<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>1:53 um it seems to me that the most important governmental activity at all of all is um controlling society and in nineteenth century terms talking about the imposition of peace and stability or order and tranquillity that kind of concept upon society in other words um <,> <.>th it is a the the historic mission of the state to impose desired rhythms of social and economic life um upon the <.>socie society of controls um so that <.>i in the final analysis industry trade agriculture and so forth um can flourish and so profits can be protected so that property's safeguarded and so forth and <,> in order to ensure this order and <&>3:00 stability or truth and tranquillity er people are expected to behave in er certain um ways certain ways which will ensure that societal stability or racial stability will will will prevail <,> um obviously for example um drunkenness er is is is frowned upon for the disruption to to the um <,> modes of commerce er it's it's frowned upon because it affects growth and productivity and so forth and one of the the keener governments of of nineteenth century police trying to check drunkenness by <.>vari by various means <,> okay so <&>4:00 that's where where um i'm coming from to my mind policing is the most significant of the government's hands on modes of social control um there's also lots of other modes of social control and and i usually think of it in terms of some kind of continuum whereby the government or state has access to a wide range of mechanisms over on the most overtly coercive side obviously military suppression and then right through to extremely benign and consensual modes of control which i depict as hegemonic modes of control in other words the state has has gained um control of the way people think and therefore the way they behave um and it seems to me that nineteenth century new zealand is a classic example of um <&>5:00 the state having to um impose first of all <,> desired modes of control upon a very unruly population both pakeha and maori and so initially there's a state strategy an overarching <.>stra strategy of um overt coercion overt suppression partly by the military but mostly by the police and i stress the police here because the police are the eyes and ears of the state they're on duty twenty four hours a day <,> their entire orientation is towards quote seeing what is going on and reporting to their superiors they report to their superiors they ultimately report to to to to the government it's a highly politicised um <&>6:00 method of control um despite the mythology that that that policing is a completely independent aspect um of the state <&>made inaudible by heavy machinery and it still is in the final analysis um so <,> <.>y you have this general continuum in terms of um continuum between the the the mideighteen forties and the mideighteen eighties <.>y you have um a very <,> coercive form of control you're suppressing rebellion amongst maori um you're suppressing um turbulent behaviour by working class people in particular who've been <&>7:00 dispossessed um form from from relatively um tightknit communities or or or factories or whatever in the old country and brought into the new country and um i have used fairburn's terms word i actually have differences with miles on on um when a society <.>chan when society change and orientation but i have no quarrel with him <.>th that that initially um society pakeha society er was a society of word beings whom the state saw as needing to first of all suppress and then secondly to to educate into appropriate er ways of behaving behaving and thinking <,,> um <,,> so <,> you have this first of all for a forty year period a strategic form of control which is coercive but also you <&>8:00 have particularly because each settlement was a nuclear voc settlement and quite quite dispersed apart from all the other settlements you you have evolved forms of control too and and and sometimes er the the tactical position on the control continuum is a relatively benign one for example in <.>pre gold rush otago a few thousand pakeha hardly any maori er the elders of the <,> free scottish church in effect kept control through through to my mind um mind control um very little turbulence er three or four arrests a year kind of thing no need at all for a coercive force coercive policing force um that state always tries to avoid coercion if it can um partly because coercive <.>im imposition is itself <&>9:00 disruptive but but secondly because it's a hell of a lot cheaper um you get into coercive police forces and the use of troops and and and and you're into paying um enormous monies out of a very very small state state structure <,> um the the new zealand situation in terms of controlling pakeha is not too dissimilar from other colonial societies in in in in the need to <.>ha have a have word coercive word approach to controlling people um but it is <.>i it does have differences <.>i in terms of the way it controls maori and <.>a and indeed new zealand's really quite a unique experience experiment in policing um for for various reasons <,> um initially the the way indeed all of new zealand was controlled by the imperial authorities was actually through the <&>10:00 the form of maori chiefly authority um before eighteen forty new zealand <.>wa was was an informal colony of of britain via new south wales and the policing task was in effect to make sure that pakeha whalers and traders and so on um didn't fall out with maori and provoke maori reaction and thereby lose um the trading opportunities that new zealand afforded which were which were enormous um and the main way of doing that was through j ps and using um naval captains and so on trying to actually um get maori chiefly authorities to act as as agents of in direct control on behalf of the british both of their own people and also of the the the pakeha who were in the country er and and that is that is a form used in other british colonies but <&>11:00 it was actually developed to quite a fine degree in in in in new zealand um after annexation in in eighteen forty er the reality of the situation was that there were a hundred thousand maori um one of the the best warrior races in the in the world in in terms of actually er their capacity to unite at least in tribal confederations and and and to do that so there was only um there was not much more than an attempt to impose nominal sovereignty on <.