Fumes of rebellion: When 'bikies' battled for the heart of Palmerston North

Thursday, 14 April 2022

A mass of bikies congregate around a fountain and pond in Te Marae o Hine/The Square as at least one person takes an impromptu dip.

Fifty years ago, bikies ran riot through the heart of Palmerston North, an event unlikely ever to be repeated. Using newspaper coverage and photographs, many never published before, Hamish Cooper reconstructs what happened.

The roar of dozens of British motorcycles heralded an event that is still etched into the minds of police officers on duty in Palmerston North on Easter Saturday 1972.

In his Manawatū police history book Beyond the Call of Duty author Ray Carter wrote: 'It would be without doubt the worst day Palmerston North has ever experienced.”

Back in 1972 Carter, although a police officer of seven years' experience, was unprepared for the events that unfolded in front of him.

Ape-hangers defined a bikie’s bike in the early 1970s. New Zealand outlaw clubs almost exclusively rode British motorcycles, with Harley-Davidson sales only taking off in the early 1980s.

* Back Issues: Piece of telegraph pole still holding on to its place in Palmerston North history

* Carvings speak to the kaupapa of Te Marae o Hine

A kind of raffish elegance. The young man in the top hat wears the side-patches of Dunedin’s Coffin Cheaters and Invercargill’s Antarctic Angels. His Norton Commando was one of the most powerful motorcycles of that time. The woman is rugged up in layers of clothes because it would have been a long, cold ride up from the Deep South.

'I was totally overwhelmed by the mass of bikes and hardened-looking characters with their patches,” he told a reporter at the launch of his book in 2016.

Tension had been building for many months between the Mongrel Mob and bikers in the lower part of the North Island.

Over the previous few years an expansion of the gang had seen it spread from the Hastings area all the way down to Wellington.

In this time the outlaw club culture in New Zealand had changed rapidly from the so-called “milkbar cowboys” of the 1960s to a more extreme, tougher version the news media called “bikies”.

What had started out as loose collections of riders hanging out at corner stores and cafes on Friday nights had become a dedicated lifestyle choice.

The slicked-back, Brylcreem Fonz – from Happy Days – hairstyle and black leather jacket was replaced by shoulder-length shaggy hair and the “Brando” leather jacket covered by a battered denim “cut-off” with a prominent patch sewn on the back.

These riders aren’t adjusting their underwear but “tickling” their carburettors before starting the engine. The German sign on the mudguard of the Triumph translates to “The Scum”. This bike is typical of the period, a mid-1960s 650 Trophy with a 1969-70 petrol tank, plenty of chrome and ape-hanger handlebars.

Groups’ names such as Road Runners and 25 Club were being superseded by more confronting titles, such as Outcasts, Satan’s Slaves and Motherf……

There was a boom in new clubs being formed. Even towns of 30,000 had a bikie group while Wellington and its outlying suburbs had at least three. Probably nowhere else in the world was there such an expansion.

Who were these “bikies”?

Most club members were young, many of them teenagers. Unlike the older “milkbar cowboys”, they didn’t care about having a full-time job.

Their life was riding with the club. It was a time when it was easy to get a casual job to fund an alternative lifestyle. Big old houses were plentiful and cheap to rent. The cost of living was low.

There were three subcultures developing in New Zealand, all based on a blueprint exported from the US: Itinerant surfers, laidback hippies, and “bikies”.

Life became one long party on the road, similar to an endless end-of-season footy trip. To quote the 1971 hit song from Australia’s Masters Apprentices: “Do what you wanna do, be what you wanna be, yeeaaah!”

Brothers in arms down from Hamilton, which at that time was a regional city of 60,000 not the satellite city of Auckland it is now.

A group of 30 or more unkempt-looking riders on noisy motorcycles with ape-hanger handlebars was an intimidating sight.

When around 150 arrived in Palmerston North, a city of 60,000, at Easter 1972, the stakes were raised. It took organisation to get that many together from around New Zealand.

What police called gangs were run like an incorporated club, with a hierarchy, weekly meetings, agendas and long-term plans.

Mainstream fascination

At the time there was also a growing mainstream fascination with bikies and how they so obviously flaunted accepted social standards.

In 1971 the popular NZ soap opera Pukemanu had an episode where long-haired bikers threatened a logging town.

Bruno Lawrence and Bill Stalker played two of the bikies. They would later enjoy acting careers in Australia but Stalker, a star of the Aussie TV series Skyways and Cop Shop, died in a motorcycle incident in Melbourne in 1981.

Chromed Triumphs, BSAs and Nortons, many with ape-hanger handlebars, crowd the edge of the Square opposite the Grand Hotel.

