Timeline

Note: The nature of this timeline feature is that it requires exact dates; unfortunately exact dates for some of these entries aren’t always known. In those cases the first or last day of a month has been selected, for example 1 January, 30 April, 30 September, 31 December, etc. So if you see a date below that is the first or last day of the month, especially for the earlier decades, take that precise date with a grain of salt. If you have additional details about any of these that you would like to see added, please be in touch.

2021

November 7

Talk by Rebecca Macfie, editor of Helen Kelly: Her Life

Helen Kelly was an electrifying figure in the fight for worker’s rights in Aotearoa. As the first female head of the trade union movement, she was at once a hero and a thorn in the side of those who sought to champion the values of neoliberalism. Acclaimed journalist Rebecca Macfie (author of Tragedy at Pike River Mine) has written an exceptional account of Kelly’s remarkable life and was joined by Jo Moir to discuss it. View it here.

July 20

Tooth and Veil wins 2021 Bert Roth Award

Bert Roth Award 2021 awarded to Noel O’Hare, Tooth and Veil: The Life and Times of the New Zealand Dental Nurse, Massey University Press, 2020.

Runner-up Mark Derby, Rock College: An Unofficial history of Mt Eden Prison, Massey University Press, 2020.

February 21

Symposium: ‘From Kinleith to the dole queue: workers’ struggles of the 1980s’

Speakers included filmmakers, 1980s union and unemployed movement activists, the Feisty Feckin’ Fulltime Feminist singers, and labour historians. There were intergenerational conversations and time for the audience to speak to contemporary issues.

Symposium: From Kinleith to the dole queue: workers’ struggles of the 1980s

1990

December 31

Film/Video: Shattered Dreams

Video produced by Francis Wevers and Dean Parker dealing with New Zealand industrial history 1946-51 (with the help of two grants from the Short Film Fund of the New Zealand Film Commission)

October 31

Publication

John Martin, The Forgotten Worker: the rural wage earner in nineteenth century New Zealand, Allen and Unwin, Wellington

August 31

Publication

Steven Eldred-Grigg, New Zealand Working People 1890-1990, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North

June 30

Publication

Days of Action, Bert Roth, TUHP, Wellington

April 30

Seminar

Development of Trade Unionism in New Zealand

February 28

Exhibition

Art and Organised Labour, Wellington City Art Gallery (toured other centres subsequently)

January 1

Conference

Culture and the Labour Movement (including a re-creation of the first Labour Day Parade in October 1890, an art exhibition and a film festival)

1989

January 1

Publication

Barbara Fill and the TUHP, Strike: trouble at t’mill (story of the 1899 Petone woollen workers’ strike), GP Books, Wellington

1988

December 31

Publication

Dave Welch, The Lucifer: a story of industrial conflict in New Zealand in the 1930s, Dunmore Press in association with the Trade Union History project, Palmerston North

October 31

Publication

Cathy Marr (collator and editor), Annotated Guide to the Archives of the New Zealand Federation of Labour 1937-1988, Dunmore Press in association with Trade Union History Project, Palmerston North

June 30

Seminar

Recording Oral History

January 1

Exhibition

Woollen Workers’ Strike of 1899, Petone Settlers Museum

1987

January 1

Trade Union History Project (TUHP) founded

Paul Chalmers was granted $100 to videotape long-time union leader and activist Peter Purdue.