II. There Is No Unrest In This Country
“We were in no way prepared…for Muldoon’s statement. Cabinet only went along with him because the alternative was trying to roll him, and nobody ever thought the war would escalate so quickly that we couldn’t do both…we were wrong.”
- George Gair, former Deputy Prime Minister.
“Ooh you sing bravo, bravo
Save me from myself
I’m the first to get trigger-happy
The first to think of my own health…”
Muldoon had hoped that his declaration of war would help rally the people of New Zealand behind him as his sterling leadership and tactical nous in allying with the Western Alliance against the Evil Empire breathed fresh life into his Government. As Michael King would write of him, Muldoon’s entire government had been dedicated to keeping alive the country he had grown up in, so it was perhaps a natural extreme of this philosophy to try and re-enact the crusade which had defined his young adulthood.
To call this move a misstep is a massive understatement.
By the time Radio New Zealand broadcast the news of the declaration of war at 10:43, the country was thrown into panic. The Armed Offenders Squad had to be called out in the Wairarapa later that morning as a Greytown man shot one woman dead and wounded a man in what was apparently the home of two local National Party organisers, and another young man was caught trying to set fire to a police station in Tauranga. Such extreme reactions were in the vast minority: for most of New Zealand the immediate concern was as to how this would play out. Although nobody held any illusions about the dangers of nuclear war, there were still those who felt that the war might just play out at a slow burn, long enough for some kind of peace deal to be signed. Given the repeated failures of the Geneva negotiations, these optimists were short on numbers.
Throughout the rest of the country, the reaction was a barely-repressed panic, which started to express itself when the stock market dropped abruptly as two things became apparent. First, New Zealand had voided whatever semblance of neutrality it may have held. Given the fact that it had built up a small amount of goodwill with the Soviets, this reversal was, in a word, unfortunate. Second, the massively protectionist nature of the New Zealand economy and the general condition thereof (a wage-price freeze having been in effect since 1982 and monstrously complicated financial controls) dissuaded investment. Cold comfort came with the closing of the New York Stock Exchange for the last time on the 19th, but the damage had been done. Overnight three billion dollars was wiped from the economy, which coupled with war panic (not helped by the Soviet rampage through the Fulda Gap) to drive the economy further from control.
With the country apparently sliding towards economic ruin and social disorder in the space of 24 hours, Muldoon turned to focus on what had always mattered to him most: ensuring his survival through any political crisis. In what post-War parlance has come to term the Three Days’ Hate, Muldoon fired shots at every enemy he had made in his nine years of power, and they were indeed legion. According to interviews with surviving Cabinet members, the emergency Cabinet meetings of the 19th to 21st of February were focused almost entirely on salvaging the Government’s reputation and using whatever financial reserves available to maintain the strength of the New Zealand dollar in anticipation of war contracts with American and British firms (that the EEC had its own mechanisms in place was either unknown or of no concern to Muldoon, even as the Reserve Bank screamed for a reprieve). This came at the cost of civil defence preparations, which were largely left to local authorities.
The regions were therefore at the forefront of the hurried preparations for nuclear attack, and this largely meant adapting existing natural disaster preparedness plans to the projected impacts of nuclear war. Although pre-War local government danced to the tune called by Wellington, civil defence was one of two crucial areas where they were permitted to make their own arrangements. This had the side-effect of leaving them hopelessly underfunded, however – as late as 1983, Hawke’s Bay did not even have a regional council, and Canterbury was the only one to levy more than $120,000 per year in total rates. By the afternoon of February 19th, practically every territorial authority in the country had convened its district or city council to discuss what preparations could be made.
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Council Administration Block, Auckland City
4:30 pm, NZDT
19th February, 1984
To call Catherine Tizard unimpressed was to call the sun warm or the Red Army peevish. She’d opposed the government on the Springbok tour, ridden into the mayoralty on the back of resentment of Rob’s Mob, and now what had they done? Only declared war on the superpower which was now romping through West Germany, shrugging off the Allies and kicking the shit out of Hannover. And now…
“So what you’re telling me,” she said levelly across the table at the Civil Defence representative, “is that the largest city in the country has no plans for dealing with nuclear attack?”
“Well uh, ma’am, not in so many words –”
“And that we have no actual facilities here to protect Council members in the event of any attack, nuclear or not, on the city?”
“Well strictly speaking, Devonport Naval Base is the main military target in the area, so that’s something, uh, that is, it’s more of a concern for my counterparts over in the North Shore…”
“Oh wonderful,” replied the Mayor, voice dripping with sarcasm. “So you’re saying the Russians will make sure to only bomb the area north of the bridge, then?” Before the grey man in his grey suit could respond, she sighed and waved him off. “Thank you, Colin, we’ll call you back in if we need to know anything else.”
As he left, Tizard looked to the table of councillors in front of her. They looked to her expectantly, a cold feeling of dread settling in the pit of her stomach as she realised there was nothing reassuring she could say if things really were to turn out as she feared. Still, like a nurse at the bedside of a man with cancer (she immediately regretted thinking that one), it was her duty to at least say something. As one of the councillors, a Labour colleague of hers, opened his mouth to speak, the Mayor cleared her throat.
“Well, we’d better do this properly, hadn’t we?”
Not good, but it’ll have to do. “So Graham, how are the hospitals prepared for beds?”
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By February 21st, then, the country was balancing on a knife edge. Stores were reporting incredible rates of panic buying moderated only by the wage-price freeze, service stations saw fights over petrol as thousands flooded the motorways out of Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, fleeing the targets with increasing desperation as the war showed every sign of escalation; the sinking of a freighter bound for Tauranga from Manila by a Soviet submarine overnight on the 20th brought the war home to many. All the while, civil defence plans were hurriedly drawn up by the councils and the central government tried to juggle mobilisation of troops, obeying Muldoon’s demands for financial tightening and discrediting anti-war protestors, and calming the public.
For all the publicised failures of the Government during the Three Days’ Hate, though, one strategic decision which would have long term effects was taken, as the RNZAF was quietly dispersed from October 20th to regional airports across the North Island, and the RNZN dispatched
HMNZS Waikato from Devonport for what was quoted as a ‘routine patrol of territorial waters,’ and the
Wellington was prepared to join an ANZUS-organised convoy from Brisbane for the anticipated showdown with the Soviet Pacific Fleet off Japan.
These two choices, along with the mobilisation of the Army’s regiments across the country, would prove decisive in shaping the events of the next few days, weeks, and months.
