1981 Springbok Tour: 'Brutal' violence of Auckland riots caught on camera
Wednesday, 29 September 2021
Photographer John Mercer still vividly remembers the afternoon on September 12, 1981 when Auckland’s suburban streets exploded in violence.
“I could hear the commanding officer of the Red Squad saying: ‘You will pick your target, when I say go, you go to your target, you will hit your target, … and you will not stop until you hear the word ‘stop’.’”
The “targets” he’s speaking of were anti-Springbok Tour protesters, whom the infamous frontline riot police, known as the Red Squad, were tasked with subduing.
In one of the more violent clashes, Mercer vividly remembers a young woman with a helmet on being hit repeatedly in the face with a police baton.
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Though she had come prepared, with-rolled up newspapers padding her arms and legs, a rugby harness protecting her shoulders and chest and a visor across her face, it wasn’t enough to protect her.
She was backed up against a retaining wall and a police officer stuck his baton through her visor and struck her twice in the face, breaking her nose.
“It was pretty brutal and pretty violent,” Mercer remembers.
But all the while he kept snapping crisp black and white photographs, some which were later used in a court case against that police officer.
Mercer was one of a small band of photographers who captured the mayhem of the riots in Auckland that day.
He had driven up to Auckland from Hamilton with his camera, nine rolls of black and white film and a feeling he needed to be on the ground to capture something important.
It turned out to be a seminal moment in New Zealand’s cultural history, a reckoning for those of the belief that sports could ever remain segregated from politics.
More than 150,000 Kiwis took part in demonstrations up and down the country, with more than 1500 charged with offences stemming from the protests.
Former Auckland Star photographer Phil Doyle, who was also in the thick of the action, still has vivid memories of the Red Squads’ ill-fated charge into the rioting hordes at what became known as “The Battle of Onslow Rd.”
The commanding officer screamed “Red Squad charge” into a megaphone as the riot police stormed forward.
Within moments, they were met with a hail of garden stakes, bricks and anything the mobs could get their hands on.
Moments later, “Red Squad retreat” bellowed across the speakers and the officers scrambled back.
Back and forth they went for hours.
No-one was quite safe in the thick of the riots, as Doyle found out when he was hit by “a full can of something” which opened a gash just over his eye.
But unlike today when everyone would be armed with a smartphone, those with cameras in hand were integral to capturing the extent of the violence that day.
Forty years on from that afternoon, Mercer’s photographs will be part of an exhibition on Google’s Arts & Culture platform, curated by Auckland War Memorial Museum.
About 40 hand-picked photos will be accompanied by a voiceover of Mercer’s recollections of the day.
The memories of the tumult and violence spilling out onto usually quiet suburban streets that day are almost indelibly etched into the now-retired civil servant’s mind.
“If I thought about it, I’d put my camera down and go and help somebody who was lying on the ground,” Mercer said.
“I’d go and help the policeman who’d just been hit by a large rock … I’d put my camera down and help him, but I’m a photographer and you just have to keep going in that mode.”