The Alternative Anzac Commemoration

I am indebted to Dale Hess (once again) for forwarding the following material from New Zealand. If you wish to receive a pdf booklet of the commemoration, please email Miss Eagle off the sidebar.

Away from all the official ceremonies, fly-bys and flag raising, five families commemorated ANZAC Day in their own way today.

The friends and neighbours gathered to remember New Zealanders and others who sacrificed their lives for the sake of peace and freedom.

Some of the people remembered include:
Te Whiti o Rongomai

the prophet of Parihaka who refused, along with his followers, to retaliate against the violence of the colonial government bent on annexing Taranaki land for settlers.
Archibald Baxter

one of 14 pacifists in World War I who was shipped to France, sent to the frontline, tied to a pole in front of the enemy, starved, beaten and left for dead for refusing to bear arms in support of the British Empire.
Ormond Burton

a decorated World War I veteran who publicly denounced New Zealand involvement in World War II, was imprisoned with hard labour and thrown out of the Methodist Church for refusing to preach against conscription.
Archibald Barrington

the founder of the Riverside community near Motueka who toured the country opposing New Zealand participation in World War II and was arrested in Gisborne for speaking out against the war.

Ann Newlands

representative of New Zealand and a key figure in the drafting and passage of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Rod Donald

environmentalist and Member of Parliament.
Moana Cole

Catholic Worker peace activist who broke into a US Air Force base in 1991, sabotaged a B-52 bomber en route to indiscriminately bomb civilians in Iraq and was jailed for a year.
Pauline Tangiora

the kuia from Mahia who went as a human shield Iraq and has campaigned tirelessly for peace in the Pacific and Aotearoa.
Dr Malcolm Kendall-Smith

the New Zealand born doctor who refused to undertake a second tour of duty in Iraq with the British RAF as he considered the occupation is illegal and was found guilty last year on five counts of disobeying orders.
After reading James K. Baxter’s poem ‘To My Father’, the families wrote their own peace poems and drew pictures.

Nine year old Hugo Robinson wrote this poem:

Peace and love
are like a flying dove;
No time for war
you just have to soar;
A tui flies
through the skies;
Open free
unlike you and me;
War, revolution
is not the solution.

Others created t-shirt slogans, pictures and designs such as:
‘Drop aid, not bombs’
‘We shall remember, we shall not cease’
‘War does not breed peace, guns do not breed security’

And another poem:

My name is peace
My name is life
My name is choice
My name is mine
My time was then
My time is now
My child, my love, my future
My name is peace.

The commemoration concluded with a rendition of ‘Maori Battalion Marches Off to War’ interspersed with ‘Gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the riverside…’

Organisers of the commemoration are expecting even larger crowds next year and are also hoping to produce a booklet of Alternative ANZACs for other groups to use.

For more information contact: Manu Caddie – ph 0274202957 / manu@ahi.co.nz

Anzac Day 2007

To-day is Anzac Day.

This is a significant day in Australian life.

All around Australia from the Australian War Memorial (below) to every tiny country community, Australian and New Zealand war dead will be remembered.

All around the world, Australians and New Zealanders will gather.

They gather for the Dawn Service in Gallipoli in Turkey.

They gather in Flanders Fields.

The troops in Iraq and every place on earth where there are Australian and New Zealand military personnel, there will be solemnity and memorial.

After the solemnity, there will be the traditional two-up game

"Two up" game in progress troops returning from service H.M.A.T. MAHIA

Museum Victoria Collection

When Australians remember those who died in the service of their nation, on Anzac Day, at the going down of the sun in RSL Clubs across Australia, the verse below is said as a sort of prayer, a testimony of sacred intent:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

The Spirit of Anzac in the struggle for Peace

It is ANZAC Day tomorrow. Now Miss Eagle has seen more Anzac Days than she cares to acknowledge. She has done Dawn Services, Parades, Church Parades with the ultimate being back in 2001 when Miss Eagle and her sister did the Dawn Service at the War Memorial in Canberra.

This year I am not feeling up to any of this.

Miss Eagle's family have done their bit - Gallipoli, France, Malaya, Borneo, MacArthur's return to the Phillilpines, Coastwatching in New Guinea, Occupation Troops in Japan, Korea. As well, there is Uncle Jack - the war historian. No males went to Vietnam but Miss Eagle thought long and hard about war in this period and became a pacifist. Miss Eagle is not anti-Defence Forces and, if she was to become the Benevolent Dictator of Australia (BDA for short), there would still be an Army, Navy, and Air Force - if only to help out in cyclones and floods. As BDA, Miss Eagle supports policing type military actions such as East Timor and Cambodia and various UN Peacekeeping missions.

But Miss Eagle is feeling war-weary.

She believes in the solemnity and sacredness of Anzac Day: remembering the fallen and those who have gone before and honouring their service to the Nation. What wearies Miss Eagle is that we do not seem to learn. Australia is still going off to battles that are initiated by others and serves a foreign purpose more than Australia's own. In short, when are we going to turn the commemorative ideal around that focuses on fishing the bodies out of the water and, in addition, focus on stopping the bodies going in.

Miss Eagle does not want to politicise the Spirit of Anzac - but when can we have a national day in which we work towards Peace, highlight Peace and Peaceworkers, and seek to understand, strategise for and glorify Peace? When?