Commemoration vs Celebration

Over the last week, Welling­ton has been the focus of an Anzac Day like no oth­er. The long-await­ed Pukeahu Nation­al War Memo­r­i­al Park opened with a “spec­tac­u­lar” light show, and on Fri­day the city stopped to cheer a “spec­tac­u­lar” Anzac parade (pag­ing Guy Debord!). This was fol­lowed by a huge turnout for the dawn ser­vice on Anzac Day itself. These were all resound­ing­ly suc­cess­ful at ful­fill­ing their pur­pos­es, but what were those pur­pos­es, and what wider agen­das might they be serv­ing?

[Dis­claimer: this is my own per­son­al view, and should not be tak­en to rep­re­sent the views of oth­er Wellingo­nistas, or of SBS.]

Many tal­ent­ed and ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple have worked hard to ensure that the full and nuanced sto­ry of the ANZACs and New Zealand’s wider his­to­ry of con­flict (includ­ing the sto­ries of non-com­bat­ants and con­sci­en­tious objec­tors) is told. But those sub­tleties aren’t get­ting through. The huge crowds at Pukeahu deserved the full sto­ry, but what they saw could cyn­i­cal­ly be described as a slick pro-mil­i­tary Pow­er­Point: kiwiana; brave chaps off to war; kiwiana; war is hell; sad pop­pies; kiwiana; WWII; Iro­quois heli­copters off to ‘Nam; more kiwiana; Willie Api­a­ta look­ing staunch and hero­ic. While much of it would have been mov­ing for those with fore­bears in WWI, the mes­sage came relent­less­ly from a mil­i­tary per­spec­tive, with no ques­tion of who they fought for, who they fought against, or why.

While the light show attempt­ed some bal­ance and acknowl­edged the tragedy of war, Fri­day’s parade dis­pensed with such niceties and went for full-on jin­go­is­tic cir­cus. Som­bre reflec­tions on the hor­rors of indus­tri­alised slaugh­ter don’t tend to fea­ture con­fet­ti, chil­dren hap­pi­ly cheer­ing how­itzers, and breezy ren­di­tions of “76 Trom­bones”. A stu­dent of semi­otics would be hard pressed to explain how it dif­fered struc­tural­ly from a May Day pro­ces­sion or a tick­er­tape parade for vic­to­ri­ous All Blacks. The Domin­ion Post blithe­ly described this as “shades of the patri­ot­ic pride and sense of adven­ture our sol­diers must have felt 100 years ago”, as if we should have learned noth­ing from the futile car­nage of that “adven­ture”. I sup­pose this is to be expect­ed when you hand the reins over to an acknowl­edged “WWI buff” and tank col­lec­tor.

As well as this glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the mil­i­tary, this year I’ve noticed a par­tic­u­lar­ly insid­i­ous form of essen­tial­ist nation­al­ism. There’s an empha­sis on remem­ber­ing those of our ances­tors who made “the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice” for our coun­try, but this excludes many New Zealan­ders. Our pop­u­la­tion has quadru­pled since 1915, so a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of New Zealan­der had no ances­tors here in WWI*.

For many of us, our ances­tors’ expe­ri­ence of war was­n’t Gal­lipoli: it was the Blitz, Dachau, Belfast, the Killing Fields, or Eritrea. The Māori expe­ri­ence is dif­fer­ent again, with some tupuna fight­ing for Empire and oth­ers against: oth­ers can tell that sto­ry bet­ter than I. But the assump­tion that a fam­i­ly his­to­ry of going away to fight in WWI is an essen­tial and “unit­ing” part of the New Zealand iden­ti­ty eras­es and excludes many New Zealan­ders.

There may be some truth in the stan­dard nar­ra­tive that WWI helped cement a par­tic­u­lar nation­al iden­ti­ty, but if so, it cre­at­ed the New Zealand of (say) 1965. The Aotearoa New Zealand of 2015 is at least as much a prod­uct of the fol­low­ing 50 years—of Viet­nam, the Spring­bok Tour, Roger­nomics, immi­gra­tion, the Māori Renais­sance, jet trav­el, two waves of fem­i­nism and the internet—as it is of Gal­lipoli.

