Depression riots
- When
- 14 April 1932
- Where
- Queen Street, Auckland · Tāmaki Makaurau
- Reach
- Several regions
Relief workers and the unemployed smashed shopfronts down Queen Street. Similar riots hit Dunedin and Wellington within days.
Export prices had collapsed, unemployment was near 12 percent of the workforce on official counts and higher in reality, and relief work paid below subsistence for men sent to camps away from their families. Māori and married women were largely excluded from relief altogether. The government responded with emergency regulations and special constables. The bitterness of these years is the direct reason Labour won in 1935 and built a welfare state.
Regions affected
Sources
Written for this project from these references rather than copied from them. Follow a link to check the account against the original.
Related
The 1951 waterfront dispute
Lockout and strike ran for 151 days. Emergency regulations made it a crime even to give food to a watersider’s children.
Wellington waterfrontDecimal currency day
Pounds, shillings and pence became dollars and cents, promoted by a cartoon character called Mr Dollar and a jingle everyone remembers.
Vogel’s public works and immigration scheme
Julius Vogel borrowed £10 million in London to build railways, roads and telegraph lines, and to bring 100,000 assisted migrants.
The first Labour government
Michael Joseph Savage led Labour to a landslide and built the welfare state: state houses, guaranteed prices, free health care and a 40-hour week.
Wellington