Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 23. September 12 1977

First Fascist organisations surface

First Fascist organisations surface

On July 23rd 1932 Davy helped found the New Zealand National Movement. It was made up of dissident Reformers, businessmen and sheepfarmers. The Movement felt that the market "for wool and meat had been worsened by 'State extravagence, reckless borrowing and Socialistic legislation' . . . They favoured a non-party organisation 'to ensure the return to Parliament of men (or women) best qualified to govern the country in the interests of all' ". (3) The Movement made little progress until devaluation in January 1933. By that time the splits in the coalition had deepened. "A group of mainly business MP's who referred to Forbes and Coates as 'the most dangerous revolutionaries in the land' were excluded from caucus". (4)

Besides the New Zealand National Movement, a number of other right-wing and fascist movements sprang up as a result of the crisis. Government's 'socialist' policy and the sense that New Zealand was on the brink of an even greater crisis, a feeling which had been brought about by the rioting.

In early 1933 the Movement was renamed the New Zealand Legion. Its founders persuaded a Dr Begg to organise the Legion nationwide. Although-Begg lacked the grasp of demagogy necessary to drop the Legion's rightist propaganda and turn it into a fully fledged fascist movement, his organising activities initially yielded results. In his first month of organising, the Legion acquired 2,000 new members. At its peak the Legion had 700 branches and 20,000 members which were coordinated by 18 Divisions (at the same time the Labour Party had 30,000 members).

The Legion drew these recruits primarily from the petit-bourgeoisie. Of a sample of 171 members of the Legion, 67% were businessmen, sheep farmers and professionals. There was some working class support for the Legion, but indications of this are harder to find. Of the 171 Legionaires, 12 did not have an education beyond primary school and were almost certainly workers. (5) The Labour Monthly of March 1934 discloses that the members of the New Zealand Legion were drawn from those elements "which world experience has shown are most susceptible to the fascist point of view" including "dis oriented brain workers" and "politically backward elements of the workers".;