Yes: if you had a great uncle who died at Chunuk Bair, hon­our his mem­o­ry. But that is less and less a defin­ing part of “the” New Zealand sto­ry. This coun­try has always been good at hon­our­ing those who went away to war; but we must­n’t for­get those who suf­fered in wars that came to them.

Why does this mat­ter? Because many politi­cians and many in the media keep telling us that Anzac Day “unites us all as a coun­try”, and this builds a pres­sure to fall in behind a sim­pli­fied (and to some extent fab­ri­cat­ed) myth of uni­fied nation­hood. While the dawn ser­vices offered the dig­ni­fied moments for reflect­ing on loss that they usu­al­ly do, Fri­day’s parade sig­ni­fied a shift from com­mem­o­ra­tion to fes­tiv­i­ty.

A cyn­i­cal per­son would say this serves two pur­pos­es: it makes it eas­i­er to con­vince us that it’s noble to engage again in for­eign wars; and it helps to usurp Wai­t­an­gi Day as our nation­al day. Accord­ing to the Domin­ion Post edi­to­r­i­al on Sat­ur­day, Wai­t­an­gi Day is about “pass­ing ide­o­log­i­cal argu­ment” while Anzac Day “unites us all”. But it does­n’t. Anzac Day does­n’t unite the quar­ter or so of us with­out fam­i­ly con­nec­tions to the ANZAC corps; nor did the war unite the coun­try at the time. It was in fact bit­ter­ly divi­sive, and it remains fun­da­men­tal­ly polit­i­cal. And of course Wai­t­an­gi Day is polit­i­cal: any nation­al day must be so by def­i­n­i­tion, because a nation state is a polit­i­cal enti­ty. The “fes­tivi­sa­tion” (to coin an ugly word) of Anzac Day is part of a very polit­i­cal process to erase cer­tain his­to­ries and to turn oth­ers into sacred, unques­tion­able truths.

If you want a Welling­ton anti­dote to the offi­cial nar­ra­tive, I rec­om­mend Remem­ber The Peace­mak­ers at This­tle Hall (until the 3rd of May).  You could also read about the oppo­si­tion­al roles of Te Puea Hear­an­gi, Archibald Bax­ter, Rua Kenana and Peter Fras­er; a Turk­ish view­point; or Tim Lead­beat­er at The Dai­ly Blog invok­ing Robin Hyde. Hope­ful­ly, once the pop­py con­fet­ti has washed away, Pukeahu will have room to com­mem­o­rate its own local his­to­ries of con­flict. Right there on Buck­le St in 1913, sol­diers armed with bay­o­nets and machine guns set up a bar­ri­cade against strik­ing union­ists. And this, tucked away behind the Car­il­lon, is a memo­r­i­al to Māori deport­ed from Tarana­ki:

New Zealan­ders have a vast range of expe­ri­ences of war, and much of it is at odds with the image of “young men will­ing­ly going to the oth­er side of the world to fight for the British Empire” that has dom­i­nat­ed this Anzac Day more than any oth­er that I remem­ber. Maybe it’s becom­ing eas­i­er to for­get the diver­si­ty of human expe­ri­ence behind the myth of “the birth of a nation”; maybe it’s the price of the club. But the resources are out there to flesh out and chal­lenge the offi­cial Anzac sto­ry.

* I haven’t found any sta­tis­tics to say what pro­por­tion of New Zealan­ders had ances­tors in this coun­try at a giv­en time in the past. But using the year­ly depar­tures and arrivals sta­tis­tics from the Sta­tis­tics NZ web­site, and a few assump­tions, I make a very rough esti­mate that maybe a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion had no ances­tors here in 1918, and hence have no fam­i­ly con­nec­tion to the ANZACs. In many parts of the coun­try, that will be much high­er: in sub­urbs with a high pro­por­tion of recent immi­grants, the vast major­i­ty would not have ANZAC “in their blood”.