No Maoris, No Tour
- When
- May 1960
- Where
- Wellington · Te Whanganui-a-Tara
- Reach
- Nationwide
A petition of 162,000 signatures opposed sending an All Black team to South Africa with Māori players excluded. The tour went ahead anyway.
New Zealand rugby had quietly accepted apartheid’s terms since 1928, leaving Māori players at home. The 1960 campaign was the first mass protest against it, and it lost. But it established the argument that would run through 1970, 1973 and finally 1981: that sporting contact with South Africa was a political act. The slogan is given here in the spelling of its day, before macrons came into general use in English-language print. The line ‘No Maoris, No Tour’ put the contradiction of a country that prided itself on race relations in plain sight.
Regions affected
Sources
Written for this project from these references rather than copied from them. Follow a link to check the account against the original.
Related
Ngā Tamatoa formed
A group of young urban Māori activists, many university-educated, began confronting the state over te reo, the Treaty and racism — loudly and publicly.
AucklandThe great Māori urban migration
Māori went from about 25 percent urban in 1945 to nearly 80 percent by 1975 — one of the fastest urbanisations recorded anywhere.
The Springbok tour
Fifty-six days that split the country. Protesters occupied the pitch at Hamilton and stopped the game; by the final test, police in riot gear fought crowds outside Eden Park.
Rugby Park, HamiltonThe Māori language petition
Te petihana reo Māori
Ngā Tamatoa and Te Reo Māori Society delivered a 30,000-signature petition asking for te reo to be taught in schools. The date is now Māori Language Day.
Parliament, Wellington