5

It was a full union meting on the Wednesday following Arty’s return, the second meeting since the mine had resumed work. At the previous meeting the miners had demanded immediate action towards the provision of a town water supply, in view of the two serious fires in the town. Jock McEwan read a reply from the county council; the secretary had replied that the council were sending their engineer to investigate the possibility of tapping the Roaring

page 404

Meg, a fierce tributary of Coal Creek in the hills at the back of the town. ‘I’m not satisfied with their reply,’ Jock said. ‘The engineer is only going to investigate. And while he’s investigating and the clerks in Greymouth are pushing his report into a drawer, months will go by. There might be another fire by then. And to cap it off, they’ve sent us a pamphlet on fire precautions from the Forestry Department. That’s the final bloody insult! Do they think we’re going to put up with that? Two fires weren’t caused by carelessness—one was an accident, the other was the deliberate action of a boy. What we want is the facilities to put the fire out once it starts in spite of all reasonable precautions.’ After a brief discussion, the meeting decided to unite with the dredge-workers in demanding immediate action.

There were cheers when Jock read a promise from the Minister of Mines that the seven-hour shift would begin to operate in the new year.

The Canterbury Education Board had replied noting the union’s expression of confidence in Rogers; it pointed out that Mr Rogers’s appointment had been terminated and added that no further action was contemplated.

‘Well, there it is,’ Ben said. ‘Is there any discussion?’

Nobody said anything for a few seconds. Jock McEwan said: ‘It’s not good enough, though.’

‘Well, it’s a straightforward reply,’ Ben said, ‘even if it’s not what he hoped for.’

‘We’re not used to being slapped in the eye like this,’ Jock said.

‘We asked for it,’ somebody said.

‘Well, is there anything more we can do?—That’s the point. The Canterbury Education Board is a good bit stronger than the Coal Flat Miners’ Union.’

‘We’re wasting the meeting’s time,’ the same man said. ‘It’s not very long since Rogers was on the side of the scabs.’

‘We went into all that last time,’ Jimmy Cairns said. ‘That’s all past history now.’

‘He came out on our side in the end,’ someone else said.

‘Well, that’s so,’ Ben said, ‘but all we’re concerned with at the moment is whether we’ve got confidence in him as a teacher.’

‘Speaking for myself, like,’ Jock McEwan said, ‘as I said last time, I didn’t like all that carry-on about sex and psychology.’

Arthur Henderson stood up from the small table where he was taking notes for the Argus. ‘Well, I said it last time too. I must say I was shocked at all that came out in the papers, filling that little boy’s head with all sorts of things he shouldn’t know about.’

page 405

Jimmy Cairns said: ‘All right, we discussed this last time too. You’re forgetting that the judge made Paul undertake not to go in for that sort of thing again.’

‘Well, as I see it’—Arthur Henderson was conscious of the fact that he was one of the only two members of the school committee at the meeting—‘all this has got some bearing on whether we’ve got confidence in Mr Rogers as a teacher. I remember when the same question came up earlier in the year at a school committee meeting—’

Jock McEwan interrupted: ‘Now just a minute. I don’t think it’s right that school committee business should be discussed at this meeting. But since the question’s been raised the question had better be settled. I was at that school committee meeting and the matter ended with the committee having complete confidence in Rogers…. All the same I couldn’t see the need for all that tommy-rot.’

‘There was no need for it,’ someone called.

‘Hear, hear,’ Arty Nicholson said. ‘He’s a damn good kid that boy.’

‘That sort of thing would only make him worse.’

‘That’s what I reckon,’ Arty said.

‘Well, just a minute,’ Ben said. ‘All this came up last time. Yet in the end we passed a vote of confidence in Rogers. What I want to know is, is there anything more we can do, and if there is, are we prepared to do it?’

There was no comment; and after a pause Jock McEwan said, ‘Well, just to test the feeling of the meeting, I’ll move that we pass on to the next business.’

‘I’ll second that,’ Ben said.

No one said No.

There was a fraternal letter from the dredge-workers thanking the miners for support in their recent strike and noting that the management had come to an agreement and the worker over whom the strike began had been suspended, and though now free to come back had, because of a personal misfortune of which the miners no doubt knew the circumstances, left the town and begun work in a sawmill. Ben Nicholson commented: ‘Well, that’s a bit formal and doesn’t tell you one thing that most of us don’t already know. For the benefit of those who don’t, the dredge-workers, while they’ve got no sympathy for a scab, wanted to give a hand to Mike Herlihy for a series of misfortunes which were no fault of his own, and they’ve taken round the hat. They aimed at £30, but they’ve got about forty. It’s not a lot, but it will help him on a bit. If anyone page 406 here wants to contribute, he can bring it to me at the end of the meeting or next pay-day.’

Arty Nicholson stood up. ‘There’s one thing I want to bring up.’ Some of the lads called out: ‘Sit down. You’re no miner. You’re a whitebaiter.’—‘The bushman!’

