The Halt All Racist Tours Movement at 50

Prominent New Zealand activists discuss the importance and future of protest and dissent
50 years on from the formation of the Halt All Racist Tours movement (HART), join prominent New Zealand activists for a discussion on the importance and future of protest and dissent.

Protest and how it changed New Zealand.

The years between 1969 and 1985 irrevocably changed New Zealand and the way we see ourselves and the wider world.

From the 1969 formation of HART to the cancellation of the 1973 tour, the 1976 Montreal Olympic boycott, the 56 days of unprecedented protest against the 1981 Springboks rugby tour to the decision by the New Zealand High Court to grant an injunction stopping the All Blacks from touring South Africa in 1985, New Zealand was at war with itself.

HARTS’s protest and what did it achieve

By 1981, the issue of sporting contact with South Africa, for a long time a litmus test for a wide-ranging set of New Zealand values, had become, sublimely at least, more about New Zealand than South Africa.

As New Zealand moved from being a grey, conservative, post second world-war society to a country with a more bi-cultural approach to domestic race issues and a more liberal, internationalist approach to world issues, what was the role played by HART and other anti-apartheid and anti-racist groups to effecting this change? How powerful was HART’s protest and what did it achieve?

Join us for a dynamic exchange of ideas focussing on the past and present with a view to the future.
About the speakers

Sessions will be chaired by Simon Wilson and Rosslyn Noonan. Presenters include:
- Sue Bradford — activist, academic and former New Zealand politician
- Bob Burgess — former New ealalnd Rugby player, All Black from 1971 to 1973
- Linda Burgess — short story writer, script and televisions writer, novelist and reviewer
- Moana Jackson — lawyer specialising in Treaty of Waitangi and constitutional issues
- Trevor Richards — HART founding chairman
- John Minto — national orgnaiser of HART
- Dave Wickham — sports fanatic HART activist
- Morgan Godfery — writer and trade unionist