Kirk questions remain

Press, 4 November 1978, Page 17

Kirk questions remain

The Hunter and the Hill. By Tony Garnier, Bruce Kohn and Pat Booth. Cassell (N.Z.). 204 pp. (Reviewed by Cedric Mentipiay) This is a curate's egg of a hook. Some portions of it are very good indeed: others are open to question, and must remain so until a biographer of historian status decides to produce a chronicle of the life and times of th° late Norman Eric Kirk The better parts of the book consist of the journalists' reports on the doings of Mr Kirk and his impact on overseas conferences, plus the collection and weighing-up. or at least the presentation, of evidence of what happened in and around Wellington during the fateful 20 months of Norman Kirk’s leadership These merits tends to be overshadowed b\ a heave and continued leaning on the drama of ’’dying man" leading the country. The book opens on the extraordinary scene of a search of the Prime Minister’s office by the Government whips (Ron Barclay and Jonathan Hunt), just 13 hours after Norman Kirk’s death The object of the search, given an absurd prominence throughout the book, was the mysterious tome described as "the Black Book,” in which Norman Kirk was alleged to have recorded the unsavoury or objectionable facts about his confreres and possible challengers. According to the book under review, this was found in an unlocked drawer, taken without reading, and shredded in the document-destroyer of a Government Department. Actually it was not. The book destroyed was a simple notebook, containing some addresses. The "Black Book” is in safe custody, and will be

produced (along with the. equalhmysterious “K-file”) for evaluation

when the time for a definitive biography is deemed to have arrived It may be found then that the term "biack" describes jccuiately neither the cover nor the contents Anothet false theme, used heavyhandedly. shows Kirk in his last hour* writhing on his deathbed, tormted hv thoughts of a wolf-pack of party members fighling for h.s place Ihs is unfair and demonstrably raise, as exposed by the labour scene four years later. There was no wolf-pack battle — not has there been since. Ihe circumstances surroundins tl» rep acement of Arnold Notdmever us leader of the Opposition was quite different Nur is it wise to make too close a comparison between the Krk take-over of that year and the deposition of John Mar-hall by Robert Muldoon so soon alter ward' As a contemporary view of what happened, this book ha- its merit- A number of its premises are capable of more than one conclusion, however There is also the incongruity that political opponents ate scarcely mentioned. Is it a valid conclusion that all of Kirk's enemies were within the Labour party? At the risk of being accused of nitpicking. I would suggest that a little more t:me spent in editing and presentation would haw h.-inec' 1 r e are some unhappy mistakes in th» book (such as the menioer <>: South, i Maori being given her father’s fir-t name). The (inly two lines of the Robert Louis Stevenson requiem used are misquoted. And the cover, showing the Kirk image stumping up the path to the Beehive, seems to nave overlooked the fact that \orman Kirk died more than four yeais ago — when the Beehive was but « skeleton of its yet-incomplete self.