The Labour Party came out in favour of the strike. Rowling called it "an historic occasion," mindful perhaps of the fact that history has plagued the Labour Party's role in the 1951 lockout dispute. On that occasion, then Opposition leader Walter Nash pursued an infamous policy of "neither for nor against," and did his party a lot of harm.

For September 20, Labour politicians gave more than verbal support: they boycotted Bellamy's. With their own private food supply brought in the day before, they presumably huddled in the Beehive corridors giving a clenched fist salute every time a Cabinet minister tottered drunkenly out of the Bellamy's doors.

Bill Rowling refused to move into his new quarters on the day. A worthy gesture, underscored symbolically (he must have hoped) by the fact that the new rooms were the ones previously occupied by the Prime Minister before his shift to the Beehive. The question still remains though, of just what Labour would do in the Government's position.

Nothing in its policies or past record gives the faintest suggestion that it would follow anything other than the same "restructuring" policies of National. The labour movement might not stage a general strike against a Labour Government, and that would appear to be the only significant difference between the two parties.

The response to the FoL call was overwhelming in the industrial areas. Factories, ports, buses, trains and aeroplanes all went out in decisive numbers. Most pubs closed, entertainment was cancelled and no newspapers appeared. Most shops opened, as did the banks and many small businesses. However, the vast majority of shops had the management and/or a small number of non-striking workers serving behind the counter.

Who's Intimidating who?

Employers' Federation executive director Jim Rowe played a consistent role right through the lead up and aftermath to the strike, he tried to claim that the Drivers' award was higher than it was. That was disproved. Then he tried to claim that the general strike wouldn't prove anything. It proved something alright: that the working class is capable of organising to fight back on a mass scale against attacks on its living standards.

So Rowe claimed that the reason many workers had stayed home was that they had been intimidated by their union officials. Salient has heard of some cases of intimidation that it thinks provide a suitable answer to Rowe's charge. But they don't concern union officials. Just the opposite.

It was announced that only one Ministerial Press Officer went out on strike. Apparently, several others were told by their Minister that if they didn't turn up on Thursday they could expect to be down the road on Friday.

In another more widespread case, also concerning government employees, it seems that in some Departments all those who wanted to strike were called in to see their director. There the individual pressure was put on. In at least one department, the workers were told that they were part of the management! Those who didn't accept such a sudden revelation were asked if that meant they did not expect to get promoted up the scale.

Under such conditions of harassment, it is surprising that the PSA managed to get the large numbers that it did. But such tactics were not limited to the public sector. During the days leading up to the strike, a group of people calling itself the "Combined Unions" telephoned many offices in Wellington to inform the workers that the strike was not official. These examples point to the kind of pressure that can be exerted on employees who have some degree of union consciousness.

Reds Under the Bed

It was not surprising that Muldoon used his old red-baiting tactics to try to discredit the strike. From overseas, he announced that the strike call page break was the work of a small group of communists and should be ignored. The idea is that people will be distracted from considering the real issues by worrying about whether they might be aligning themselves with "communists". (It is worth noting in passing that the SUP is not a communist Organisation, and would have to be pushed very hard before it even tried to pretend it was.)

The response to Muldoon's red-baiting was, in many quarters, to deny that communists were involved in any significant way in the strike call. This was done in such a way as to suggest that if the opposite was true, it would be alright to engage in red-bashing. It is unfortunate that many of the people who claim to abhor Muldoon's tactics actually go along with him at least half the way.

Official Responses

The next morning, the Dominion came out gloating that the strike had been a failure and would have strengthened the Government's resolve to stand firm. The Government must have taken a different view of the matter, because Acting Prime Minister Brian Talboys cancelled a trip overseas at the eleventh hour in order to be here for whatever happened the next week.

Labour Minister Jim Bolger called the strike "completely ineffectual", but when he sat down with the FoL to work out the next step in the Drivers' dispute, he wasn't able to turn his opinion to any advantage. The talks broke up with no advance having been made. Dairy farmers in the Waikato, pouring thousands of gallons of milk down the drain, knew how effective the strike had been as far as they were concerned.

The Chairman of the Combined State Unions, Ivan Reddish, called the response "excellent in the time available to organise". But it was Knox himself who may have put his finger on the immediate sign of success: two awards were settled at a level above that allowed the Drivers, and no Government action had been taken or was forthcoming. Bolger, asked to comment on this, resorted to the old arguments about strike action and overtime payments. It was clear though, that the Government's determination over the Drivers had been significantly deflected.