A memorial peace garden to honour Archibald Baxter and all of New Zealand’s conscientious objectors took a massive step forward in November 2019, when the NZ Lottery Grants Board granted $326,639 towards its completion on a site in central Dunedin, on the corner of George and Albany Streets.
The memorial, designed by Baxter Design of Queenstown, will be a place where people can consider peace as an alternative to conflict. It will be seen not only by local people but also by the thousands of visitors who come to the city each year, including cruise ship passengers. The sculpture, by Queenstown sculptor Shane Woolridge, forms the centrepiece of the peace garden memorial and is envisaged as a site for reflection, with links to web-based information via smartphones and other devices.
While the Lotteries grant is allowing the project to go ahead, it comes on the back of numerous donations by supporters, fundraising by the Trust (including a successful Boosted crowdfunding campaign), and generous grants by three charitable trusts – the Otago Community Trust, the Alexander McMillan Trust and the AAW Jones Trust. The Dunedin City Council has consistently supported the Trust, offering a site for the memorial and making a $30,000 grant-in-aid, as well as covering the cost of the plantings.
Work is nearing completion at the site and the Trust expects that the memorial, which will be known as the Archibald Baxter Peace Garden – The National Memorial for Conscientious Objectors, will now be unveiled in September 2021.
Rendering of the design for the memorial, on the corner of George and Albany Streets, Dunedin.
The Meaning of the Memorial
Although honouring all New Zealand’s conscientious objectors, the memorial is focused on Archie Baxter and his experiences as a prisoner and war resister on the Western Front during the First World War.
The centrepiece of the memorial will be a large sculpture reflecting Baxter’s wartime experiences, edged by native plantings, walls and paths. A weathered wooden boardwalk and textured concrete walls suggest the duckboards and makeshift trenches which were a part of daily life on the front lines.
Whether the site is entered from George Street or the steep pathways above Albany Street, these elements will lead visitors to an impressive sculpture which is an abstract representation of the brutal Field Punishment No. 1. In the words of the designers: “The focal point of the design is a 3.2m-high sculpture, entitled ‘We Will Bend but not be Broken.’ It is composed of 70 450mm-wide stacked schist discs that represent a leaning figure, with a dark patinated bronze sphere suggestive of a human head. The sculpture represents the human form which has been pushed to its physical and mental limits. The rough-cut stone suggests the brutality of the infamous Field Punishment No 1, while the bronze head, apparently bowing to coercion, could conversely portray a state of strength and grace.”
The native plantings acknowledge Archie’s wife Millicent’s love of alpine botanising. She would often take Archie along on her plant-collecting expeditions and transplant specimens in the garden of the family home at Brighton. For more information about Millicent and her interests, see her autobiography, The Memoirs of Millicent Baxter, and Out of the Shadows: The Life of Millicent Baxter, by Trust member Penny Griffith.
The Text on the Memorial
The Archibald Baxter Peace Garden: The National Memorial for Conscientious Objectors
This memorial commemorates the fate of conscientious objectors in New Zealand during two world wars. The principled defiance of the state by conscientious objectors to military conscription has, over the years, helped expand the rights and liberties of all New Zealanders.
The First World War
Following heavy losses at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, the government introduced conscription in 1916. Many men opposed to war refused to serve in the military. Of the 138,034 men called up, 614 appealed on conscience grounds. Most cases were dismissed and those 286 who continued to refuse to fight were sentenced to two years’ hard labour in prison, banned from working for the government post-war and denied their civil rights for ten years.
In March 1917, Archibald Baxter was arrested at his home in Brighton in coastal Otago and, with 13 other war resisters, was transported to Britain and from there to the front lines in France. Although he was starved, threatened, beaten and tortured to force him to don a British army uniform, he never gave in, steadfast in his belief that it was always wrong to kill. Bound to a pole, he suffered the brutal Field Punishment No. 1 many times; the sculpture opposite refers to his ordeal.
The Second World War
During the Second World War, conscription (introduced by the First Labour Government in 1940) was resisted by more than 3,000 New Zealanders. Before unsympathetic appeal boards – which believed resistance to the war was ‘a failure of citizenship’ – fewer than 600 objectors had their appeals allowed, although they were subject to strict probation. Those who continued to refuse military service, 803 men, were held in spartan internment camps for the duration of the war – a punishment unique to New Zealand, much harsher than in any other Allied country. Those who resisted in these camps were imprisoned, often in solitary confinement. There was no appeal.
Māori Resistance
Despite active efforts to recruit Māori for wartime service, many Māori in Taranaki and Tainui-Waikato, strongly encouraged by Kīngitanga leader Te Puea Hērangi, resisted the call to serve King and Country, remembering that the Crown had confiscated much of their land during the 1860s. The best-known instance of nonviolent resistance by Māori to government land-grabbing occurred at the village of Parihaka in Taranaki, culminating in an invasion by colonial military forces in November 1881. Many of the Parihaka ‘ploughmen’ were imprisoned in Dunedin between 1879 and 1881. The leaders of the Parihaka resistance, Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi, were welcomed onto the Ōtākou marae in 1882.
Funding for the memorial has come from the following sources:
NZ Lottery Grants Board
13 November 2019
$326 639.00
Otago Community Trust
24 July 2018
$75 000.00
Alexander McMillan Trust
11 September 2018
$20 000.00
AAW Jones Trust
26 October 2018
$10 000.00
Peace and Disarmament Education Trust
18 February 2016
$19 500.00
Boosted Fund
16 July 2019
$18 418.50
Give-a-Little
16 July 2019
$2090.00
Dunedin City Council
August 2019
$30 000.00
Funds in Kiwibank
23 July 2019
$23 545.83
Sundry donations
Since 2014
$70 000.00 [approx]
The Trust would also like to thank …
Many people have contributed to the completion of the memorial, especially the Trust’s supporters who helped with funding; their names are too numerous to list here. Special thanks go to Sir Tipene O’Regan, Edward Ellison and John Birnie who advised on te reo versions of inscriptions and checked the accuracy of information relating to Māori on the signboard. Also to Baxter Design (led by Paddy Baxter) for designing the memorial and for their scrupulous work in executing every detail, and to sculptor Shane Woolridge for his compelling work. The Dunedin City Council has supported the project from the beginning, with encouragement, funding and in-kind support; special thanks go to former mayor the late Dave Cull, mayor Aaron Hawkins and councillors David Benson-Pope and Christine Garey. Finally, the Trust acknowledge the magnificent work of Stuart Anderson of Signal Management, who has guided us expertly through every stage of the planning and construction process.