Published as part of my research for Spaceless I had the chance to interview political activist, mayoral candidate and school teacher John Minto at his home in Christchurch.

Daniel Shaskey I guess to start off, tell me a bit about yourself what inspired you to start getting involved in protests?

John Minto Well yeah, I grew up in Dunedin, and went to a catholic school. We were a big catholic family down there, with ten kids. At the time the catholic church was very involved in looking at social justice issues. There was quite a strong feeling within the church about, you know, supporting the poor and the oppressed around the world. Anyway, I think those are some of the values that I took from there, from my family and from my church. I was at university and I sort of became interested there, but I didn’t get actively involved until after I left university. I got involved in the anti-apartheid movement in Napier. It was 1975 that there was a proposed All Blacks tour in South Africa for 1976. I got quite involved in that, then moved to Auckland and got even more involved. So yeah I think it’s a value based thing, in terms of my family particularly. Yeah. 

DS When you got involved in the anti-apartheid movement was that straight into HART?

JM No, I got involved in The National Anti-Apartheid Council. We were a little group in Napier initially. So, I was involved there, where we had national meetings. So, HART was looking at a sports boycott and the National Anti-Apartheid Council was looking at the economic boycott. So stopping trade with South Africa and diplomatic links and all those other things. In the end in 1980, a couple of years later, they merged into HART Aotearoa because we had the 81’ tour coming up and we knew it was going to be a really big campaign so we needed to be really united. So, that’s how it transpired. I was appointed national organiser in 1980 at HART, so that was a full time job for the next five years. Yeah, it was a real privilege, something. I enjoyed, yeah it was good.

DS So at that point it was HART plus The National Anti-Apartheid Council. So, they were merged by then?

JM Yeah they were all merged. I mean, yeah there was CARE. There was another organisation called CARE which was based in Auckland. Citizens Association for Racial Equality and they looked at the races in South Africa and in New Zealand. Looking at all kinds of local issues as well. There was number of groups around but the main anti-apartheid organisation was HART Aotearoa, or as it was called HART: New Zealand Anti-Apartheid Movement (HART: NZAAM) in those days. 

DS So they played a pretty big role in coordinating a lot of the protests?

JM Yeah what HART did. We had a huge education campaign which is what most of my time was spent doing, organising educational things. We had films, we had speakers, we produced leaflets and posters. We had a very high public profile, because rugby was such a big issue and there was growing movement against this proposed Springbok tour in 1981. So, the whole country picked up the momentum of this big issue. My role was doing the education, but was also organising protests. Early in 1981—this is important from a structural point of view— we realized HART had a bad name. What we had was a controversial organisation and to try and build the movement wider in all the centres we encouraged coalitions to form. So, people who didn’t know if they wanted to go join something under HART they might join something under their local church group or their local student group, or the local trade unions. So, we had about twenty centres around New Zealand where these coalitions formed, and they were all coalitions to stop the Springbok tour. That turned out to be a very important development for us. We were able to build very strong organisations around the country. 

DS I know you had quite a bit to do with the more recent anti-TPPA protests. What would the atmosphere of the earlier springbok tour protests compare to these more recent ones? 

JM Well in those days the issue was that the country was so bitterly divided. There was something like 45% fervently in favour of the tour, come hell or high water. And 45% absolutely opposed, and strongly opposed. There wasn’t any room, really, to sit on the fence. It was bitter and the tension was palpable right through the whole community from Early 1981 right through probably to the end of 81, because there were still repercussions of the tour that went on. There were court cases going on even two years after the tour. Yeah so the level of tension was a lot greater. 

DS Yeah. So, in 81’ there was a group called the Wellington Media Collective They did a lot of political posters, a lot of posters for HART as well.

JM Yeah, they did

DS What sort of role do you think this sort of visual ephemera played in promoting the protests or also as a part of the protests?

