War, slump & reform
Gallipoli and Passchendaele cost a small country proportionally enormous losses, influenza kills about half as many in two months as four years of war did, and the Depression breaks the old order. Out of it comes the first Labour government and a welfare state.
15 events under way between 1912 and 1938
The Liberals take power
New Zealand’s first modern political party began 21 years in government, with reforms that led many to see the country as ‘the social laboratory of the world’.
The Waihi strike
Six months of confrontation at the goldmine ended when police and strikebreakers stormed the miners’ hall and Frederick Evans was fatally injured.
WaihiBrightwater’s chicken power
A Brightwater mill owner lit the district’s first electric streetlights, and local memory has it that roosting hens switched Brightwater’s lamps on and off.
BrightwaterThe Great Strike
Watersiders and miners struck around the country; the government enrolled mounted special constables — farmers and farm workers on horseback — who took back the wharves for strike-breakers.
Wellington waterfrontNew Zealand enters the First World War
About 100,000 served overseas from a population of just over a million. Around 18,000 died and there were some 41,000 instances of wounding or illness; no other British dominion lost a higher share of its military-age men.
The Gallipoli landing
New Zealand troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April. In all, 2,779 died, about one in six of those who served there. The date became the country’s day of remembrance.
The raid on Maungapōhatu
An armed police expedition marched into the Tūhoe prophet Rua Kēnana’s community at Maungapōhatu in Te Urewera to arrest him. Two men were shot dead, including Rua’s son.
MaungapōhatuPasschendaele — the worst day
An attack on Bellevue Spur in Flanders mud, against uncut wire and without effective artillery support, killed 843 New Zealanders in a few hours.
The influenza pandemic
About 9,000 people died in two months — roughly half as many as died in four years of war. Māori died at more than eight times the Pākehā rate.
The Rātana movement rises
Te Hāhi Rātana
Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana built a church and then a political movement that campaigned for the Treaty of Waitangi to be honoured.
Rātana PāThe Ōtira tunnel pierces the Southern Alps
An 8.5 km tunnel under Arthur’s Pass completed the transalpine railway between Christchurch and Greymouth, and was then the longest tunnel outside the Alps.
ŌtiraThe Hawke’s Bay earthquake
A magnitude 7.8 quake devastated Napier and Hastings and killed 256 people — still New Zealand’s deadliest earthquake.
NapierDepression riots
Unemployed relief workers smashed and looted shops down Queen Street, after earlier trouble in Dunedin. Wellington had its own riot in May.
Queen Street, AucklandThe first Labour government
Michael Joseph Savage led Labour to a landslide in 1935 and built the welfare state: state houses, guaranteed dairy prices, a 40-hour week and free hospital care under the Social Security Act.
WellingtonSocial Security Act
Free hospital care, subsidised doctors’ visits and a comprehensive array of benefits, meant to protect New Zealanders ‘from the cradle to the grave’.