Fred Bust and the first Labour Day celebration

Frederick Robert Bust

The campaign for an eight-hour working day started in New Zealand in 1849, when Samuel Parnell, a carpenter with much-needed skills, landed at Petone Beach and refused to start work until he was granted an eight-hour working day starting at 8 am. But it wasn't until the 1940s that the first Labour government made the eight-hour day a standard working condition for the majority of New Zealand employees.

Throughout the hundred odd years it took for this to happen, the impetus for change was maintained through frequent worker agitation, and one such method was an annual Labour Day celebration. The first New Zealand Labour Day was celebrated on 28 October 1890. That date was the first anniversary of the establishment of the Maritime Council, an organisation of transport and mining unions. To celebrate the occasion and as part of an ongoing campaign for an official eight-hour day, the Maritime Council asked the other union organisations, the Trades Councils, to observe 28 October as a public holiday.

Around the country, workers united in the Labour Day celebrations, with parades in the main cities, picnics and sporting events for all-comers. In Auckland, as secretary of the local Trades and Labour Council, my paternal great-great-grandfather Fred Bust was the man called upon to organise the day's events.

This image is reproduced from the New Zealand Observer and Free Lance newspaper of 11 October 1890 (p.8). The caption reads: ‘The modern Nero; King Miller fiddling while New Zealand is being ruined. Music Galore! Fun for all! Mr Secretary Bust’s advertisement of Eight Hours Demonstration.’ The ‘King Miller’ refers to John Millar, a militant unionist who was at that time leader of the Maritime Council.

It is immediately obvious from the Observer's cartoon that the newspaper was critical of the planned celebrations, and this depiction of Fred Bust, as a rather rotund man dancing with a bottle of grog in hand, verges on the cruel. Fred was, in fact, a sober and religious person, a family man and a practising Methodist, but he never hesitated to voice his opinions. His loquacity and his physique made him a prime target for the cartoonist's pen.

Despite the newspaper’s criticism, Fred’s preparations continued apace and he sent a formal request to the Auckland City Council for their permission to hold the celebratory picnic on the grassy slopes of Mt Eden. It seems many employers and some members were keen for the Council to refuse permission but, as fate would have it, Nature intervened and a torrential downpour led to the postponement of the Labour Day celebrations on 28 October. The New Zealand Observer and Free Lance (p.1) reported the news:

Jupiter Pluvius has won the day for the employers of labour who objected to the proposed general holiday for the Eight Hours Demonstration. Mayor and Councillors, elected by the popular vote, would undoubtedly have given way and proclaimed the 28th of October a holiday; but the drenching rain supplied them with a plausible pretext for spoiling the plans of Labour without seeming to throw cold water over them. It is to the credit of the Labour leaders that they promptly recognised the finger of Providence and gratefully deferred their principle demonstration to the Prince of Wales’s birthday. Compromise and concession are the foundation of social harmony, and I sincerely trust the coming holiday will be observed with a hearty good feeling by all classes of the community.

Fortunately, a public holiday was imminent, the annual observance of the birthday of HRH Albert, Prince of Wales, so the Labour Day celebration was rescheduled to take place on that day. The unions, trades councils and their supporters were able to enjoy their festivities and the employers didn’t lose an extra day’s production – a positive and face-saving outcome for all parties.

The text of the New Zealand Observer and Free Lance’s cartoon of 1 November 1890 (p.5) (shown above) reads:

Labour and loyalty vanquish the demonstration damper.

28th October. Mayor Upton -- ‘Bless you, Jupiter Pluvius; you have got the City Fathers out of a difficulty. We didn’t want to refuse the ground, but now we must!’

10th November. Mr Bust -- ‘God bless you, Albert Edward -- we are both socialists, you know! Now we shall have a proper reconciliation of all classes, music galore and fun for all!

In spite of the problems beforehand, by all accounts the first Labour Day celebrations were a huge success. As this final illustration from the 15 November 1890 edition of the New Zealand Observer and Free Lance (p.18) shows, over 10,000 Aucklanders marched behind ornate floats decorated with colourful Union banners from the central city to Mt Eden, where the crowds then enjoyed picnics and sporting competitions. The illustration’s text reads: ‘Sketches of the labour demonstration and sports. Typ[ists] Ass[ociation] and the Devil. The Employers' Association viewing the Procession. The Butchers' Display. The Tailoresses' Race.’

Fred Bust's granddaughter Lilian Arthur recalled this particularly memorable event when writing the obituary of her grandfather that was published in the Auckland Star, 14 March 1919: 

One event ... stands out as a remarkable testimony of the moderate precedent and careful management of the interest, not only of the workers, but the community generally, namely, the great procession of unionists organised by the Trades and Labour Council. Some eleven thousand workers marched with banners flying and bands playing through the city to the top of Mt Eden, then lined round inside the crater to hear an address from Pastor Birch of the Baptist Tabernacle, also speeches of other leaders of religious, political and labour opinions. An outstanding feature of that day’s proceedings was the perfect order and discipline secured by the leaders of the movement. That earned for Mr Bust and his fellow officials high praise from all classes.

So, this Labour Day, when you’re out enjoying your walk along the beach or firing up the barbie or planting your tomato seedlings, spare a thought for those early battlers, like my great-great-granddaddy Fred, who fought to bring us this annual day off.

Diwali in Auckland

Auckland central came alive to the sounds of Bollywood this weekend when both Aotea Square and a couple of blocks of Queen Street were transformed into a little bit of India. The Auckland Diwali Festival included stalls selling delicious Indian food and vibrantly coloured Indian clothing, as well as a constant flow of music and dance, both traditional and contemporary. My favourites were the younger dancers, who looked stunning in their gorgeous costumes. 