In 1972 the national broadcaster filmed the bikie television doco If You’re In it, You’re In It To The Limit. It was never screened, probably because of the public urination filmed during the Hastings Blossom Festival.

Both these productions can be viewed on the NZ On Screen website.

When the bikers came to Palmerston North in 1972 a university student travelled with the Epitaph Riders from Christchurch and a small book was published on their lifestyle.

Riders and associates outside the Grand Hotel's early-opening bottle shop on the Saturday morning.

A strange fact is that what is considered the original biker movie, 1953’s The Wild One, failed to pass the Kiwi censor five times between 1954 and 1959, before finally being passed with R16 certificate in 1977. The explanation was: “Concerns about teenage motorbike gangs and teenage behaviour in general.'

“Invasion”

As the motorcyclists arrived, the Manawatū Evening Standard newspaper stated: “Rumours of the invasion have been circulating for weeks, as has a report that they were going to deal with members of a local youth gang.”

Gang support cars on The Square outside the Grand Hotel in Palmerston North.

“Trouble began on Thursday night,” the Saturday edition reported (newspapers didn’t publish on Good Friday), “when a bikie was seriously injured after he was knocked from his machine by a thrown beer flagon.”

Events started escalating early on Saturday morning.

A policeman, with regulation-length sideburns, attempts to lay down the law to one of the riders.

“Bikies swarmed into the Grand Hotel, the city’s only early-opening hotel,” the report continued. “They crowded into one of the bars and spilled out on to the footpath and road.”

Reporters and photographers didn’t have to go far to get the story as their offices were opposite the Grand Hotel, a faded version of the once impressive building that had hosted royal tours. It would close later that year.

Directly across the road from the Grand Hotel was All Saints Anglican Church. Its neo-gothic appearance combined with the Grand Hotel’s French Napoleonic style to create an unlikely backdrop for the 120 or so bikies milling around.

As Te Marae o Hine/The Square, with its large lawns and ponds, was the retail centre of the city, Saturday shoppers arrived and several stayed on to watch what must have seemed like a circus sideshow.

Big British motorcycles were parked anywhere their owners cared, sometimes three deep and ignoring the parking meters.

Eventually police persuaded the groups to move away from the Grand Hotel and they shifted to the side of Te Marae o Hine, near a pond, where at least one stripped off and jumped in.

Then word came that members of the Mongrel Mob were near the post office.

A Rambo-like Mongrel Mob member stands up to a charge from the bikies during the 9pm scrap in Te Marae o Hine/The Square.

The newspaper reported: “30 bikies ran to the building … when police arrived only two injured youths remained.”

Beside a photograph of the dazed youths an extended caption read: “The two local youths who were assaulted in the post office foyer this morning. Both youths are aged 16. The youth standing was hit behind the ear, the other over the eye.”

Under the sub-heading ‘Big ‘convoy’’, the Standard reported: “By 11.30am the Square was cleared … At 12.45pm more than 100 motorcyclists convoyed West… About 1pm motorcyclists attacked a car with their boots… The car had apparently swerved across the head of the convoy at an intersection… A motorcyclist was knocked off his machine.”

Saturday’s main report finished by naming clubs included in what it now described as a “rally”: “Outcasts (Hamilton), Satan’s Slaves (Wellington), Antarctic Angels (Invercargill), Mothers (Palmerston North), Epitaph Riders (Christchurch), Outlaws (Napier), Confederates (New Plymouth), 25 Club (Wellington), Sinn Fein (Upper Hutt), the Devil’s Own (Tawa) and a lone Hells Angel from Auckland.”

It said another 56 riders were expected later in the day. Meanwhile police reinforcements were on their way from as far away as New Plymouth to boost numbers in Palmerston North to around 100.

Policemen, who have lost their caps in the melee, hold a Mongrel Mob member in a head and arm lock. Note the wooden mini-baseball-like truncheon.

Mongrel Mob members from around the lower North Island were also heading to the city in cars.

Just below the main report was another with the heading ‘’Warning shot fired’’. It recounted how the publican at the nearby township of Ashhurst “fired a shotgun over the heads of about 90 youths after extensive damage had been done to the public and lounge bars” in the afternoon.

Blood flows

The newspaper didn’t print on Sunday but it was worth the wait for Monday’s front page.

The local Manawatū Standard newspaper didn’t have to go far to get the story of the decade.

The heading “Blood flows in Square when rival gangs clash” was accompanied by amazing photographs and a description of an all-in brawl with the Mongrel Mob at 9pm on the Saturday night.

