In advance of Ronald Trifero Nelson’s theatrical adaptation of Mates and Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand, Spark correspondent Ian Anderson reviews the original book.

The Spark November 2010

Chris Brickell’s Mates and Lovers: A History of Gay New Zealand is an essential book for anyone interested in local social history. The first book of its kind focused on New Zealand, the book draws on court records, personal collections, press coverage and various other sources to map out the changing social formation of “homosexuality,” as it was dubbed in Europe over the late 19^th Century.

As Brickell explains, that very word “homosexuality” did not reach popular discourse in New Zealand until the mid 20^th Century. With that in mind, the book covers the shifting roles that men who have sex with men have played in society, and the shifting language to describe these roles. [Read more…]

Luis Jalandoni and Coni Ledesma, two leaders from the Philippines liberation movement have finished a nationwide speaking tour.

During their tour they gathered signatures and support from socialists, human rights and peace advocates including members of parliament, Maori activists, trade unionists, clergy and community leaders calling for the Aquino government to resume formal peace talks without preconditions, and to put an end to the wave of extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and illegal detention of political activists in the Philippines.

Hear more in Luis Jalandoni’s Interview With Chris Laidlaw, Radio NZ National, 14/11/10

Luis Jalandoni – Peace in the Phillipines (duration: 17′37″)

One of the most longstanding conflicts in the world is the war that has been fought, on and off, between national liberationists and the ruling authorities in the Phillipines. Luis Jalandoni has been at the centre of the conflict since the 1970s, as chair of the National Democratic Front of the Phillipines negotiating panel for peace talks with the government.
Audio from Sunday Morning on 14 Nov 2010

Activists from Matt McCarten’s by-election campaign in Mana have been involved in a symbolic protest to highlight the crisis in housing faced by working class people in the area and New Zealand as a whole. 3 News reported that the vacant state house in Cannon’s Creek had been occupied by protestors in order for a family currently living in a garage to move in. Shortly after the news item was aired, police arrived at the house and arrested four people, including two Workers Party members who were visiting the house to provide their campaign comrades with food. The police demanded that the four signed non-association orders as a condition of bail. The activists face court on Tuesday at 9am.

The campaign will be hosting a block party outside the property in Calliope Crescent this Saturday from 12-3pm. Matt McCarten has commented that: “The State will let working class people wait on housing lists for seven years. Occupy an empty house and they’ll arrest you in seven minutes.”

The Workers Party demand the charges against the activists are dropped immediately, and that the anti-democratic non-association orders are quashed.

FILM REVIEW: Made in Dagenham

In 1968 three struggles by working class women in Britain helped inspire the formation of the women’s liberation movement there: Hull fishermen’s wives fought for better safety on trawlers, despite being told by the bosses to keep quiet; London bus conductresses rebelled for the right to become drivers; and women machinists at the Ford motor company’s giant plant at Dagenham went on strike for equal pay.

The Ford women’s strike led to the National Joint Action Committee on Women’s Equal Rights, a union-based group focussed on equal pay and women’s rights at work.

Over four decades later, the Ford strike has been dramatised, and partly fictionalised, as a film: Made in Dagenham, directed by Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls), produced by Steven Woolley (The Crying Game, Scandal, Interview with the Vampire) and  partner Elizabeth Karlsen (The Crying Game, Hollow Reed, Sounds like Teen Spirit), written by Billy Ivory, who wrote for TV series such as Minder and Common as Muck, and starring Sally Hawkins as strike leader Rita, Daniel Mays as her husband Eddie and Bob Hoskins as Albert, the shop steward for their area.  The theme song is sung by 60s British pop star Sandie Shaw, a former Fords Dagenham punch-card operator (albeit several years before the 1968 strike). [Read more…]