1970 Anti-Vietnam War protestors greet US Vice President

United States Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s three-day visit to New Zealand sparked some of the most violent anti-Vietnam War demonstrations seen in this country. Many protestors and some media criticised the police for their over-zealous response.

Agnew’s visit was the last stop on a 25-day, 60,000-km, 11-nation goodwill tour of Pacific and Asian countries. He was accompanied on Air Force Two by his wife Judy, Apollo 10 astronaut Eugene Cernan, 10 newsmen and a score of aides and Secret Servicemen.

More than 500 protestors greeted the Vice-President when he arrived at Auckland’s Intercontinental Hotel. The police made 15 arrests on the first day of the visit. Things turned ugly the following evening as the protests continued outside a state dinner at which Agnew addressed about 300 guests. Up to 700 protestors turned up outside the hotel and shouted anti-war slogans at the guests as they arrived. There were 200 police on hand and a series of scuffles broke out. Around 11.45 p.m. the police moved forcefully against the demonstrators, making a further 11 arrests.

The protests attracted widespread media attention here and in the United States. The New Zealand Herald ran the headline ‘Police Wade into Crowd’, but a later editorial described the police as a ‘disciplined force’. New Zealand Truth dismissed the protestors as ‘hairy ruffians' and ‘trouble makers’. The New Zealand Listener was concerned about ‘police insensitivity’, while the Monthly Review was more forthright, ‘condemning the police and the authorities’. The protests and the actions of the New Zealand Police also made it onto the front page of a number of US dailies.

The presence of a high-ranking American politician was bound to attract the attention of the strong anti-war lobby in this country. Many protestors saw the New Zealand government as kowtowing to the US over participation in the war. As well as raising moral objections to the war, its weapons and tactics, protestors asked whether communism posed any real threat to New Zealanders.

In 1969 Agnew had described American anti-Vietnam protestors as ‘an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals’. In response to the protests that greeted him in New Zealand, he was slightly more diplomatic. He told reporters that he didn’t find the demonstrators ‘really worth a great deal of comment’. They represented ‘only a small number of people’ and had ‘nothing constructive to offer’.

Image: Vietnam War protest poster