“Jim” of Glide Time

One of Chris Trotter’s unending themes are his hymns to the world of New Zealand that was lost in 1984. These appear regularly, whether it’s railing against a National-led government continuing its dastardly neo-liberal plans in the dark shadow of the evil Roger Douglas, or lamenting the gutlessness of a Labour-led government that claims it’s shed Rogernomics but never reverses neo-liberalism. The latter no more pained than in the last three years as Labour “threw away a once-in-a-lifetime” chance to go back to the good old days.

One such lament was published back in April, The Folly Of Impermanence, where he pivoted from looking at the recent under-powered protests against National’s Public Service cuts to the history of their denigration and the roles this played in the Douglas reforms and “this invalidation of New Zealand’s past”, to a play he thinks had something to do with that:

Playwright Roger Hall’s “Glide Time” endearing caricatures were presented as accurate depictions of a public service that contributed nothing useful or worthwhile to the nation.

I’m glad he chose the photo of “Jim”, because it is he at the end of the play who gives a resigned, mournful, but impassioned monologue about how when he joined the Public Service during the Slump he was grateful for the job, did it diligently, they all felt they were contributing something to the nation and the public appreciated what they did – compared to “now” (1975) where the younger ones who’ve joined don’t seem to care about their jobs, work as little as possible, achieve nothing beyond shuffling paper, and the public despises them.

That last one is what hurts Jim the most, and that’s important because…

This neoliberal denigration of the past was nowhere more unrelenting than in its depiction of the public service. The Post Office and the Railways were held up as being both irremediably inefficient and scandalously over-manned.

The play was written and set in 1975 and played in 1976 and I don’t recall any “neo-liberal” ideology even as an undercurrent in the play. And the Post Office and Railways were overmanned and not very good (especially the latter), plus many other parts of the government that hadn’t changed in thirty years. They were “accurate depictions of a public service”.

Sure the mindset that would eventually underpin Rogernomics was obvious in the play but in the mid-1970’s that was just ordinary common sense applied to the bureaucracy and annoyance that the bureaucracy didn’t seem to care – and the play captured that, which is why it was such a massive hit around the nation, even being turned into a well-rated TV series with the same cast.

And those negative attitudes and feelings towards the world of Glide Time came from Trotter’s Boomer generation and even the previous generation that had supported it for decades after WWII.

My lot, Gen-X, was even harsher. The thought of joining the Public Service and its permanent employment was not viewed with Jim’s sense of thankfulness but actually with horror. As just one example, a couple of management students I knew in the late 1980’s got summer jobs with Railways, who were always looking for bright young things, and returned at start of the varsity year spitting tacks about how useless and awful the place was and how they’d slash their wrists rather than work there.

This tearing away of citizens from their nation’s past is the most important confirmation of the neoliberal ideology’s cult-like practices.

As a Righty who thus supported Rogernomics I’ll stick my hand up and accept that side of tearing us away from our nation’s past.

But all the rest of it, across our old Kiwi culture? That’s all on the Left, of whatever shade. And they’re still at it.

When the right-wing Coalition Government of 1932 announced a 10 percent cut in Postal and Telegraph workers’ wages, their protest meeting in the Auckland Town Hall… became the catalyst for the Queen Street Riot that shook conservative Auckland to its core.

Funny but true story which seems very appropriate here. In 1984 Glide Time was revived for a nation-wide tour with the original cast, and I saw it with a date in Auckland. As the play progressed we could hear what sounded like thundering feet and occasional shouts from outside but ignored it. However, at the end of the show a man came back on stage to tell us we needed to use different exits to leave and to be careful outside. I got back to my flat to find my Dad had been calling during the evening (no cellphones and not even an answering machine) as he watched the mayhem live on TV.

It was, as you must have guessed by now, the night of the 1984 Queen Street riots, and since it happened before the neo-liberal reforms had really hit home (mainly just financial de-regulation to that point), it was clear that they arose more from the society bequeathed to us by my parent’s generation, including Muldoon.