JM Hugely important. Chris McBride, I think had some key involvement in that. I’ve been working with him relatively recently just before I left Auckland, this is something like 35 years on. So, yeah the Wellington Media Collective did a huge amount of work, fantastic work. Before and all around that issue, over many years they were producing work. They had a very big impact. I always think, it’s that thing about a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s very true, and I think a poster can convey the emotion of a situation generally much more than plain text, or however else you try to communicate. Yeah a poster and a graphic can create, I guess it works two ways. A really good one will be an inspiration or an encouragement to people involved in the protest, as well as people on the other side seeing it, would see it as a real challenge. So, it plays those two roles. It supports your people but it also challenges others. That’s really important. At the end of the day people get involved in things essentially out of an emotional reaction to something. So, posters conveying that emotional reaction are very, very important.

DS Yeah for sure! I find that now days you see a lot less of those kinds of posters though, because you now have things like social media platforms that have, in a sense, taken over. Do you think that
this sense of emotion has been anything lost because of this? 

JM Well, no. I think what we find is that the most effective communication on social media is via really good posters. Like for example we had two events on this week, we had Nicky Hager speaking the other night and last night we had a Palestinian poet performing here in Christchurch. Both posters were really well designed, both really good posters. They covered that role I talked about before. I think that when they get shared around they can have just as important an impact. So yeah posters slapped up on walls yeah, by all means, that’s still important. But it’s become more important now, I think, having those posters circulating social media.

DS Cool, although there are these theories that social media is quite mediated, because there are algorithms behind everything, which only show certain things to certain people. You were talking about it before, how you can get the opposite side looking at physical posters and being challenged by them. Do you feel like they might not be seeing these on social media as much?

JM Yeah, it’s hard to know. I’ve got a guy in Auckland that designs the posters for quite a lot of stuff that I’m involved in and he’s very good. I think that a good poster, one that has immediate impact, gets circulated around enough. He did one for us on the GCSB, just a simple public meeting in Auckland, but it’s a really, I would say, an outstanding poster with the Auckland town Hall at night in the background. That poster got shared over 200 times. Of course, the issue was a big public issue, but it’s still that thing about having a graphic. If it had just an explanation saying ‘there’s a public meeting on, so on, please share around with your friends’ the it wouldn’t have had anywhere near the impact that presented on a really good poster. So, I think it’s just as important as it was in the past. 

DS Yeah that’s good, on a slightly different topic. Part of a project I’m working on involves looking at a recent Adam Curtis Documentary called Hypernormalisation. This talks a bit about the realities of politics and what they do and don’t show to you. One idea he mentioned was about how artists had made a change around the 70s where they moved from collective action into forms of self-expression. I know for me, being somewhat involved in some of the galleries around Christchurch that I kind of agree with that in the sense that a lot of art, even if it is quite political, it tends to be reflecting society which isn’t really–

JM In one person’s eyes you mean?

DS Yeah, so it’s not exactly motivating change.

JM Yeah, Yeah, well we just saw the James Robinson Exhibition at PG Gallery the other day. We were there for something. We’ve got a couple of his works up around the house here, I quite like his work, but yeah I can understand what you’re saying. Because it’s very much his expression of the world around him, there are lots of very political issues but yeah. That’s interesting, I hadn’t looked at it from that point of view. 

DS Because often artists fall under the left-wing liberal stereotype. I feel like they should be acting more collectively rather than only in self-expression, or reflection.

JM Yeah well in 1981 in Auckland there was
a group called Artists Against Apartheid and they were hugely active, they were acting as a collective. There was a lot of individual expression within it of course, but they were a lot of very well-known artists In Auckland. They even organised one of the big marches. It was just an absolute celebration of art, incredible political art. All the big names in New Zealand, or Auckland art were there. So, that had a huge impact, those people are still around doing a lot of good work. So, what I’m saying is, that was the 1980s and that was where they were acting collectively, and as I said they organised one of the big marches down Queen Street. 

DS I guess the Wellington Media Collective is like that as well. They are designers but they are also artists in a sense. Design and art kind of fall under the same radar, so they were acting in a similar way.

JM Very Similar, but the amazing puppets and paper-maché, and all sorts of things. It was an absolute celebration of art. If you look at the protest photos from 81’ certainly in the big marches you find so much incredible creative artwork there. Celebrating opposition to racism, it was great. Really good to be part of.