BLACKBALL MUSEUM OF WORKING CLASS HISTORY

​Opened in 2009, this little museum is unique in our country. No other museum is dedicated to telling the story of the working class. We owe a lot to the citizens of Blackball and the West Coast unions who came together to found the museum. We owe a lot, above all, to the commitment and energy of Paul Maunder, writer and filmmaker, who had the original vision for the museum and then worked long and hard to make it a reality.
 
The Ministry for Culture and Heritage has now offered $20,000 for the museum to start work on a project building eight huts modelled on the Blackball Coal Mine Company’s single men's huts. Great news! The museum when it asked for this funding said that the huts would ‘tell the full political history of the New Zealand working class from 1890-1935.’
 
I went along to a meeting of the museum committee – as I mentioned in an earlier post – where we talked about what steps to take next. Some of us were a bit startled to find the proposal is for six of the eight huts to portray the lives of working class men and only one to show the lives of working class women. The other is for working class kids. Two of us argued that half the huts should show the lives of women.
 Opened in 2009, this little museum is unique in our country. No other museum is dedicated to telling the story of the working class. We owe a lot to the citizens of Blackball and the West Coast unions who came together to found the museum. We owe a lot, above all, to the commitment and energy of Paul Maunder, writer and filmmaker, who had the original vision for the museum and then worked long and hard to make it a reality.
 
The Ministry for Culture and Heritage has now offered $20,000 for the museum to start work on a project building eight huts modelled on the Blackball Coal Mine Company’s single men's huts. Great news! The museum when it asked for this funding said that the huts would ‘tell the full political history of the New Zealand working class from 1890-1935.’
 
I went along to a meeting of the museum committee – as I mentioned in an earlier post – where we talked about what steps to take next. Some of us were a bit startled to find the proposal is for six of the eight huts to portray the lives of working class men and only one to show the lives of working class women. The other is for working class kids. Two of us argued that half the huts should show the lives of women.
 
Paul Maunder spoke most strongly against the idea. The museum, he says, ‘has always retained the Marxist consciousness’ which means that men were the key workers in the working class. Giving women and men equal numbers of huts as men, Paul argues, is ‘just plain silly.’
 
Watch this space!
Paul Maunder spoke most strongly against the idea. The museum, he says, ‘has always retained the Marxist consciousness’ which means that men were the key workers in the working class. Giving women and men equal numbers of huts as men, Paul argues, is ‘just plain silly.’
 
Watch this space!