A GIANT CLUSTER OF INCORPORATIONS

Te Ao Hou, July 1955, Page 8

A GIANT CLUSTER OF INCORPORATIONS The most important of the Maori incorporations is undoubtedly the giant cluster established just recently on the East Coast, in the place of the East Coast Trust Lands. If the East Coast Commissioner was, for many years, the most powerful farming concern on the Coast, the new incorporations, provided they remain united, can retain a similar position. The beginning of the story of the East Coast Commission was told in an earlier issue of Te Ao Hou; the Maori people tried to farm these lands towards the end of last century but failed; parliament saved the lands from being sold up and placed them under a commissioner who managed not only to salvage them, but to transform them into unecumbered assets worth several million pounds. Meanwhile, about the nineteen thirties, a new generation of Maoris had grown up with greater experience in managing land, greater selfconfidence and an understandable desire to run their own affairs. To give these people some satisfaction, parliament, in 1935, set up ‘block committees’ to assist and advise the East Coast Commissioner. These committees met regularly and discussed the problems of their respective blocks, but they had no power of decision. Mr Jessop, the commissioner, considered that this should rest with him as long as the financial position necessitated the continuance of the trust. This financial position, however, improved from year to year. In 1939 the principal security debt was paid off; in 1945 the lands were clear from all the mortagages. The wool boom of the late forties greatly improved the position of the weaker brothers among the blocks, the so-called debtor blocks which were still encumbered with debt to other blocks in the trust (the so-called creditor blocks). The great majority were now able to stand soundly on their own feet. After several years of preliminaries, preparations for winding up were started in 1950. The first stage consisted of a huge court case, fought in the Supreme Court in Gisborne, with both sides representing thousands of Maori owners—on the one side were the beneficiaries of the East Coast Trust Lands; on the other side descendants of those whose land had been under the East Coast Settlement Company and had been sold at one time or another to pay debts. Most of this land had been sold before 1908, and its owners or their heirs obviously had a claim. A very pleasant compromise was reached, and settlement was made out of the huge reserves accumulated by Mr Jessop. At the time of writing, the complex task of liquidation of the other blocks is nearly completed and many committees of management are completing their first independent farming year.