{"id":949,"date":"2007-11-18T21:52:31","date_gmt":"2007-11-18T11:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=949"},"modified":"2007-11-18T21:58:07","modified_gmt":"2007-11-18T11:58:07","slug":"closely-resembling-stupidity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=949","title":{"rendered":"“closely resembling stupidity”"},"content":{"rendered":"

1<\/a>) Laura Norder reports<\/em>: It is 25 years today since an anarchist died while trying to blow up the Wanganui police computer<\/a> building.<\/p>\n

Neil Roberts was protesting against what he considered was ‘creeping fascism’<\/a> and a ‘police state’<\/a> driven by then Prime Minister Robert “Piggy” Muldoon. A short film about the anarchist and punk rocker<\/a>, called The Maintenance of Silence<\/em> (1985) directed by William Kendall, is being screened in Auckland this evening to mark (but not celebrate) the anniversary of his death in 1982.<\/p>\n

The screening is being held at the launch of a new book: Rabble Rousers and Merry Pranksters – A History of Anarchism in Aotearoa\/New Zealand<\/a><\/em> from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, written by Toby Boraman.<\/p>\n

This book covers New Zealand events such as the worker-student siege of parliament in June 1968; the “Jumping Sundays” or the liberation of Albert Park in Auckland in 1969; the Mount John “rock festival” of 1972, when anti-US military bases protesters sabotaged the only access road to the Mount John US military installation; the 1974 ferry case when a near general strike spontaneously occurred over the imprisonment of union official Bill Andersen by the Labour Government; and the anarchist involvement in the formation of Peace Movement Aotearoa and the successful Save Aramoana Campaign.<\/p>\n

The book is the first major history of anarchism in New Zealand.<\/p>\n