Exhibition highlights pacifism and achievements
The current exhibition at the Golden Bay Museum will be the subject of a Spectrum programme by Jack Perkins on Radio NZ National on Sunday 20 February.
The exhibition gives a historic overview of Golden Bay’s Peace Group and celebrates pacifism in New Zealand across the decades.
It is a collection of memorabilia, symbols of the struggle for peace and a historic account of facts and events arranged in chronological order, and covers the local and national scene and the international stage.
Peace activist Helen Kingston said the idea evolved two years ago.
“It was a matter of getting the material into the museum and we wanted the exhibition to be in the summer to get the visitors as well as the locals,” she said. “We had collected a lot of material in our archives, paper clippings, correspondence, accounts of how much money we had collected, and it was all in different people’s houses and the documentation did take some time. We felt there was enough interesting material after 28 years of peace activism that was worthy of being exhibited.”
Modelled on a photo, Sarah Hornibrooke’s installation by the entrance shows the imprisonment of a conscientious objector who refused to perform military service on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion, and draws the attention to the status of pacifists during WWI and WWII.
Another corner exhibit reminds the visitor of the first atom bomb victims and leads on to the documentation of the countrywide formation of active peace groups in the 1980s.
Peace group member Ginny Stocker said the exhibition tells part of the social history of the district, “and we are quite passionate about it. We were representative of many peace groups around the country forcing the Government to make New Zealand nuclear-free, which changed the course of events for New Zealand and is so much part of our national identity now. We are a grass-roots movement that stood up and said ‘we are not going to be bullied’ by the Government.”
The group has worked incessantly to raise public consciousness about issues relating to worldwide conflicts, violence and the threat of nuclear armament, and has been involved in a number of campaigns. It continues to take an interest in all matters relating to non-violence and maintains an active presence by collecting signatures for petitions, organising peace marches and setting up information stalls once or twice a year.
The Golden Bay group formed in 1982 in response to mounting Cold War tensions, eventually attracting a core of 30 members committed to turning Golden Bay into a nuclear-free zone. At the time, a petition in support of the initiative was signed by over 51 per cent of the Bay’s population and, although rejected in its first round, it was finally adopted by a newly elected council in 1985. For 17 years, the group met monthly and was mentioned as the most active group in New Zealand in Will Foote’s book on the country’s peace groups.
A generation later, there is renewed interest in pacifism, said Helen Kingston. “A new generation is learning about it and we had a lot of interest from schools, and it has become part of the social science curriculum.”
The exhibition closes on Easter Weekend. Opening times depend on the availability of museum volunteers.
Ina Holst
The Radio NZ National programme will be aired on Sunday 20 February. Time: 12.15pm. Repeated Thursday at 7.30pm.
