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| Hone Harawira at the Te Mana party hui |
Hone Harawira split from the Maori party due to his former party’s relationship with National. Hone was highly critical of the Foreshore and Seabed Act and his comments, in which he called the coalition with National more important than the commitment to Maori over the issue, eventually led to his resignation from the Maori party. He had proved the only class-conscious left-wing voice in the Maori party, interested in Maori and class. When the by-election was called, he received flak from National and the media saying that it was a waste of tax-payer money. As Hone said, it is “hardly an expense in terms of democracy”. On the 25th of June Hone regained his seat in parliament as leader of Te Mana, winning the election with a significant 8% advantage. The Maori party was relegated to a mere 9% of votes.
Te Mana is needed in the current political spectrum. Hone is pro-worker and Te Tai Tokerau are aware of this. The Maori party on the other hand have started to lose their niche. Maori, in their vast majority are working class; they live in the poorer suburbs or areas of the countries and still now a disparity between Maori and Pakeha levels of education exists. The Maori party has failed to represent the working class sector of the Maori population. Hone and Te Mana however, are set to create a pro-Maori and pro-working class party. They note in their kaupapa that “ordinary New Zealanders are starving, workers are being forced into slavery by the 90-day bill, and Maori rights are being drowned in the Raukumara Basin”[1]. Te Mana doesn’t just represent Maori interests, it represents the interests of the working class, in other words the majority of New Zealanders, because Maori are an important and significant part of this working class.
There is no party in parliament currently that can actually say it truly represents the working class. National and Labour serve capital and neo-liberal economics, thus hurting the majority of Kiwis with lower pay, worse representation in terms of unions, increased fears of job loss; all in the name of recession or austerity. At the same time though we are seeing tax subsidies and tax cuts for a few, as well as a destruction of our services of education and our environment. Te Mana is focussed on rebalancing the scales, it wants to put ‘class’ back into the agenda. The Labour Party and the Greens are losing support to Te Mana. Sue Bradford, Matt McCarten, John Minto, Mike Treen and Annette Sykes have all joined Hone, they have long fought for the working class, green politics and Maori identity. Hone is also helping to set up a much-needed activist youth force, Mana Rangatahi.
OGNA stands in support of Te Mana, we must remember though that while Mana does represent the interests of the working class, so did Labour once, so did the Maori Party, the Alliance and so do the Greens. It is key that Te Mana continues its quest to protect workers and Maori but at the end of the day it is yet another cog in the system. Parliament is focussed on reform, it will never achieve full equality or justice for the working class. OGNA believes there is the danger that socialist organisations will lose their way supporting Te Mana, capitalism can only be changed through a movement by the workers and for the workers. We need to empower communities and unions that will be able to unite people in the struggle nationally and internationally. Reforms will never end up achieving economic justice; the workers do not receive what they work for, they are oppressed and forced to slave in the interest of bosses and under the duty of nationalism. We must overcome these restrictions. In order to achieve a socialist society, one that belongs to the working class and through it everyone else, workers must unite to achieve a socialist revolution, which will only succeed if it is non-violent.
D. F. Benson-Guiu
[1] http://mana.net.nz/kaupapa-
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