1971: Foxton Courthouse Closure
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Foxton Courthouse was shut down on January 28, 1971. It was part of a wider trend to cull the country courthouse that was just warming up. National 3.0’s Minister of Justice, Dan Riddiford, was the figurehead behind this one but at the end of the decade that government dropped the axe on 24 of New […]
Read more..March 31, 2024
1848: The Canterbury Association
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Today in history, 28 March, 1848 The Canterbury Association met for the first time. This was at 41 Charing Cross, London, and the local time was 27 March which is how most sources record the time but AHNZ prefers to record dates using New Zealand’s calendar. To us, especially Cantabrians, names like Cavendish, Charterius, Coleridge, […]
Read more..March 28, 2024
1936: Single Source of Truth
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Today in history, 25 March, 1936, Labour 1.0 started radio broadcast transmissions from the Debating Chamber. Michael Savage’s new Government scared some New Zealanders. Had we elected a bunch of open Communists to run our country? Yes. Would they run it that way? Kind of, yes! One thing Labour had to do was circumventing the […]
Read more..March 25, 2024
1921: Christchurch Electric Car Fleet
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
By 1921 Christchurch had a fleet of 48 private and council electric vehicles. Every one of them paraded for this photo that year. A good city for electric cars because Canterbury is flat and had a good power supply. The local MED offered discount rates for charging batteries overnight and this encouraged more users. This […]
Read more..March 24, 2024
1848: New Edinburgh
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Today in New Zealand history, 23 March, 1848, the first colony ship for the Otago Association landed and for this it has been Otago Anniversary ever since¹. This was a sub-project of the New Zealand Company facilitated by the Wakefield family and designed to be a Scottish intentional community. The New Edinburgh project had been […]
Read more..March 23, 2024
1861: The Invasion of Otago
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Gabriel Read was done with gold in March 1861 but it wasn’t to be for the first or last time. Now aged 36, Reed made his way in March to Cust in North Canterbury for the farm hospitality of his 21yo cousin, Terry Murphy. The family connection between these Australian men was that Read’s sister […]
Read more..March 21, 2024
1988: Cyclone Bola
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Sometimes at this time of year things dry up or catch fire. Other times cyclones strike and we catch flooding the likes of which we had forgotten because of our short memories. Today in history, 7 March, 1988, Cyclone Bola came to New Zealand and hit the North Island. Taranaki and Gisborne in particular. The […]
Read more..March 6, 2024
1842: The Raupo Houses Act
By Anarchist History of New Zealand
Today in history, 3 March, 1842, self-declared Governor of New Zealand, William Hobson, passed the Raupo Houses Act. This placed a huge £20 tax on anyone with a ‘Maori House’ within the boundaries of what The State defined as a town. The Maori fiber house technology had been adopted and improved by the new colonists […]
Read more..March 3, 2024
