NEWS from one hundred years ago: COOLIES TO MINE COAL?

Conservatives throughout the country are unhappy about the way disputes between coalminers and mineowners have been dragging on. They blame the miners for being ‘disloyal’ and ‘greedy.’ Coal is crucial to cooking, heating and boiling water in most houses; it is also crucial to shipping, railways and keeping the wheels turning in the many factories that use steam power. ‘We must have coal, and I would suggest that black British subjects be introduced to mine it,’ a returned soldier writes today. ‘The war was fought for liberty and for the welfare of our womenfolk, but we return to New Zealand to find the horrors of peace worse than the horrors of war, and our women driven to distraction to provide meals for their households.’ A second returned soldier writes about the problem in much the same way. ‘I cannot understand why the population of this Dominion should knuckle down to the dictation of the labour autocrats who have taken control of the vital industries of this country.’ He thinks that the government should hold a referendum ‘on the question of producing the necessary coal required from our mines by means of coolie labour.’ Coolie labour ‘would be all right providing they are kept in compounds at the mines, and returned to their homes after their time has expired.’ Conservatives for nearly seventy years have been calling for Asian workers to be brought into the country.

New Zealand Herald, 08 October 1920