Archibald Baxter Memorial Trust : MemorialOpening

Official Opening of the Archibald Baxter Peace Garden

29 October 2021

Speech by Trust Chair - Emeritus Prof Kevin Clements, for the Opening of the Archibald Baxter Memorial Peace Garden, The National Monument for Conscientious Objectors

E nga mana, E nga reo, E nga hau e wha, tena kotou, tena kotou, tena kotu katoa. I’m Kevin Clements, Chair of the Baxter Trust and MC for today’s opening of the Baxter Memorial Peace Garden. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Edward Ellison Upoko of the Runaka at Otakau to welcome you all on behalf of Mana Whenua. We are very privileged that you have come to lend your formidable mana to our proceedings.

Welcome too to all of you who have travelled from other parts of NZ to be present at this opening and welcome to all of you from Dunedin, who have supported this venture from the very beginning.

This Archibald Baxter Memorial Peace Garden and National Monument to all Conscientious Objectors started from a seed planted by Tony Eyre, who wrote an op ed on Archie for the ODT 10 years ago. Alan Jackson, read the article, called Tony and said it would be nice to honour Baxter in some way. Steve Mulqueen, a local sculptor and artist was also excited by the suggestion and soon they all got involved in serous conversations. Soon after Paul Sorrell and I got involved and then Ralph Lawrence, Richard Jackson and Tim Leadbetter. The group expanded to Wellington where Penny Griffith, Katherine Baxter, David Grant, and Chris Finlayson came on board. We then constituted ourselves as the Baxter Memorial Trust of which I have been proud to be Chair for the last 9 years. So I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to thank all my colleagues on the Trust, but especially Alan Jackson for being our secretary and keeping us all on task and Tony our Treasurer. I want to applaud the whole Trust, however for wonderful dedication and service over the last decade.

The Trust has three aims. The first was to develop a memorial to Archie and all NZ conscientious objectors. The second was to organise an annual Archibald Baxter Memorial Lecture and the Third is to stimulate peace education in schools.

By far the most challenging objective, however, was to develop this memorial. We searched for sites and after two false starts the Dunedin City Council offered us this one on the intersection of George and Albany Street. We accepted their offer and then started commissioning different designs before accepting one from Paddy Baxter, landscaper, and sculptor Shane Woolridge who are also here today. As this process proceeded, the Dunedin City Council under Mayor David Cull, initially, and David Benson Pope were unfailingly supportive as have been their colleagues on the Council Staff. Our current Mayor, Aaron Hawkins, and Deputy Mayor Chris Geary have given their enthusiastic support to the project too. We would not be there without their backing. Having accepted a site and design, we then had to raise the funds and here I want to acknowledge all of you who have given generous individual donations. You know who you are. You gave us hope when we needed it. We would not have reached our target, however, without the generosity of the NZ Lotteries Fund, the Dunedin City Council, The Otago Community Trust and the Alexander McMillan Trust. I would like to thank all of these bodies and all of the other smaller trusts and religious groups that also gave generously to get this monument built. Finally, I want to acknowledge our wonderful project Managers, Stuart Anderson and Ross Martin of the Signal Group and ABL and their workers who have toiled away in adverse conditions on a very cramped site to create this memorial.

As you can see, this memorial centres around Shane Woolridge’s sculpture, which is an abstract expression of what Archibald Baxter, Lawrence Kirwan, Mark Briggs and Henry Patton had to endure in what was known as Field Punishment Number one. This punishment was known by soldiers as the Crucifixion. It would be considered state-sponsored torture today and was adopted by the British army after flogging was abolished. Military defaulters and conscientious objectors were tied to a pole, erected close to the front lines. They were tied to it in such a way that it caused blood to flow to the feet and, after a few minutes, it generated excruciating pain in the legs and back. Baxter and the others had to endure this punishment near Ypres for days at a time. On one occasion Baxter was either deliberately or unintentionally forgotten. It was snowing and he was not taken down after the statutory period. This occasion nearly killed him.

Baxter and the others suffered these punishments to the end because they believed that there was absolutely no argument that could justify industrial-scale slaughter. As Baxter said: "I have suffered to the limit of my endurance, but I will never in my sane senses surrender to the evil power that has fixed its roots like a cancer on the world." Of all those who were given Field Punishment Number 1 only Baxter and Mark Briggs didn't succumb after a month of such treatment. In the end, however, after being dragged to the front lines over skin-ripping duckboards, Baxter and Briggs were both mentally and physically damaged. But neither put on the uniform.

Baxter was ever generous, however, and said that what he endured was not that different from the deprivations of soldiers at the front. They were all suffering together. The First World War took an emotional, physical and spiritual toll on everyone, combatants, non-combatants, civilians and conscientious objectors. In his autobiography We Will Not Cease Baxter acknowledged that he would not have survived without the humanity of soldiers who sometimes took care of him and opposed their own chain of command, when they disobeyed orders to protect Baxter from further punishment and torture.

