By Chris Trotter*
Many New Zealanders would, no doubt, have been surprised to discover that Keith Locke was 80 years old. There was always something of the cherub about the man which generally prompted guesses well south of his actual age. That youthfulness could also be applied to his ideals, which never soured with the passing of the years. Certainly, he reached the age of 80 without losing either his heart or his head. Indeed, there was a joyous naiveté about the man who finally succumbed to the twin ravages of Parkinson’s and Cancer on Friday, 21 June 2024.
Locke was what the Americans, rather unkindly, call a “red diaper baby”. The son of confirmed socialists Jack and Elsie Locke. That being the case, Locke had only two “historical” choices: to follow in his parent’s ideological footsteps, or execute an about-face and become a fierce champion of capitalism. It no doubt came as an immense relief to Jack and Elsie that their son not only kept the left-wing faith, but became (along with his sister Maire Leadbeater) one of its leading New Zealand missionaries.
It is telling, however, that when he returned from tertiary study in Canada to take up a lectureship in sociology at Victoria University in 1970 Locke declined to devote himself to either of the orthodox communist parties then operating in New Zealand.
When Moscow and Beijing parted ideological company in the “Sino-Soviet Split” of 1962, New Zealand and Albania were the only communist parties which sided with Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China. After much internal wrangling, Moscow’s loyalists finally broke away to form the Socialist Unity Party in 1966.
Given that the SUP had all the flair and pep of a Soviet stamp-collectors congress, and the CPNZ’s ultra-leftism made Mao’s Red Guards look like Labour Youth, Locke’s decision to throw in his lot with the Trotskyites of the Socialist Action League (SAL) is entirely understandable.
Leon Trotsky, alongside Lenin himself, was indisputably the most able of the Bolshevik revolutionaries. His upper-class background, however, proved problematic. In a party increasingly composed of hard-bitten working-class battlers, Trotsky’s ostentatious love of “bourgeois” culture raised more than a few comrades’ hackles. Anyone who read French novels during meetings of the Central Committee was asking for trouble – which duly followed him into exile, and caught him in Mexico City where, in 1940, he met his death at the hands of an ice-pick-wielding Soviet assassin.
Was there ever any historical figure better suited to attracting the allegiance of middle-class rebels than this cinematic combination of dazzling intellectual, ruthless revolutionary, and sensitive reader of French literature? As the crimes of Stalinism became increasingly obvious, the global appeal of Trotsky – the man who should have succeeded Lenin – grew and grew. Although most of them will be quite unaware of the fact, whenever any politician consigns their political adversaries to “the dustbin of history” they are quoting Trotsky.
Trotskyism certainly found a loyal follower in Locke who, as editor of its newspaper “Socialist Action”, soon became one of the SAL’s key figures. It was in this role that Locke was to provide future opponents with statements that were, to say the least, embarrassing.
His too-early celebration of the Khmer Rouge’s takeover of Cambodia was to strike him again and again, like an avenging ideological boomerang, throughout his years as a Green Party Member of Parliament. While it is true that he didn’t know about Pol Pot’s killing fields when he wrote his celebratory articles – he should have guessed.
Locke’s naiveté was again in evidence following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which Locke hailed as a victory for the Iranian working-class and its communist cadres. History would render a very different judgement – as would the Ayatollah Khomeini and his legions of deeply conservative Shite Muslim “revolutionary guards”, who never saw a crane that could not be improved by hanging an Iranian leftist from its hook.
Locke’s sojourn in the SAL proved personally costly in other ways. Like so many of his comrades, Locke allowed himself to be buried alive in the bowels of industrial capitalism. This “turn” to the New Zealand working-class involved men and women with impressive academic credentials – Locke had an MA from the University of Alberta and and was working toward a PhD in Sociology at Toronto when he returned to become a lecturer at Victoria – taking the jobs of honest workers in the car plants and freezing works of the nation.
Perhaps this “turn” was inspired by the sneering contempt in which the “bourgeois intellectual Trots” were held by their Maoist and Muscovite competitors. Nowhere is this scorn better captured than in “Socialist Action”, an excoriating parody of Peter Cape’s satirical ditty “Taumarunui – On the Main Trunk Line”. The Maoist bard was merciless:
They run the revolution
From the student union hall.