Here are some of the things that caught my eye. Happy Diwali!

Aotea Square was buzzing

The food stalls were popular 

Even the retail therapy was colourful

Getting henna designs painted on various body parts was popular

The people-watching was interesting

Not all the little dancers were Indian 

What great performers!

The traditional dancing was superb

Aren't they gorgeous?

Four Ponsonby churches

Modified from: Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, NZ Map 3926

Last Saturday I enjoyed another guided walk, from amongst the huge selection offered as part of the 2013 Auckland Heritage Festival, a walk around four churches in the inner-city suburb of Ponsonby.

We started at St John’s Methodist Church (working from the bottom right red blob in this image to the top left), then continued along Ponsonby Road to the All Saints Anglican, before turning left into Jervois Road and walking along, firstly, to the Ponsonby Baptist Church and finishing further along still at the St Stephen’s Presbyterian Church.

So, starting with the Methodists … This wonderful old church, dating from 1882 and built of kauri in the Gothic Revival style, still retains its original colour scheme. Paint colours were very limited back in the late 1800s, so most buildings were painted cream, with decorative details and roofs either painted a barn red or Lincoln green.

Prussian immigrant and master craftsman, Anton Teutenberg (he of the High Court heads and gargoyles), carved the wonderful pulpit and corbels on the windows, whose stained glass offers beautiful examples of Art Deco design.

The congregation of this church reflects the changing population of Ponsonby itself. Originally home to Auckland’s middle class, whose women would have been active in the early suffrage movement, Ponsonby saw, in the 1960s, both a reduction in the numbers of Europeans attending church and an influx of Pacific Islanders who did, so the church became the centre for the Auckland District Samoan Fellowship. Though most Pacific Island families cannot now afford the million-dollar price-tags of the heritage houses in Ponsonby and other inner-city suburbs, the church remains their much-loved and much-used centre of worship.

Teutenberg's magnificent pulpit

Outside the modern All Saints Anglican Church is a wonderful old pohutukawa tree which the church’s brochure romantically suggests was where ‘Bishop Selwyn met with the people of Ponsonby, probably in 1865, to discuss building the church that became the first All Saints’. It’s a good story but, as this 1879 image clearly shows, the tree is not that old.

All Saints Ponsonby, 1879, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 4-308

The image depicts the original All Saints, first opened in December 1866. Sadly, that wonderful old wooden structure was demolished in the 1950s to make way for the present church. The church’s brochure also waxes lyrical about how special this modern church is but the 1950s Richard Toy design, though its large open interior and concertina-shaped brick walls are modelled on Coventry Cathedral in England, didn’t particularly impress me. Modernism simply isn’t my thing.

The church does have a beautiful wooden ceiling – apparently containing 6 and a half miles of timber! – and there are some lovely stained glass windows set into the lower parts of the chevron brick walls, images of such saints as Augustine of Hippo, Margaret of Scotland and the Venerable Bede.

We moved on to the most austere of these four churches, the Ponsonby Baptist Church, founded in 1880. I love the simplicity of this wooden building. It has no stained glass windows because the Baptists prefer the pure light of God streaming through their windows and its Classical Greek style was felt appropriate, as Jesus and his disciples, being of diverse nationalities, would have spoken Greek to one another. It would not originally have contained a cross either – the current cross is a relatively recent addition, added about 20 years previously and made of old telephone poles.

The most ornate thing in the church is the organ, originally brought to New Zealand by Samuel Marsden for the old St Paul’s Church in the central city (since demolished) and one of only 10 John Avery organs remaining in the entire world. It dates from 1779 but was sent to England for restoration six years ago so its sound is as sweet today as when it was first built. We were very lucky to be treated to a chat about the history and workings of this magnificent musical instrument, and a short recital.

The final church, St Stephen’s Presbyterian, is currently closed for services due to worries about the risk of earthquakes, part of the government and local authorities’ knee-jerk reaction to the devastation of the Christchurch earthquake. Auckland, as most people know, does not have a high earthquake risk and it is generally stone, not wooden buildings which are most at risk of collapse when earthquakes do occur. Luckily, the closure is being challenged by the church authorities, with the support of experts from the University of Auckland’s Schools of Architecture and Engineering, as it is a huge shame that people cannot more readily visit this magnificent structure.

Built of kauri in 1875 in Gothic Revival design with a standard rectangular shape, the church was expanded thirty years later into its present cross shape. It has a tin external roof and holes in its ceilings and wall panels, which were originally intended to let out the fumes from the gas lighting and kerosene heaters. The interior hammerbeam roof is magnificent, and has the additional and apparently quite unusual feature of metal rods connecting the spans. Another unusual feature is the sloping floor, intended to give parishioners seated in the back pews a better view.

Rather than a cross or a fixed altar, the central focus of the church is the large organ, which was originally powered by a hydraulic pump but is now motorised. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear this one in action.

In front of the organ sit five chairs, the central ‘God’ chair, reserved for the minister, and two chairs on either side for the church elders. This is, I have now learnt, a common feature in Presbyterian churches. Before these chairs, on a table, lay an open bible, another common feature. In fact, some of our group recalled the bible being processed in and out of their churches, a means of emphasising the Presbyterians’ belief in the importance of the bible as the word of God.

Not being a religious person, I learnt a great deal during this guided walk, but what I enjoyed most was the magnificent architecture of the three older buildings. Long may they survive the evils of developers … and earthquakes!