Halt All Racist Tours
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Halt All Racist Tours was a group set up in New Zealand in 1969 to protest rugby union tours to and from Apartheid South Africa.
Up until 1970, South Africa refused to allow mixed-race sports teams to tour South Africa, and they were "disgusted" at having to play against "natives" in New Zealand. A protest movement against the 1960 tour of South Africa used the slogan "No Maoris, No Tour", but it was unsuccessful at stopping the tour. In 1967, the New Zealand Rugby Union decided to cancel the proposed 1967 tour over the issue.
Trevor Richards, Tom Newnham, John Minto and others formed HART in 1969 to protest against the proposed 1970 tour. The tour went ahead after the South Africans agreed to accept a mixed-race team.
In 1973, HART promised a campaign of civil disruption if the Springboks toured New Zealand. The Labour Prime Minister, Norman Kirk, cancelled the tour. Rugby supporters complained that politics should not interfere in sport.
The All Blacks were next due to tour South Africa in 1976. Newly elected National Prime Minister Robert Muldoon refused to cancel the tour, which went ahead, in spite of the (then draft) Gleneagles Agreement where Commonwealth leaders agreed to discourage sporting contact with South Africa. 21 African nations boycotted the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal in protest.
HART merged with the National Anti-Apartheid Council in 1980 to become HART: NAAM. After ten years as National Chairperson, Richards was replaced by John Minto.
The high point of protest was around the 1981 Springbok Tour in which thousands of New Zealanders protested, invaded pitches and ended the tour. HART was not the leading body in these protests, as broader organisations were set up in each major centre to coordinate protests, but HART members played a leading role in these organisations.
In 1985, a planned All Black tour of South Africa was stopped by the New Zealand High Court after two lawyers sued the NZRFU, claiming such a tour would breach the NZRFU's constitution. An unofficial tour did take place in 1986 by a team including some but not the majority of All Blacks players. These were known outside South Africa as the Cavaliers, but advertised inside the Republic as the All Blacks. HART organised nationwide protests, but they were much smaller than the 1981 protests.
HART's reason for existence ended with the fall of apartheid.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Te Aro Hou, THE MAORI MAGAZINE, No 67, July 1969 In Support of the New Zealand Maori Councils Decision in Favour of the 1970 All Black Tour.
- South African National Orders awards 29 October 2004 - Trevor Richards
- History of the Flower Bomb Tour
[edit] Further reading
- Malcolm Templeton, Human Rights and Sporting Contacts: New Zealand Attitudes To Race Relations In South Africa, 1921-94, Auckland University Press, 1998, ISBN 1-86940-170-0
