Seditious, libellous and blasphemous: the Maoriland Worker

Media Release from the National Library of New Zealand
23 February 2012

Seditious, libellous and blasphemous: read the Maoriland Worker on Papers Past

“No ‘quack’ advertisements of any kind whatsoever will be inserted in the columns of the Maoriland Worker,” stated an early edition of one of the nation’s most controversial newspapers, now available to all on the National Library’s Papers Past website (http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz)

The Maoriland Worker was a leading voice – and recorder – of the development of the labour movement in New Zealand in the first half of the 20th century. The complete first 14 years of its publication, from 1910 to 1924, can now be read on Papers Past, which contains more than two million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals, from 1839 to 1945.

“The Maoriland Worker seemed to court controversy from its very beginning,” said Emerson Vandy, Papers Past’s Service Manager. “Even after it became the newspaper of the fledgling Labour Party, its uncompromising editorial stance brought it into conflict with the establishment of the time.”

Everyone can now read the newspaper that made its own headlines: the staunchly pacifist editorial line during World War One; the libel charges against “Billy Banjo” and Harry Holland; police harassment, and New Zealand’s only blasphemy trial, involving the paper’s manager, John Glover.

“The early pages of the Maoriland Worker offer a fascinating look into the development of one of the major social and political forces in this country, and a welcome addition to the resources now available online to historians and researchers everywhere,” said Emerson Vandy.

ENDS

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