Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
from 1917 to 1967, pubs were obliged to shut at 6pm. Yet the puritanical society of Bet-
ter Britons was never the whole story. Opposition to Sunday trading stemmed, not so
much from belief in the sanctity of the Sabbath, but from the belief that workers should
have weekends too. Six o'clock closing was a standing joke in rural areas, notably the
marvellously idiosyncratic region of the South Island's West Coast. There was always
something of a Kiwi counterculture, even before imported countercultures took root from
the 1960s.
There were also developments in cultural nationalism, beginning in the 1930s but
really flowering from the 1970s. Writers, artists and film-makers were by no means the
only people who 'came out' in that era.
The Six o'clock Swill referred to the frantic after-work drinking at pubs when men tried to
drink as much as possible from 5.05pm until strict closing time at 6pm.
Coming In, Coming Out
The 'recolonial' system was shaken several times after 1935, but managed to survive un-
til 1973, when Mother England ran off and joined the Franco-German commune now
known as the EU. NZ was beginning to develop alternative markets to Britain, and al-
ternative exports to wool, meat and dairy products. Wide-bodied jet aircraft were allow-
ing the world and NZ to visit each other on an increasing scale. NZ had only 36,000 tour-
ists in 1960, compared with more than two million a year now. Women were beginning
to penetrate first the upper reaches of the workforce and then the political sphere. Gay
people came out of the closet, despite vigorous efforts by moral conservatives to push
them back in. University-educated youths were becoming more numerous and more as-
sertive.
From 1945, Maori experienced both a population explosion and massive urbanisation.
In 1936, Maori were 17% urban and 83% rural. Fifty years later, these proportions had
reversed. The immigration gates, which until 1960 were pretty much labelled 'whites
only', widened, first to allow in Pacific Islanders for their labour, and then to allow in
(east) Asians for their money. These transitions would have generated major socioeco-
nomic change whatever happened in politics. But most New Zealanders associate the
country's recent 'Big Shift' with the politics of 1984.