‘It’s all very well to give Mike Herlihy a few quid,’ Arty went on. ‘I’m not quarrelling with that. But what about his kid?’ Everyone turned to stare at him, puzzled. ‘He was down South Westland with me and Joe ‘Taiha, and he’s a damn good kid, I don’t care what you say. I’ve been in this town nineteen years and you know as well as I do that everybody’s made out the Herlihys were queer, and nobody’s had anything to do with them. The old man drunk and the old woman nagging and giving the kid a hiding if he dropped a crumb on the floor; how would you like to be brought up in a home like that?’

‘Just a minute,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t see that this is strictly the concern of this meeting.’

‘It’s not the union’s place to take any notice of family matters,’ Arthur Henderson said.

‘You’re wasting the meeting’s time, lad,’ Jock McEwan said.

‘Just a minute,’ Arty protested. ‘Wait till you hear me!’

‘Does the meeting want to hear this item? We’ve still got to discuss plans for a working-men’s club,’ Ben asked. There were cries, ‘No!’ Arty shouted, ‘How do you know whether you want to hear when you don’t know what it is?’

‘Well, I don’t know what you’re going to say,’ Ben said. ‘But this town is too deeply torn with personal strife as it is. We don’t want to add fuel to the fire. We’re an organization for unity, not for dissension. We don’t want you reopening old wounds.’

‘I’m not trying to make trouble,’ Arty shouted. ‘I want to tell you about this boy. He’s got no one to stick up for him.’

‘Well, I suggest we go into committee and give him a hearing,’ Ben said. Some of Arty’s pals called, ‘Favouritism!’ The meeting voted for this suggestion but with only a majority of four. Arthur Henderson put down his pencil, and with the meeting’s permission, stayed to listen; the reporter from the Star, who had come up specially since the Star had discarded local correspondents as too biased, had already slipped out to phone the office about the seven-hour shift and their resolution on the town water supply. When he came back and couldn’t get in, he was annoyed that he had no hint of what it was about.

‘Well,’ Arty began again. ‘I’ve brought this up here because there’s nowhere else I could bring it up. This kid Peter Herlihy page 407 never had a chance. His mother’s left home now and his father’s never treated him right. He’s got to go to a convent. The Children’s Court said so. And I know he doesn’t want to go to a convent or any institution. He’s been there before and he hated it. He wants a proper home. You can say what you like about him—he’s tough and cheeky and burnt their house down. He’s never had a chance and none of us have ever done anything for him. When he was with us down south he was a damn willing kid, slaved his guts out to help us, never any trouble.’ (One lad interjected, as a joke, ‘You’ve been exploiting child labour,’ but he was ignored.) ‘I want to do something for him, I bring him back and I find he’s got to go to his old man, and now he’s got to go to an institution he hates the sight of. I don’t care what you say, I feel I’m letting him down. He was looking to me to help him. And there’s nothing I can do. Joe Taiha’ll back me up on this too.’

Arty sat down. There were murmurs of deprecation, but no one volunteered any comment, though Ben called for discussion. Then Arthur Henderson said hesitantly, ‘The meeting ought to take into consideration the fact that it was this boy Herlihy who got young Rogers into trouble….’

‘I can remember when Rogers wasn’t any friend of the union,’ someone said.

‘Well, he’s lost his job through the boy. I’m not saying I’m sticking up for Rogers. We’re all agreed he didn’t need to tell him all that tommy-rot about sex.’

‘All this is beside the point,’ Jock McEwan said. ‘As I see it, it’s a matter of fundamental principle. What’s the union for? We exist to secure better conditions from our employers, to get wage agreements, and to help our comrades in other industries in their efforts to better their conditions, and to support the political party that works for our ends. We’re not a child welfare office. We can’t take everything on our plate.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Jimmy Cairns said, completely serious for once. ‘We’re a crowd of ordinary working men doing a necessary job. There’s a bit too much formality sometimes. If there’s a case where we can lend a helping hand, we ought to think it over. We agreed to give a few quid to the boy’s old man. That’s the sort of thing we’ve done before. We don’t want to turn this case down just because we haven’t had one like it before.’

‘It’s not true to say we only deal with conditions,’ Ben said, thinking aloud rather than arguing a case. ‘We’ve dealt with matters affecting the whole town—the question of bus stops, the town water supply. Because, with the dredge-workers, we are the town—most page 408 of the working population of the town. If we haven’t a town council, so long as we aren’t a borough, the union’s the only organization that can deal with these matters. Small towns without strong unions like ours never get anything done. I just don’t know. I’ve sometimes wondered if we aren’t too formal, if we aren’t sticking to the rules too much, bargaining all our lives. Maybe the time has come to expand our interests….’

‘You talk as if the workers were in power,’ Jock McEwan said. ‘The capitalist class is going to give us a few more kicks before they pass out. They won’t give up without a fight. We’ve got to hold fast to what we’ve won in the past. If we get ambitious ideas and spread our activities we’ll weaken ourselves. We’re going to be in debt with this club.’

‘I’m not interested in all this talk about principle,’ Arty said. ‘I want to get something done for the kid.’

