Recent years have seen a lot of discussion of the monuments in our streets and public spaces, asking us to consider, for example, whether it’s appropriate to have monuments to people like William Wakefield or Captain Hamilton, complicit in the violence of colonisation. Leonie Hayden has argued that, alongside taking down some of these monuments, it is time to build memorials to honour those that served iwi Māori, and those that served the community, as a way of claiming history.[1] One such memorial could be on Norfolk Street, in Ponsonby, Auckland.
Many housing struggles are private: to find a home, despite discrimination and high rents relative to income; to live in rooms that are damp, cold and hazardous; to make a home while knowing that the landlord could give notice. But on Norfolk Street, renters got together and made their struggle public: once in 1931, and once in 1974. Norfolk Street is a good place to honour those who, in a society that idolises homeownership, fight to make a better life for renters..
1931
In 1931, at 21 Norfolk Street, Mrs Martinovich and her five children could not afford to pay the rent. They were given notice of their eviction when they were eleven weeks in arrears. Negotiations between the landlord and the Unemployed Workers Movement’s anti-eviction committee failed. In anticipation of the eviction, up to 40 people at a time gathered in the home for five days. They hoisted a red flag from the roof and hung banners saying “Anti-Eviction Vigilance Committee”, “Stop the eviction” and “No work, no rent” from the veranda. Then the bailiff, accompanied by a group of policemen, knocked on the door. When the occupants refused to admit them, the door was wrenched from its hinges, to boos from the crowd of five hundred. Most of the occupants were arrested, and the bailiffs moved the contents of the house to the street. Finally, Mrs Martinovich, “poorly clad but smiling” left the house to cheers from the crowd. A hat was passed around to gather donations for her, and a woman from Ponsonby Road offered the family a place to stay. Fifteen people, including Jim Edwards and Alexander Drennan, were later convicted of “procuring lawlessness” and imprisoned for between one and three months.[2]
1974
In 1974, the Vasau family, who had lived in their rental home on Norfolk Street for five years, were told to leave after the house was sold. The family did not leave. The landlord put their belongings in the street. Later that day, with the support of the Ponsonby People’s Union, the family and their possessions returned to the house. After a confrontation with the landlord and the police, the union and family negotiated with the landlord. As a result, they were able to stay on in their home. After six months, they were removed with a court order and police assistance.[3]
Legacy
The Norfolk Street eviction resistance of 1931 was the most public event, but there are at least 17 documented accounts of eviction resistance during the Depression. This kind of direct action often helped tenants gain a little more time to find new accommodation, or to find another home, alongside making a strong political point about the need for fairer rents and better housing conditions. Such activism has been partially credited with creating the conditions for the new Labour government to implement the social welfare system, fair rents legislation, and the state house building programme from 1935.[4]
The Vasau family and the Ponsonby People’s Union were part of a wider movement for better conditions for renters during the 1970s, which included the Polynesian Panthers’ Tenants’ Aid Brigades, and tenant protection associations or tenants unions in a number of cities. Direct action like theirs, alongside lobbying and publicising of the issues tenants were faced with, helped make the case for the Residential Tenancies Act 1986, which strengthened the rights of renters.[5]
The actions of the Martinoviches and the Vasaus and their neighbours, and the Anti-Eviction League and the Ponsonby People’s Union and other organisations like them, helped make life in rental housing better. This important work is continued today by organisations like Renters United. This work merits celebration. Perhaps through a memorial, someplace like Norfolk Street.
***This article appeared in the Labour History Project Bulletin (87), April 2023: Campaigns in a cost-of-living crisis and is republished here with permission. The Labour History Project AGM is coming up on 17 July in Wellington, featuring some great speakers on 1970s protest photos and the announcement of the winner of the Bert Roth Labour History Award.***
[1] Leonie Hayden, “Idea: Put up more statues – of New Zealanders who deserve them,” 8 July 2020, https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/08-07-2020/idea-put-up-more-statues-of-new-zealanders-who-deserve-them.
[2] “Evicted – Ponsonby woman,” Auckland Star, 13 October 1931, 9; “Lawless men – Fifteen get gaol,” Evening Post, 16 October 1931, 8; B. Roth and J. Hammond, Toil and Trouble: The Struggle for a Better Life in New Zealand (Auckland: Methuen, 1981), 120.
[3] People’s Union, “Eviction resisted by Ponsonby tenants,” People’s Union for Survival and Freedom Information Service, August 1974, 1.
[4] E. Chisholm, “Individual and Collective Action for Healthy Rental Housing in New Zealand: An Historical and Contemporary Study” (PhD diss., University of Otago, Wellington, 2016), 117-145; E. Chisholm, “‘Come quickly! The bailiffs are in!’: Resistance to eviction during the Depression in New Zealand,” New Zealand Journal of History 55, no. 2, (2021):32-50.
[5] Chisholm, “Individual and Collective Action,” 146-175; E. Chisholm, “‘The way to end housing problems’: tenant protest in New Zealand in the 1970s,” Kotuitui New Zealand Journal of Social Science, (2022):1-16.
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