A kind of equality: Labour and the Maori people 1935 - 1949

Abstract

Before 1935, the Labour party had already formulated a policy for the Maori people. It promised to extend to Maoris a greater participation in Government and in the general life of the community than they had enjoyed up till that time. In the first years of the Labour period, however, Government handling of Maori affairs was tending towards a kind of separate development for a section of the Maori people. This trend was arrested by two major influences - the Second World War and the benefits of Labour's general legislation. By the late forties, Labour was committed to a policy of absorbing the Maori race into the mainstream of New Zealand life - a policy that Government had consistently followed in various ways from 1840 on.