Abstract:
This thesis investigates the attitudes of New Zealand newspapers to the social and
economic tensions exacerbated by the emergence of a newly assertive labour
movement in 1890, culminating in the August-November Maritime Strike, and the 5
December General Election. Through detailed analysis of labour reporting in six
newspapers (Evening Post, Grey River Argus, Lyttelton Times, New Zealand Herald,
Otago Daily Times, Press) this thesis examines contemporary conceptions of New
Zealand society and editors’ expectations of trade unions in a colony that emphasised
its egalitarian mythology. Although the establishment of a national press agency in
1880 homogenised the distribution of national and international news, this study
focuses on local news and editorial columns, which generally reflected proprietors’
political leanings. Through these sites of ideological contest, conflicting
representations of the ascendant trade union movement became apparent. While New
Zealand newspapers sympathised with the striking London dockers in 1889, the
advent of domestic industrial tensions provoked a wider range of reactions in the
press. Strikes assumed a national significance, and the divisions between liberal and
conservative newspapers narrowed. To varying degrees both considered militant
action by organised labour a threat to the colony’s peace and prosperity – sentiments
that pervaded their reporting. The New Zealand Maritime Strike confirmed these
prejudices and calcified the perception of organised labour’s malevolence. Despite
the year’s upheavals, this thesis contends that the press struggled to comprehend
labour’s political ambitions, ignoring the unprecedented mobilisation of thousands of
new voters, shifting public opinion, and the transformative impact of electoral reform.
Distracted by the mainstream political obsession with land reform and convinced that
public prejudices, stoked by their own reporting, would obviate a labour presence in
the new parliament, the victory of the Liberal-labour coalition confounded the
publishing establishment.
