Overall Effect on the Government
Although new political parties - both left and right - emerged following the riots, the government as a whole was not affected majorly because such movements were spontaneous in their nature and did not raise much of a threat to the state authority.
What is quite surprising about the way that New Zealand dealt with the effects of the Great Depression is not that the violent riots were produced, but that overall so little disorder came out of it. The authority of the state was never really threatened. Many other democracies had mass street battles between extremist of right and left. The weakness of the trade unions and the Communist Party, and the crackdown of the Coalition government can help explain the modest level of working-class unrest. While the nationwide riots seemed extremist and radical for the otherwise puritan New Zealand society, it was not major compared to what happened elsewhere. In contrast to most other states affected by the crisis – even Australia with its New Guard- there were no fascist movements formed in New Zealand.
In other countries, fascism grew from the collapse of the property-owning classes and race hatred. New Zealand’s middle classes were however not completely broken as in those states, there were only in a temporary state of despair. Home-ownership rates fell, but the majority survived. Here the slump also couldn’t be blamed on racial minorities as the Maori were at this time still a rural group with no effective economic power and there were very few Chinese, Indians and Jews to take notice of.
Popular discontent and anger were channelled into more conventional forms by the rise of the Labour Party. Led by Michael Joseph Savage since 1933, and encouraged by its support of the popular wave of credit reform, Labour seemed to offer a practical and painless way of rebuilding the ‘land of happy homes’. Hence why there was an overwhelming support for Labour in the 1935 elections which they won by a great majority.
In other countries, fascism grew from the collapse of the property-owning classes and race hatred. New Zealand’s middle classes were however not completely broken as in those states, there were only in a temporary state of despair. Home-ownership rates fell, but the majority survived. Here the slump also couldn’t be blamed on racial minorities as the Maori were at this time still a rural group with no effective economic power and there were very few Chinese, Indians and Jews to take notice of.
Popular discontent and anger were channelled into more conventional forms by the rise of the Labour Party. Led by Michael Joseph Savage since 1933, and encouraged by its support of the popular wave of credit reform, Labour seemed to offer a practical and painless way of rebuilding the ‘land of happy homes’. Hence why there was an overwhelming support for Labour in the 1935 elections which they won by a great majority.