We’re down here on the picket-line
And we don’t see them at all.
They bring around a pamphlet
Maybe once or twice a year,
Saying ‘Forget about your wage demands,
You’re better off being queer.’
What is clear is that Locke, after 15 years in the SAL, many of them devoted to assembling cars and disassembling sheep, was ready for something else. He threw himself into international causes and became the proprietor of One World Books in Auckland’s Karangahape Road. But, if he remained hopeful of revolution breaking out overseas, Locke had finally reconciled himself to the fact that the only leftists who were going anywhere politically in New Zealand were those prepared to follow the “parliamentary road”.
Locke joined Jim Anderton’s NewLabour Party in 1989 and was quickly elected to the roles of foreign affairs and defence spokesperson. He could not, however, overcome Anderton’s ingrained suspicion of any NLP member further to the left than he was. Some up-and-comers Anderton had to endure – like Laila Harre and Locke’s old SAL comrade, Matt Robson – but at Locke, himself, the Alliance leader drew the line. Anderton was not prepared to ease him into Parliament. At Number 24 on the 1996 Alliance Party List there was little chance of that.
Locke’s chance came when the Greens decided to part company with Anderton’s Alliance in 1997. Alongside the former Maoist, Sue Bradford, the former Trot, Locke, secured himself one of the top seven slots on the Green Party List. If the party crossed the magic 5 percent MMP threshold, then this former lecturer, editor, car-assembler, freezing-worker, and bookseller would do what the spooks who had contributed so generously to his bulging SIS file believed to be impossible – enter the New Zealand House of Representatives.
Locke would serve four terms as a Green MP, acquitting himself impressively as the Party’s foreign affairs spokesperson. Few New Zealanders outside the circles of the more-than-rhetorical Left have any real appreciation of how steeped its members are in the great causes of their time. To a degree that would put most Labour, National, Act and NZ First MPs to shame, Locke was able to discourse knowledgably on every one of the many international issues for which he was expected to articulate the Greens’ position.
Locke departed Parliament in 2011, the same year as Phil Goff, whom he’d first encountered as a young left-wing firebrand back in the early 1970s. In sharp contrast to Goff, Locke kept the socialist faith right through, but, that said, both men almost certainly left Parliament at the right time. Because neither of them were truly ready for the changes that were, even in 2011, transforming the New Zealand Left – including Labour and the Greens. Locke was a good communist, and a passable eco-socialist, but he was not “woke”. His retirement was shrewdly calculated.
The contemporary New Zealand Left is many things, but “joyous” isn’t one of them. Locke belonged to a generation that still believed in a world that could be, through struggle, relieved of its chains. That struggle constituted the core of a life lived with purpose, courage and determination. At times, Keith Locke could be naïve, but he was never cruel. Even as the afflictions that claimed him wore down his body, he remained a gentle left-wing cherub. Aware of the darkness in the human soul, but always walking hopefully towards the light.
Disclosure: The author, Chris Trotter, was a friend and NewLabour Party comrade of Keith Locke for more than 30 years.
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
35 Comments
I found this article sad. While CT is clearly trying to celebrate the person of Kieth Locke, all he really manages to achieve is highlight the dangers of ideological fanaticism. CT states "Locke belonged to a generation that still believed in a world that could be, through struggle, relieved of its chains." which is a disappointingly short sighted comment that fails to recognise that the supposed 'thinkers' of their time utterly failed to see the flaws in human psychology and the traps involved when taking up a polarised position against what they declare as wrong. Murder becomes justified in the name of an ideology, as they label the victim an enemy of the people. While they decried religion, their actions and behaviours demonstrated that they were little different. Extremism is still extremism, no matter the drum they beat.
Socialism was born of fossil energy being applied to production. It was the inevitable fight-back by the oppressed, who held one trump card; their labour. But is was all within that temporary arrangement; nobody on the social Left, saw limits. The problem with the alternative political system they set up, is the problem with any system, ultimately; the psychopaths take over. That isn't the system doing badly, that's the psychopaths taking over - but the system is blamed by those who need to denigrate it, not the psychopaths (Musk is a bigger a threat to humanity's chances of survival, than Stalin was).
