Union martyr sparks discord in Waihi

Press, 9 October 1987, Page 41

Union martyr sparks discord in Waihi

PA Auckland Efforts to honour the union martyr, Frederick George Evans, killed in the 1912 Waihi miners’ strike, have struck a wall of opposition in the Bay of Plenty town, the “New Zealand Herald” reports. For three years, the Waihi Borough Council has fought off a union bid to install a plaque at the War Memorial Hall, commemorating Evans’ death. The convenor of the Frederick George Evans memorial committee, Mr Karl Andersen, said a union deputation had been refused permission to address the council to explain its plans. Approaches to find alternative sites in the town had also struck snags. Evans died at Waihi Hospital on November 13, 1912, after a confrontation outside the Miners’ Union Hall at the height of the dispute. An inquest heard that

Evans was chased by police and non-strikers after a shot was fired. He allegedly fired a shot which hit a policeman in the stomach. The policeman then caught Evans and clubbed him over the head. Union witnesses claimed the shot that hit the constable was fired after Evans was clubbed and that it came from the ranks of the non-strikers. Mr Andersen said the town seemed split on the issue of a memorial to Evans and a succession of votes in the council had been narrowly lost. "People are reading something into it that isn’t there,” he said. "They keep seeing the issue as a political one, as if we are trying to gain some sort of foothold in Waihi. "It is simply the remembrance of a trade union martyr so that people understand who he was.”

The Waihi Town Clerk, Mr Richard Penfold, said the council had no objection to the plaque’s being placed elsewhere in the town. The war memorial already had a plaque dedicated to the memory of miners and it was council policy to allow no further plaques. ’* But Mr Andersen said . attempts .to find another site had failed. “We do not think the plaque should be burled away in some... back street,” he said. “It was an important part of Waihi’s history.” The memorial committee members would visit Waihi next month, the seventy-fifth anniversary of Evans’ death, to lay a wreath. They had invited the Mayor of Waihi, Mr Owen Morgan, and councillors to attend the wreathlaying and hoped to bury their differences then.