Field Punishment Number 1 and being ordered unarmed to the front lines was the culmination of brutality which began as soon as he was arrested here in Dunedin. It continued in detention centres and prisons around NZ and at Sling Camp in the UK. He and the 13 others who were sent to France, were beaten, put in solitary confinement, fed starvation rations, threatened with death on numerous occasions, tortured and humiliated. As one warder said “We don't want your obedience Baxter we want your submission”

So this Memorial Peace Garden is dedicated to Archibald Baxter, Farmer, husband to Millicent, father to two remarkable sons, James and Terence, a solid down to earth Kiwi bloke, pioneer Conscientious Objector and social reformer. He maintained his pacifist and socialist principles to the end of his life and established an extraordinarily high suffering threshold for those who wished to embrace pacifism in the Second World War. As his son James said about him in a poem

… I have loved

You more than my own good because you stand

For country pride and gentleness, engraved

In Forehead lines, veins swollen on the hand:

Also, behind slow speech and quiet eye,

The rock of passionate integrity,

But that's not all: this is also The National Memorial to all of New Zealand’s Conscientious Objectors to the Second World War and other wars Kiwis have been involved in. COs to the 2nd World War didn't know whether or not they would have to endure the punishments and brutality meted out to the 14 sent to France in the First World War or would be imprisoned in NZ. Fortunately, there was a Labour Government in power in 1939 and Fraser, Nash and others were determined that COs should be treated more humanely. The mood of the people though was not sympathetic to the Pacifist cause. There were others in the cabinet, like Fred Jones and Bob Semple who were determined that Pacifists would not remain free to undermine the war effort and in addition felt strongly that they should be forced to pay for their beliefs. This meant that the society was deeply polarised between those who answered the call to arms and those who resisted conscription and war. The long and the short of the internal debates within the Labour Party and patriotic fervour within the community was that Appeal Boards were set up to hear the grounds for conscientious objection to conscription. The traditional peace churches, such as Quakers were exempted but everyone else had to argue their case. Some appeals were upheld but the Tribunals were weighted against the appellants and 800 plus were detained at his majesty’s pleasure for the duration of the war. Teachers who were COs lost their jobs as did other civil servants. The costs of dissent, while not as cruel as the punishments that Baxter and the 14 suffered, were still high. The detainees were kept in detention camps in rural areas; they were only allowed visits from family but because the camps were in such isolated areas these visits were few and far between. The camps were forced labour camps and resulted in many of NZ’s forest areas. Pacifists and their families experienced considerable hostility from families, friends and work mates. Going to War required bravery but being a pacifist also required courage in a community focused on the war effort.

Those who fought for their country and died or were traumatised by their experiences did so courageously in the face of deprivation, threat, and death. This memorial does not detract from their bravery. Rather it is intended to complement the experiences of those who fought by focusing on those who chose not to fight. Conscientious Objection to state-sponsored killing was considered unorthodox and unpatriotic. CO’s had to endure threats from the state, public opprobrium and imprisonment both during and after the war.

There are many children grandchildren and great grandchildren of COs here today. So this monument is dedicated to your relatives and all those who chose a different path to those who went to war. By conscientiously objecting to war your relatives expanded human rights and civil liberties. Conscientious Objectors made and peace activists now make a vocational commitment to non-violence as a way of life and the peaceful resolution of disputes. In doing so they provide some small brake on unbridled power in wartime and creative opportunities in peace time. They create spaces for individuals to say no when asked to do reprehensible things which offend religious, ethical or humanitarian values.

It’s not easy being either a Pacifist or a soldier, sailor or airman. Both are risky and dangerous vocations. True Pacifists, however would rather be killed than kill, suffer, rather than inflict suffering.

Archibald Baxter’s stand carried on the Maori non-violent traditions of Te Whiti and Tohu Kakahi who responded to British colonial force with non-violent resistance. Baxter resisted all efforts to get him to put on the uniform and take up arms. He suffered deeply as a consequence but provided an example to others to resist in their own ways. Today we celebrate and honour those who chose the narrow road of resistance to war and suffered the consequences. This monument is dedicated to all those who said and continue to say No to War.

We hope that the memorial will be a place of reflection on the folly of war; a place of peace and tranquillity; a place of remembering and a place of commitment to a more just and peaceful world. This memorial stands to remind both current and future generations that violence is never inevitable – and that there are always far more positive and less destructive ways of resolving differences.

This world is broken in many different ways, and we need the healing balm of peaceful rather than violent solutions. If this small space, honouring all those who chose an alternative to militarism, can make a contribution to non-violence as a tactic and a way of life, we will have fulfilled part of our dream for a more peaceful world.

Peace Poem

As the fever of day calms towards twilight

May all that is strained in us come to ease.

We pray for all who suffered violence today,

May an unexpected serenity surprise them.

For those who risk their lives each day for peace,

May their hearts glimpse providence at the heart of history.

That those who make riches from violence and war

Might hear in their dreams the cries of the lost.

That we might see through our fear of each other

A new vision to heal our fatal attraction to aggression.

That those who enjoy the privilege of peace