>o over the country er so the first policing forces were were under a police magistracy system imported from new south wales which was er actually an urban orientated policing system so you had police but they didn't do much except um <.>d do do beat patrol in the towns and and in other words they modelled themselves on the london metropolitan police it <&>12:00 was a new police form it was a er a bureaucratic police <.>a and it was a police that that that that that focused on surveillance of people er the keynote er knowledge is is is is is basically power or the capacity to exercise power or one of one of the um overarching requirements of of the new police forms <,> so you so you had police in in half a dozen pakeha settlements and their control was fairly limited outside those settlements most of their control was again through <.>frien friendly <.>so called friendly chiefs coopting them to to state power and sometimes calling them policemen sometimes not giving them a a a a sort of stipend or whatever <,,> um but <,> by the mideighteen forties maori were rebelling in in the far north <,> and <,> the the the the crown <&>13:00 recognised that you couldn't hold a country the size of new zealand with <.>th that many indigenous people when when some were rebelling by force of arms <,> you couldn't hold them with with a few hundred troops and um literally about forty or fifty policemen and and and and that is why grey was was introduced er to new zealand as governor from south australia <,> um <,> because first of all the state was prepared the British state was prepared to put put enormous resources into the policing <,> of new zealand and they needed someone who could control the troops and grey was appreciated as as a um practition militarily and also grey had had instituted um <,> plans in in south australia of policing indigenous peoples <&>14:00 which would not only suppress them by force of arms but would also rapidly assimilate them into pakeha society and so it it it was recognised that by by the british state authorities that that that now maori were rebelling um you you had to first of all crush them and then <,> pacify them in a form in which they would become nothing much more than brown brown skinned <,> pakeha and and they they would attune themselves to the commercial and social rhythms of pakeha life they would be forced into assimilation and one of the the ways grey um affected this <.>a and and and and bear in mind here i'm always talking about the way the state the state perceived things i'm not <&>15:00 necessarily talking about the state's success although there were often partial successes very seldom full success one of the ways was to actually set up a mixed race police for the to to cover the whole country <,> so in the in the mideighteen forties um three armed police force units were established and they gradually phased out the old um police magistracy forces and and these units were as i said mixed race <,> er Maori were in them on equal terms with Pakeha they couldn't become officers but <.>th <.>th they could become n c os um and so you have a VERY unique experience er experiment of er indigenous police in a in a in a in an area that had only been a formal colony for five or six years actually policing pakeha um which was upsetting to the <&>16:00 pakeha ways of seeing things often and and and that in itself would would cause enormous trouble for for for state control <,> but um <,> grey wanted a force that was far more coercive than the other one he needed to impose forms of behaviour upon both races and so he looked to the what was considered the best coercive police force in in in the <.>end english speaking world which of course was the irish constabulary known as the royal irish constabulary and so the armed police forces were modelled very much along the lines of the irish constabulary in other words there were small detachments <.>o of people who worked together the old the previous police magistracy people er er they walked on the beat and and had been um <,> er acting in effect um by <&>17:00 themselves there's there's an old policing um saying that the difference between a policeman and a soldier is that that a soldier is um a policeman acting in conjunction with lots of others er a policeman is a soldier acting alone um these these police acted in small detachments so they were nearer the military mode they were nearer the the word mode and um they were there to discipline large numbers of people rather than individuals who who who were causing trouble in the streets or who were conducting a smash and grab raid or or or whatever <,> um and and so these these these the maori police um in particular were supposed to learn how to um behave and how to think the pakeha way and so young chiefly men were chosen and then they were to go back to <&>18:00 their villages and and and spread the word and and get their people to to to behave as if they were pakeha and and it sounds bizarre um but it was actually relatively successful um <.>a and in so far as the evidence was concerned grey enormously exaggerated <.>h he said by eighteen fifty three all <.>M maori were um were were were brown skinned pakeha which was a long long way away from the truth but it was relatively successful there were um again i'm talking about state perception in in many ways um <,> there were there were there were many things militating against this being a successful experiment er in toto and and one of them being the very er what what you might call poor quality of those who were actually in the police er who were who were pakeha er they were they were hardly good role models um in in fact um they were so poorly paid <&>19:00 that er police normally got less money than than a day labourer and and the the very very word occupation um <,> they were often drunkards themselves and and so the maori police were living in in barracks alongside um young men who who who were drunken or layabouts er or who who who were basically pretty stupid often and again i go back to what i said initially you might think of of policing as being enforcing the law er these guys didn't know what the law was um they they would be dragged off the street and said look do you want to be a policeman taken into a police station given a badge and uniform and be out on the beat er perhaps with one other person inside ten minutes and and they would stay there two or three days or two or three weeks until they could get a better job they could be digging ditches or whatever <&>19:51