The Nature of History and the Price of Beer

SIMON SCHAMA AND THEIR ISLAND STORY

I have been puzzling for some days on the ‘Nature of History’ – partly in response to reading about Professor Simon Schama’s commitment to revising the UK’s national history curriculum - and partly in response to nagging irritation at a contemporary advertising campaign here in New Zealand on the merits of a locally brewed beer.

Strange counterpoint perhaps but it kicks up some interesting points about objectivity.

So let’s start with Simon. Apparently, he chatted recently to British Prime Minister David Cameron and came away with a remit to reintroduce schools to ‘narrative British history’.

The UK Minister of Education, Michael Gove explains the rationale in the following terms:

"One of the under-appreciated tragedies of our time has been the sundering of our society from its past ... Children are growing up ignorant of one of the most inspiring stories I know – the history of our United Kingdom .... Our history has moments of pride and shame, but unless we fully understand the struggles of the past we will not properly value the liberties of the present."

And it is an acknowledged source of dismay to members of the UK Conservative Party that Winston Churchill is currently left off the history curriculum for 11 to 13-year-olds, while two anti-slavery campaigners, William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano, are the only historical figures mentioned by name.

The tension between seeing school history as identity affirming and nation building on the one hand and as virtue inculcating and cross cultural bonding on the other clearly creates dissonance.

This kind of dissonance is also very evident for mainstream New Zealanders, whose need for post-colonial identity affirmation is constantly challenged by the demands of biculturalism.

That we expect too much is partly because, as Oxford Professor of History, Margaret MacMillan points out, history has displaced religion as a means of “setting moral standards and transmitting values.”

Picking up on the UK curriculum issue, Schama has promised to instill "excitement and joy" as pupils connect with their ancestry:

"A return to coherent gripping history is not a step backwards to dry as dust instruction," he claims. "It represents a moment of cultural and educational rediscovery. Without this renewed sense of our common story – one full of contention, not self-congratulation – we will be a poorer and weaker Britain."

James Grant has commented recently though that for Simon Schama, eloquence is the highest virtue, as reflected in the overblown claim that "the survival of eloquence is the condition of both a free political society and a coherent community."

Well, eloquence aside, Winston Churchill has been taking a bit of stick recently and as Johan Hari comments reviewing Richard Toye’s new history, “Churchill’s Empire”:

“After being elected to Parliament in 1900, Churchill demanded a rolling program of more conquests, based on his belief that “the Aryan stock is bound to triumph.”

And Toye’s research confirms that even at the time, Churchill was seen as standing at the most brutal and brutish end of the British imperialist spectrum.

This was clearest in his attitude to India.

When Gandhi began his campaign of peaceful resistance, Churchill raged that he “ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back.”

But there again, quoting John Carey:

“One of history’s most useful tasks is to bring home to us how keenly, honestly and painfully, past generations pursued aims that now seem to us wrong or disgraceful”

– UK Conservative Party stalwarts please note!

THE PRICE OF BEER IN NEW ZEALAND

Well, what better way of illustrating the manipulation of New Zealand history than by watching the beer advert itself (see above).

As you can see, it is very hard on Sir Arnold Henry Nordmeyer who was made Minister of Finance in Walter Nash’s 1957 Labour Government and who had to deliver the infamous 1958 ‘Black Budget’.

At the outset, it is important to be clear then that New Zealand was not without locally brewed beer prior to 1957. One of the founding elements of DB Breweries is the Tui Brewery established in 1889 by Henry Wagstaff, and DB itself was formed in 1930 by Sir Henry Kelliher and W Joseph Coutts with the purchase of Levers and Co. and the Waitemata Brewery Co.

The mainstay brew remains Tui, a 4 percent pale lager which the New Zealand Consumers' Institute recently has recently taken to task for claiming to be an "East India Pale Ale", when it is in fact a pale lager that bears little resemblance to the traditionally hoppy, bitter or malty India Pale Ale styles.

The company did not produce a 5.4 percent premium lager until Nordmeyer’s budget provided a protective tariff, largely because demand in this sector was limited. It was not a run of the mill workingman’s drink.

So I am happy to mount a retort to DB’s claims, partly because they are obvious bunk in economic and social terms and partly because Nordmeyer represented my local Island Bay constituency from 1954 until he retired in 1969.

I even quoted one of Arnie’s dictums in one of my Local Election posters:

• We have obligations towards the young because if we fail to provide for them, we fail to provide for the future.

• We have obligations towards the old and infirm because their work in their earlier and more fruitful years has made it possible for us to enjoy the standards we enjoy today.