“About 70 Mongrel Mob members, including many youngsters, were packed together in a corner of the Square when 80 bikies streamed in,” the paper reported.

“Chains, marker posts, beer bottles, knives, a tractor lever and iron bars were drawn… fights broke out and no quarter was asked or given.”

The report was backed up by confronting photos.

In his police history book author Carter states: “We moved in just as the gangs started to clash … the fights had started in earnest and the bikies came well prepared.'

He noticed how some Mongrel Mob members were “disturbingly young”.

The newspaper says “the actual fighting lasted about 15 minutes and the Square was cleared after 30 minutes”.

Rather than being a full-on riot it appears to have been a series of skirmishes with police running around using wooden truncheons to break them up. Interestingly none of the policemen were wearing hard hats or any type of riot gear.

The Standard described one fight: “A Mongrel Mob member, looking like a karate exponent, faced a group of bikies. Undecided for a second whether or not to rush him, the bikies held off until one of their number rushed through their ranks and fly-kicked the Mongrel.”

Twenty-two arrests were made and the newspaper described the relief as the bikers left town the next day: “Tensions ebbed and peace returned.”

Political consequences

This event had major consequences, eventually becoming a political issue before the general election held later in 1972.

Labour leader Norman Kirk promised to “take the bikes off the bikies”.

New legislation prohibited unlawful assembly of more than three people wearing patches. As it was a street gang, the Mongrel Mob was most affected by this law.

In 1976 the laws were expanded to allow the confiscation of vehicles used to commit offences. As well police undercover detectives had started to infiltrate the clubs and thick dossiers were being compiled on members and their activities.

The noose was tightening, the stakes increasing. Nothing would be the quite the same again for those involved.

Ultimately, the main attraction in 1972 was the adrenalin hit of roaring down an open road in a group of 30 or more and making your own rules. Only those involved really knew what it was all about.

Strange laws

New Zealand had a strange set of helmet laws in 1972. One was only required if riding a motorcycle faster than 50kmh (i.e., around town).

The minimum age for getting a driving licence was 15 years, so many got their full licence on their birthday. Another quirky feature of Kiwi life back then was two separate police forces.

Traffic police (the Traffic Safety Service) were a department of the Ministry of Transport, not the actual NZ Police force.

Breath testing for suspicion of drink-driving had been introduced in 1969 with a legal level of 0.10 but random testing was only made law in 1984.

Easter roads were a killing ground in the early 1970s. The road toll of Easter 1971 was 21 and by Easter Monday 1972 at least nine people had died out of a population of 2.9 million.

Soundtracks of 1972

The big hit single in New Zealand in early 1972 was John Lennon’s Imagine, which sat top of the pops for five weeks, being knocked off by Daniel Boone’s Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast.

The hit single for the two weeks around Easter was The Congregation’s Softly Whispering I Love You. It was highly unlikely any of the bikers in Palmerston North were listening to that.

Their soundtrack was more likely to be the menacing lyrics and beat of Jethro Tull’s Locomotive Breath off the album Aqualung, or Led Zepplin IV’s thumping Black Dog or ethereal Stairway To Heaven that ends its eight minutes with Jimmy Page’s blistering solo on a double-neck guitar. Hard-arse for sure.

Deadly days

The bikie confrontation relegated major news stories to filler yarns on the newspaper.

In the days over Easter North Vietnamese forces over-ran major bases in the heaviest attacks for four years and began pouring south almost unchallenged.

Over in Turkey Western radar technicians were taken hostage and killed by guerrillas while in Ireland the death of a mother-of-10 hit by a stray bullet during a gunfight between British soldiers and IRA snipers was inflaming sectarian troubles.

In Florida a B52 jet bomber crashed onto homes, killing all seven crew and injuring civilians, including children.

Police harassment

In 2010 Kiwi academic Jarrod Gilbert explored New Zealand’s bikie culture in a 700-page thesis that was later published as a book called Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand.

In part of it he explains how in the mid-1960s a motorcycle club was ambushed by police and local footballers “who were always keen for a fight in those days” when it took refuge from a storm in an abandoned farmhouse.

“The police deliberately damaged motorcycles (cut control cables) and tore patches from the backs of members,” Gilbert quoted one ex-policeman.

“Including friends and girlfriends of club members, the police arrested 21 people for being unlawfully on premises.”

Gilbert said the rationale given for the police action was that a show of force would prevent future problems.

“There is a strong argument, however, that such actions have a contrary effect,” he concluded.

Hamish Cooper is based in Australia and writes for various motorcycle publications. This feature was written for Australian Motor Cycle News in co-operation with Stuff.