But the offshoring of slave-labour by our society, removed that one trump card; now we have renters and rentiers. Ironically, the Limits to Growth are now the renter's trump card - if you can call it that - in that if they don't 'earn', they cannot 'pay'. And more and more tenant 'income' is rentier itself...
Locke seemed to evolve his thinking - the valid thing to do, and those here who doggedly choose not to, stand out like dog's balls. I don't think I would have agreed with him over everything, but over most, yes. A man of integrity, no bad epitaph.
Neither side understood there were limits PDK. The hard core communists still took the fundamental religious teaching of "go forth and multiply" with the implicit understanding that that statement has no implication what so ever of any form of limits. The capitalists they swore everlasting enmity for, had the same view. And their system utterly ignored human psychology in that while they espoused loudly that everyone was equal, and imposed it through the title of "Comrade" the reality is that they set up their own stratified system that was more oppressive and ultimately much more corrupt than the one they overthrew. They turned their own people into a nation of slaves living in fear. The Bolsheviks were led by psychopaths just as the Maoists were in China. Their actions belie their words.
That Keith Locke kept his integrity and beliefs in the face of the pressure he had to face in parliament is impressive and speaks volumes to the strength of the man.
If to attach fossil energy to the advent of socialism, Marx was compiling his manifesto well before the Bolsheviks and while coal/steam was certainly about in his time, it was WW1 that catalysed the monumental outreach to embrace and capitalise on the wonder of oil especially mechanised war machinery and apparatus. Hence my view, expressed before here, that this was the dawn of the Age of Oil. As far as socialism though, the Bolsheviks happened to arrive at about the same time of oils all out importance, but simply put, they just needed a different system of government that’s all and there was Marx on the shelf, not really tried anywhere else before. If it hadn’t been there they could have adopted the American two house and the rest just as easily for example. It would have made no difference as they seized total power, eradicated the layers of opposition, and settled in for the duration. For them any system would work provided it provided them unassailable power. Hence Stalin , the Red Tsar, but not to his face. Mao and the CCP subsequently navigated the same course. Oh yes it’s a different government for the people but in these two forms it resembles and represents dictatorship just as efficiently.
“That isn't the system doing badly, that's the psychopaths taking over - but the system is blamed by those who need to denigrate it, not the psychopaths”.
Wrong. The system that they tried to install in the USSR initially, was/is a utopian / unimplementable one, for it ignores the very nature of human beings. That became clear very soon after the 1917 revolution, - in the early 1920s. From that point, it was either “let’s go back to capitalism, the least bad out of all implementable systems”, or “no, we’ll force the system on people”, “we’ll create a new type of human being”, and all that carry on… The latter direction could only be sustained through brute force and fear – hence the Stalin’s regime and what followed for some 40 years after him. In other words, the only way for a socialist / communist system to survive is if “the psychopaths” (“tyrants” would be a more accurate term) are in power. And even then, the system renders low, and declining, living standards due to its essential flaws.
“Musk is a bigger a threat to humanity's chances of survival, than Stalin was”.
WTF?
Perhaps Locke genuinely failed to see the inherent problem with the Marxist doctrine - and the inevitable consequences. Not least it's elevation of the worst of human impulses, envy, resentment and hate, into a moral virtue.
Not so much joyous naivety as useful idiot.
Locke wasn't the only one. I'd say he was more idealistically blind. Many people cherry pick the best, believing that the worst will never happen to them. Nature has other plans though.....
I'd prefer the Locke's of the world to the cynical self servers that we see too much of these days.
Agreed, Hamas did not carry out a military attack in defence of Gaza. They carried out a grotesque terrorist attack against civilians, and then chose to hide behind their own civilians. Yahya Sinwar planned it that way. He doesn't give a damn how many Palestinians die.
If you're trying to make some sort of counter point (.... are points I guess) you've picked a very poor example.
The Israelis are fighting genocidal terrorists intent on the annihilation of your country and it's people, terrorists that have openly embraced the worst of human impulses, envy, resentment and hate and made it out to be a moral virtue.
Bollocks.
The Israelis are running the worst kind of Apartheid, and have been doing so for decades.
Only by starting your appraisal clock late, can one ignore the long view. Once you realise that, those who start their clock late (within the last year, say) become very obvious - and the fact that they needed to, even more onvious.
