Blowin Weekly Extra
9-10pm Sunday 24 April 2011
Blowin online http://blowin.podomatic.com
BCB 106.6 FM and www.bcbradio.co.uk
Near Wycoller
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for Steve
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We were talking about what we did on the last royal parasite wedding day, in 1981. I vaguely remembered the pubs being open all day, an extraordinary event then. We trotted round Manningham via a series of pints in pubs that no longer exist or have become sari shops or halal butchers. Elsewhere, Jon was twitting around on his mate’s motorbike and Chris was in Sudan blissfully unaware.
Ben had a different tale:
“The Wednesday of 29 July 1981 is etched on my memory because it was the night my brother and sister were arrested for civil disobedience during the notorious South African Springbok Rugby Tour of New Zealand.
A group of students, including my brother and sister, broke into the New Zealand Rugby Football Union’s Wellington HQ and tossed the upcoming Wellington Test tickets out the window before barricading themselves in. They were then arrested.
Meanwhile on the streets of the capital riot police were unleashed on non-violent protestors attempting to march on Parliament, which was debating the already divisive SA tour. After pushing the police lines back the ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ riot squads were set on the unarmed and peaceful demonstrators. They proceeded to indiscriminately smash the front few rows of the march in the head with their new PR24 US batons*.
Men, women, children were beaten. Blood on the street. Nice. I was on the edge of the demo that night, but it was too heavy for me so I went home for my tea. I was 16 years old.
Oh yes, the wedding was on TV, at about 11pm NZ time, but after I took the call from the Central Police Station saying my siblings had been arrested we weren’t paying much attention. To this day I’m afraid I so dislike the Afrikaans/Boers. It’s an irrational racist part of me.
After 29 July “the Tour†(as it was known) got really nasty. Attempts to disrupt the games were met with a solid line of police brutality and barbed wire. We used to spend our Saturdays playing cat and mouse with the police, practicing mass disobedience by blocking motorways and roads in advance of the 2nd Test.
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