‘Ki te la Pacific! Get out of the Pacific!’: Anti-Nuclear and Independence Activism in Pacific New Zealand, 1970-1985

Abstract

The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement (NFIP) developed a unique version of Pacific regionalism aimed at promoting anti-nuclearism and self-determination by and for Pacific peoples. The thesis explores the NFIP by way of New Zealand, taking three case studies that bear out the conceptual and functional nature of this Pacific world as an entity. The first chapter is a transnational approach centred on the voyage of an Australian protest yacht, the Pacific Peacemaker. I contrast the views of a predominantly Australian, trade unionist and peace protestor crew with those indigenous and Pacific-minded activists they met in New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawai’i. I evaluate the successfulness of the voyage from the Pacific perspective, arguing that the voyage was indeed a success, although not for the publicity reasons espoused. Reporting by Peacemaker crew misrepresented Pacific peoples or was aimed foremost at generating support for the voyage rather than for the Pacific. The value for the Pacific peoples then, lay in their ability to marshal the yacht for their own ends, capturing its symbolic value by taking it to sites of colonial contention or using it to transport themselves around, making their own connections. The second chapter concerns Māori interactions with other indigenous Pacific peoples, and what this meant for the Pacific as a conceptual and functional region. Voyaging back across the Pacific, Māori drew on whakapapa, identified cultural commonalities and similar colonial legacies between themselves and other Pacific peoples, suggesting there was a shared Pacific struggle: that between indigenous and coloniser. While this was contentious to some, it allowed Pacific peoples to draw upon an alternative network of political action outside formal politics or peace and humanitarian discourses. The third chapter considers the significance of Pacific peoples’ relationships for formal politics, discussing how a regional approach might shift the popular narrative around New Zealand’s nuclear free legacy. I connect the realms of foreign policy and national identity, arguing that New Zealand pursued an exclusive anti-nuclear (and not decolonising) agenda in the Pacific as a result of an ambivalent Pacific identity broadly reflected across the protest movement. By adding the Pacific back into the story, both as an impetus for anti-nuclear politics, and as a section of the population who saw New Zealand regionally and nuclearism as a subset of colonialism, we might appreciate how New Zealand turned away from the Pacific and the alternative paths it might have taken. Ultimately, I argue that Pacific peoples’ association facilitated regionalism through movement and a shared (if diverse) vision of a nuclear free and independent Pacific. By forming relationships activists within the NFIP network contributed to a Pacific not characterised by isolation and weakness, but rather connection and strength. Because formal politics or external peace action often did not achieve the results Pacific people wanted, the NFIP served as an alternative network of support and shared struggle. No longer subject to external considerations, Pacific people could promote anti-nuclearism and self-determination by and for Pacific peoples.