The Fairfax Archives: Stop the Tour!
The Fairfax Archives: Stop the Tour!
Online Auction
09 - 13 September 2021
More items from the storied Fairfax Archives collection, this time from newspaper coverage of the 1981 Springbok tour. Sadly, due to the tortuous journey that the collection has taken since being sent to the USA for digitisation, photographer credits have been lost. For more info on the background of the archive, read this article by Todd Niall on Stuff.
A clash between pro and anti tour demonstrators in Mount Eden, 1981
gelatin silver print, 200 x 250mm, unframed
Photographer not recorded
The Fairfax Archives: Stop the Tour! chronicles the most socially polarised moment in Aotearoa’s history. The infamous Springbok tour of 1981 led to the outbreak of widespread protests across the nation. The scale of the protests and the level of social division the tour created is unlike anything else we have seen on our shores.
This sale presents over 150 gripping photographs of the tour, capturing the intensity of the historical moment in a powerful and distinct way.
The tour saw unprecedented social unrest, with mass protests, field invasions during games, and pitched battles between protestors and police playing out on the streets of our cities. The protest movement was opposed to South Africa’s apartheid policy. Sporting ties, it was argued, demonstrated New Zealand’s implicit support for this policy. Tour supporters, on the other hand, believed that sport and politics should not mix. These opposing points of view caused deep division - not just on the streets and rugby fields, but in workplaces and in homes. Rarely, if ever, has New Zealand been so internally divided on an issue.
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