The Build-up.

The demonstration against P.B.E.C. (organised by the Campaign Against Foreign Control in New Zealand, CAFCINZ) was held outside the Christ church Town Hall at 5.30p.m. on Sunday May 8. It was timed for the opening dinner of the conference.

Christchurch is the place where most of CAFCINZ's activities take place. Wellington CAFCINZ had travelled down for the demonstration and the AGM was held on Saturday. It came as no shock to find P.B.E.C. featuring fairly prominently during the AGM. Jeff Mason (CHCH) gave a talk on the nature of P.B.E.C., and there was a slide show and discussion on foreign Investment at present in New Zealand.

It is worth mentioning that CAFCINZ is not a campus based or student organised movement. Although students are amongst their supporters, CAFCINZ support is largely worker based, and the wide variety of groups represented over the weekend bore this out.

Although the question of neo-colonialism — foreign investment in the Pacific basin is one of great importance, few people (thanks to our news services) could have been aware of the relation between P.B.E.C. and the exploitation of the Pacific basin or the horrible nature of that exploitation.

An example of this is the supplements put out in all the daily papers, the first of which appeared at the week leading up to the conference. On Monday May 9, a 15 page supplement appeared, filled with the same cosmetic facade proclaiming P.B.E.C. a benevolent society and suggesting that colonialism (and neocolonialism) are dead in the Pacific basin! Absent from the supplements were the P.B.E.C. drives for low wages and the smashing of Trade Unions.

Had it not been for the 200 people who turned out and protested, the only "information" the average New Zealander would have received would have been the P.B.E.C. propaganda. These people are the vicious exploiters of the Third World, not philanthropists as the supplements suggests. The active nature of the demonstration (the police must take a bow too) brought coverage to the opposition to P.B.E.C. and the solidarity of those people with the Third World. It also gave people a glimmer of the true motives behind the Pacific Basin Economic Council, when otherwise — if people had been left to the supplements alone — people would have got an entirely incorrect image of P.B.E.C.