Bill Andersen Was New Zealand’s Leading Communist and Trade Union Leader
By the 1970s, New Zealand’s union movement had grown to become powerful, popular, and left-wing. This was in large part thanks to leaders like Bill Anderson, whose organizing skills were matched by his political vision.
Picketers during International Longshoremen’s strike. (Al Fenn / Getty Images)
For the first time in a while, socialists in New Zealand’s trade union movement may have reason for optimism. In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, while politicians have been unable or unwilling to help, union campaigns have won significant improvements for growing numbers of working people. As a result, after years of slumping membership, there’s modest but real membership growth.
This is why the release of Comrade: Bill Andersen – A Communist, Working-Class Life by Cybèle Locke is potentially very well timed. Bill Andersen was a prominent communist and the secretary of the National Distribution Union (NDU, now FIRST Union), and his biography is a window into the twentieth-century left of New Zealand’s trade union movement. Most importantly, Comrade demonstrates the indispensable role that organized communists can play in building strong, militant, and political trade unionism.
On the Auckland Waterfront
Andersen grew up in Auckland during the depression of the 1930s before becoming a seafarer. His experience of harsh class oppression as a merchant seaman led him to the communist movement, as did the poverty he witnessed at Middle Eastern ports. Consequently, he returned to New Zealand in 1946 a member of the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) and found work on the Auckland waterfront.
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