Abstract:
This thesis analyses the way Maaori and Paakehaa unemployed have sought to represent themselves collectively and demand the right to work during the decades of the 1930s and 1980s.
The organisation of unemployed during the 1930s was a common point of reference for unemployed groups of the 1980s and justifies the comparative for this thesis. I focus on members of Te Roopu Rawakore o Aotearoa, the national unemployed and beneficiaries' movement operating in the 1980s, who attempted to locate themselves in their historical past, especially women and Maaori who played principal leadership roles in the organisation. Because collective identity for the unemployed was expressed as a class issue during the 1930s the experiences of unemployed Maaori and women were often hidden from view. Thus, I sought to review the roles of Maaori and paakehaa women and men who were active during the 1930s. A small but vocal group of paakehaa women protested discrimination against unemployed women but predominantly chose to organize with Paakehaa men and support the ideology of class struggle. There were incidences of cross-cultural alliance and protest, and it was from these sites of contact that later alliances on a broader social front would form, between Maaori and paakehaa in the 1980s' However, Maaori resisted class identity as an ideology for protest during the 1930s, and continued to organise out of a collective demand for mana Maaori motuhake, which was recast in the 1980s to demands for tino rangatiratanga.
Te Roopu Rawakore is an important case study because the organisation sought to represent both Maaori and Paakehaa unemployed by instituting a parallel power structure. Unemployed women and Maaori challenged the concept of class identity as an ideology because they wanted to bring about social change for unemployed. They incorporated concepts of race and gender into their organising to validate their experiences of discrimination. Although Te Roopu Rawakore allowed for diversity within its organisation, the movement fragmented in the early 1990s.