‘We’ve got to consider the principle of it,’ his father said. ‘We can’t run the risk of weakening our movement. This boy and a hell of a lot of other boys would be worse off then, in the long run. I’m not arguing one way or the other. I can see both sides of it, but if the whole meeting supports what Arty wants, I think we can carry it. If we are all hesitant we’d do more harm than good if we took it on. Now in a proper socialist society it would be the union’s responsibility to take care of a fellow-worker’s boy.’

‘Then it’s the dredge-workers’ job,’ someone interjected.

‘You can’t expect them to feel much sympathy for a fellow-worker that scabbed on them,’ another said.

‘Well, they have put in to a fund to help him along,’ Ben said. ‘But if you look at it like that, it’s not anybody’s pigeon, Mike’s no longer on the dredge. You can’t expect the sawmillers to take this on when all this trouble happened before he came to work with them. At least we all know Mike. It’s the whole town’s responsibility.’

‘I heard he hasn’t even joined the union at Nelson Creek,’ another voice came.

‘Then we shouldn’t lift a finger to help him!’ someone else said.

‘He’ll have to pay up,’ Ben said. ‘His dredge union fees will be transferred. He’ll have to pay up the next financial year. That’s just a bit of showing off.’

‘I’m not caring about Mike Herlihy,’ Arty said, ‘It’s the boy. You can’t take it out on him.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ someone asked.

‘I’ve got a letter from Joe Taiha,’ Arty said. ‘He’s down at Arahura. He says his girl’s mother would adopt Peter. He’s getting married in a couple of months. Then he could look after him.’

page 409

Inadvertently, someone said, ‘But they’re Maoris!’

‘What the hell if they are Maoris?’ Arty asked. ‘I thought we were supposed to be socialists. I thought we didn’t hold with the colour bar.’

‘Well, I’m not one for the colour bar either,’ the speaker said, standing to defend himself. ‘But I don’t reckon this kid’ll get a good home with the Maoris. It’s—well—it’s out of the frying-pan into the fire.’

‘I’ve been in that home,’ Arty said. ‘It mightn’t be too spick-and-span. It’s a bit rough and ready I’ll admit. But they’d treat the boy right. They’d feed him decently and give him a bit of care.’

‘I’m not blaming the Maoris, mind,’ the other miner said. ‘I know they’re not to blame for the way they live. But it’s just a fact. When they’ve got decent healthy houses and can clothe themselves a bit better then there’d be no objection.’

‘Well, it’s a poor reflection on us if we’ve got to ask a Maori to take the kid,’ Jimmy Cairns objected. ‘We should have canvassed among ourselves first.’

‘That’s not right either. This is all irrelevant,’ Ben said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Maori home or a white home. It’s got to be someone the boy knows, who’s willing to adopt him and who’ll give him a good home. I could take him in myself if it came to that, but the boy doesn’t know me and I’ve got no reason to expect he’ll take a great liking to me. But is it possible? What about the court order? What about the parents’ permission? What about the Child Welfare Office?’

‘Well, I can tell you this much,’ Arty said. ‘Joe saw the woman from the Child Welfare Office when she was on her rounds, looking at some place in Arahura, and she told him flat his girl’s mother’s place would be “absolutely unsuitable”. Damn cheek! I’ve seen the house. It’s a damn sight better than that old mill hut Mike Herlihy’s got now over at Nelson Creek!’

‘Well, if you’d told us that before,’ Jock McEwan said, ‘you’d have saved us a bit of unpleasant discussion.’

‘It brought some things to light we oughtn’t to be too happy about,’ Ben said. ‘Well, that rules Joe’s people our. We’re not very enlightened on this question ourselves, so you can’t expect a government official to be. Now it’s a question of possibilities. Has anybody approached the boy’s father and mother? That’s the first step.’

‘No,’ Arty said impatiently. ‘It all takes time. While we’re farting around, the boy’ll have to go to this convent.’

‘Well, we can’t obstruct a court order,’ Ben said. ‘It’s no use getting hot under the collar. That won’t get the boy out. One thing page 410 we’ve got to do is approach the parents. But before we do that we’ve got to have a home ready for him. I suggest we get a list of volunteers who would take the boy, and we’ve got to find out if they’re acceptable to him. It’s got to be someone he likes. He’s no angel, and it’s no use anyone taking him if he doesn’t get on with them and wants to burn their house down. We don’t want anyone to volunteer glibly. They’ll be running a risk.’

‘He’s all right,’ Arty said. ‘He won’t burn anyone’s house down.’

Jack McEwan asked, ‘Is this to be recorded in the minutes?’

‘It’s not strictly a union matter,’ Ben said. ‘Can we form a committee, not having any official connection with the union? Say in the minutes that a committee was formed to discuss a matter raised by Mr A. Nicholson?’

This was agreed to and a committee was formed of Ben, Arty, Joe (if available) and Jimmy Cairns, with power to co-opt Ben’s and Jimmy’s wives if they wanted to.