Richard Arthur Haydon was born in Chudleigh, Devon, England about 1863 but would travel to the other side of the globe as a young man to live the rest of his life in New Zealand.
In August 1883 at the age of 21 he embarked at Plymouth, England for Lyttelton, New Zealand to start a new life. A carpenter by trade, he would work for the New Zealand Railways for the balance of his working life. Marrying within a few years of his arrival, he lived with his family firstly in Wanganui, then Dunedin, and Christchurch, the latter being where he ended life.
Neither famous nor distinguished, he - with tens of thousands of fellow emigrants - left his Old World home for a new one, never to return to whence he came. It was a one-way ticket.
No author or historian, Richard, with relatively little schooling, wrote a shipboard diary of his 1883 journey that has been read by but a mere handful of people over the past 125 or so years. No work of great literary value, it nevertheless leaves a young man's penciled account of his journey that may as well have been to the moon given the technological and emotional "distance" involved.
Showing posts with label Immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Immigration. Show all posts
Monday, July 6, 2009
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Racist Comments Inflame New Zealand Election Campaign
National Party spokesman on Immigration, Lockwood Smith, made the following remarks to the Marlborough Express about Asian and Pasifika immigrant farm workers:
“There are some skills in the vineyard that some people are perhaps better at, for example some of the pruning … some of the Asian workers have been more productive … because their hands are smaller. Some of them [employers] are having to teach them [Pasifika seasonal workers] things like how to use a toilet or shower.”
Smith has been charged with racism by his political opponents and has been required by his leader, John Key, to issue a public apology. The Maori Party, likely to be vital to National to form a voting block to form a majority in the new parliament, has criticised the comments as racist and questioned whether Smith is fit to serve as a Minister of Immigration in a new cabinet.
No doubt Lockwood thinks 5 year olds are suitable orchard workers too since they have small hands compared to adults. Will National be repealing child labour laws if elected? Is horticultural work "women's work" because women generally have smaller hands than men? And what's the fascination with showers and toilets? Surely, employers are not incapable of assisting employees to adapt technologically and culturally? Perhaps they need to adapt too.
The remarks rekindle memories of the Muldoon National government of the 1970s - early 1980s in which a number of Cabinet ministers uttered fatuous, racist comments without much political consequence. Hopefully, New Zealand society has evolved sufficiently since then to no longer tolerate such nonsense.
“There are some skills in the vineyard that some people are perhaps better at, for example some of the pruning … some of the Asian workers have been more productive … because their hands are smaller. Some of them [employers] are having to teach them [Pasifika seasonal workers] things like how to use a toilet or shower.”
Smith has been charged with racism by his political opponents and has been required by his leader, John Key, to issue a public apology. The Maori Party, likely to be vital to National to form a voting block to form a majority in the new parliament, has criticised the comments as racist and questioned whether Smith is fit to serve as a Minister of Immigration in a new cabinet.
No doubt Lockwood thinks 5 year olds are suitable orchard workers too since they have small hands compared to adults. Will National be repealing child labour laws if elected? Is horticultural work "women's work" because women generally have smaller hands than men? And what's the fascination with showers and toilets? Surely, employers are not incapable of assisting employees to adapt technologically and culturally? Perhaps they need to adapt too.
The remarks rekindle memories of the Muldoon National government of the 1970s - early 1980s in which a number of Cabinet ministers uttered fatuous, racist comments without much political consequence. Hopefully, New Zealand society has evolved sufficiently since then to no longer tolerate such nonsense.
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