I've just finished The Other Side of Israel; it now sits alongside Daughter of the Desert; Seven Pillars of Wisdom; Allenby; With Lawrence in Arabia; Adventure in Oil... But oh no, these folk are terrorists. Don't ever ask why?
let's not mention the ACT candidate sentenced last week or the ACT Member still before the courts
every party has their ragbags that's the nature of some people that put their hand up, it's about what's in it for me and my friends.
he was one of the last line of politicians that got into parliament to make a change and kept to his principles and ideals, whilst i don't agree with the greens on 98% of things i admire people that don't let parliament change them, gone of the days of having an MP stand up to his party and publicly disagree with policy direction as it goes against his ideals.
If it looks bad from the outside, and boy do the Greens look bad, then always it is worse on the inside. Recent outbursts, white cis male, the cry baby, the thief and the one under investigation, results of which would seem too damaging to publish, point rather definitively to a culture that is combative, undisciplined and destructive. All that the Greens rail against in terms of immorality and injustice seem to actually be harboured within their own organisation and I would more than wonder, if that factor alone has been very contributive to the case before the court today for sentencing.
The sneers of interest.co.nz's capitalism-dedicated commenters at Keith Locke, and marxists and socialists generally, are as inevitable as night follows day.
I am happy to read in today's The Post that Steve Maharey (Social insurance of health would contribute to social solidarity) and Rob Campbell (We need to look at health funding through a health lens) continue to argue for the poor and oppressed.
Not the whole story. My father was running a NZ building company there at the time (housing developments & public buildings for "ordinary people") & had to get himself & his team out in a hurry a week or so before the Ayatollah returned. He'd met many of the country's leaders over the previous couple of years. A large part of their internal problem was the Shah's program to redevelop the country's infrastructure & historical (= religious fundamentalism) way of life into a modern nation. Their large reactionary elements were threatened by this & revolted.
He butted heads with the incumbent hegemony - and lost.
History disparages the hegemony - but it didn't disparage itself.
The Shah was a bent puppet - kknz's dad; did they want what was being pushed at them? I'm guessing it was a profit motive... Christianity accompanied colonialism in suppressing many happy-with-themselves cultures. And was always indignant when it was resented...
“That isn't the system doing badly, that's the psychopaths taking over - but the system is blamed by those who need to denigrate it, not the psychopaths”.
This is the sort of thinking that ends up with "Real Communism Has Never Been Tried" whenever the latest example goes down the toilet.
Which is. Every. Single. Time. Doesn't matter what race, ethnicity, resources or stage of industrialisation, communism always fails, and almost always takes a whole lot of poor buggers with it, either in outright death or with miserable, stunted lives.
I can excuse the early believers, even the anarchists like Rosa Luxemburg, because it was all new then.
But Kieth Locke had no such excuses and it's something beyond naivety, as we're seeing in this comment thread.
Psychopaths always thrive in communist systems because it's tailor made for them; a vast, centralised power system run by a few people. Those who later said Stalin was a fluke immediately had to look at Mao, and then Castro, Ceaușescu, Hoxha, Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot of course and then Mugabe. And don't kid yourself that Trotsky would have been any different just because he was a sensitive intellectual. Lenin's heir? Hells teeth, Lenin created the whole apparatus that Stalin would use, and was equally ruthless although that knowledge was suppressed for decades because Stalin could be the fall guy.
It was in this role that Locke was to provide future opponents with statements that were, to say the least, embarrassing....While it is true that he didn’t know about Pol Pot’s killing fields when he wrote his celebratory articles – he should have guessed.
That's why people like me damned Locke about his support of the Khmer Rouge. It wasn't just a political matter of "embarrassing" him by pointing out that he had supported, excused and rationalised awful people, or just that he was a communist, but that he was exhibiting his "naivety" again and learning nothing from it. Perhaps he couldn't? Perhaps when you're that far down the rabbit hole you just can't accept the flaws in your ideological system, even when they're staring you in the face?
I'm reminded of the nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs, an extremely bright fellow who did the mathematics for the core of the Plutonium A-Bomb, handed secrets to the Soviets and wished for a global communist revolution. He once confided to a fellow communist physicist that once that happened he would "have a talk with Stalin about the things he had done".
That's not naivety but idiocy. He and Kieth Locke would have got along well.
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