets that the same unions, before socail welfare, collectively provided for their dependents through freindly societies.

I find Chris’ suggestion that the state should be the provider somewhat neive. This decade, the state has had more strikes than most private employers. When the whale (who is not a social democrat) calls the unions because he sees a boss abuse workers… the need for collective advocacy is accepted in NZ. The state, however, is not that collective, and when the government controls a large percentage of the economy… they are too large and too blunt a force to act to make changes. Besides, the old unionists argued for self reliance, (intra) community support (the two are not contradictory) and self improvement.

This “labour” government is trying to make most people passive, dependant, and indoctrinated. “Old” labour, like Regain Democrats will (and should) vote National this election: there is no future in passivity and poverty.