• We have obligations towards the sick and the ailing because they cannot care for themselves.

• And it is our duty to ensure that those who do the useful work of the world enjoy the full reward of their toil”.

Taking up the story in more detail, there is an interesting recent article by NZ economic historian Rob Vosslamber: ‘Tax history and tax policy: New Zealand’s 1958 “black” budget’ that explores the reality and its telling.

Ross notes that in New Zealand a 'black budget' is:

A name given to a severely deflationary and hence unpopular budget, especially one which increases taxation on popular consumer items; specifically the name given to a 1930 budget, and especially to Labour Finance Minister Nordmeyer’s deflationary budget of 1958. (Orsman and Orsman, 1995, p. 21)

Ross also quotes Michael Stanford’s distinction between two aspects of history - history as events, and history as story, noting that ‘popular notions of the 1958 budget may bear scant resemblance to the actual budget event’.

Of course the same event can give rise to a range of stories, which are shaped by the availability of sources, the scholarship of the researcher, and the perspective of the story teller.

Ross goes on to show that even eminent historians change their views and let eloquence colour the event.

Keith Sinclair's first edition of his classic ‘A History of New Zealand’ published in 1959 made no mention of Nordmeyer’s budget.

In the second edition published in 1969, Sinclair devoted one paragraph to the second Labour government of 1957-60, simply noting that:

It inherited a major balance of overseas payments crisis. There is no doubt that the stringent import controls and the ‘black budget’ of 1958, which increased taxation, were largely responsible for its defeat in 1960. Since then, as harsher measures have followed, that budget looks less dark than it did. (p. 293)

In the third edition eleven years later, Sinclair virtually identifies the writer of the budget with the budget itself.

Having noted that Labour had inherited a major balance of payments crisis, he then describes the budget not so much as a response to this crisis, but rather as a reflection of its author:

The Minister of Finance was Arnold Nordmeyer, a very able and intelligent administrator who was much respected but inspired little affection. He was a Presbyterian minister and in manner somewhat austere. He and the Cabinet were prepared to impose heroic sacrifices upon the nation. Rigorous import controls were introduced.

Then came the famous ‘black budget’ of 1958. Income tax was raised very substantially. Duties on beer, spirits, tobacco and cars were doubled. The tax on petrol was nearly doubled. It was a puritan’s budget, and cynics noted that neither Nash nor Nordmeyer smoked, drank alcohol, or owned a car. It contrasted very greatly with Labour’s promises at election time. (Sinclair, 1980, p. 293).

As Ross goes on to say, these portrayals of the 1958 budget perhaps tells us as much about the historian as about the history.

Sinclair, a Labour party member, was of a different faction than Nordmeyer and it seemed to him, on reflection that the 1958 Budget 'reflected everything he most disliked: Puritanism, Christianity, Britishness and elitism'.

Ross concludes that:

‘Looking at the past. the political and personal stories of the 1958 budget suggest several contrasting stories that could be told. One story might recall the tax increases as a prudent response to an unforeseen crisis and that families were better off because of the budget. But this is not the popular story; instead it is Sinclair’s story of a “puritan” budget that is more commonly told.

That story certainly reflects aspects of the events of 1958, but not all. Fifty years on, the black budget metaphor has a life of its own, largely independent of the events which originally gave it rise, and is perpetuated by media usage of the term, and by short entries in the published history.

The black budget highlights the ambiguity of history: history as story may elucidate past events, but only ever in part. Sinclair’s telling of the budget demonstrates that it will also always reflect the background, knowledge, and preferences of the historian’.

And we might add the butcher, the baker and the brewer.

Getting back to the advertisement, one would have thought that the DB brewing company would be celebrating Nordmeyer’s initiation of a protective tariff to shelter an infant industry – though the company is now a subsidiary of the international conglomerate Asia Pacific Breweries.

But there again, DB Breweries may have a covert motif in running the advertisement.

Further to the Law Commission's recent report on liquor laws, the current Government has tabled an Alcohol Reform Bill in parliament and this is expected to get its first reading on Thursday.

In this the Government has avoided the big policy decisions, such as increasing prices and restricting advertising, and ended up with a package that has been described as "like treating cancer with a couple of aspirin".

At least though, the Government – with a little nudging from DB and the alcohol lobby – cannot be described as puritan.

And we have a neat illustration of how even the provenance of a beer can be held to be identity affirming and nation building - at the loss of virtue and the possible pursuit of aims that are wrong and even disgraceful.