Bruce Jesson
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Bruce Jesson (1944 - 1999) was a leftwing journalist, author and political figure in New Zealand. He was educated at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, where he gained a bachelor's degree in law.
As a student in the 1960s, he was initially attracted to the Communist Party of New Zealand which tried to groom him to be the party's lawyer. The CPNZ had been the first communist party in the world to side with China in the Sino-Soviet split. However, Jesson, being an independent thinker, soon struck out on his own, writing a number of polemics such as Traitors to class and country: A study of the Conservative Left and publishing a journal called Te Tao (The Spear). He had a lifelong antipathy to the sectarianism and dogmatism that plagued the small Marxist groups in New Zealand.
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[edit] Republicanism
Jesson was from that time an avowed republican championing an independent political and intellectual culture in New Zealand. He rebelled against the habit of the New Zealand Left to take its political cues from overseas countries. He founded the anti-royal Republican Association in 1966, later moving to Auckland (first to Pokeno and later Otahuhu) and forming a political party (the original Republican Party) to push the republic issue in 1967. Around 1970 he also associated briefly with Trotskyist radicals such as Owen Gager and David Bedggood, and he contributed occasionally to journals such as Dispute, New Zealand Monthly Review and Spartacist Spasmodical.
When activity in the fledgling Republican Party petered out, Jesson wound up the party in 1974, but continued to publish a widely-read pro-republican broadsheet entitled The Republican (1974-1995), covering both republican and leftwing issues in a plain and unpretentious style. This journal also featured articles by many other New Zealand leftists. (The Republican merged into Chris Trotter's New Zealand Political Review in 1995).
By this time, Jesson - who never had much of a steady career, working variously as labourer, wool presser, dustman and freezingworker - was living with his wife Joce, an educationist and tutor/lecturer, and played househusband as well as pursuing his writing. He was interested in developing an indigenous Marxian tradition in New Zealand, and participated in the four NZ Marxian Political Economy conferences staged in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Around the time of the mass protests against the Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand in 1981, he associated with Māori radicals such as Donna Awatere, Dun Mihaka, Syd Jackson and Ripeka Evans who sought to put Māori nationalism on the political agenda (Mihaka, though an anti-royalist, was strictly speaking not a nationalist). The first drafts of Awatere's famous book Maori Soveignity were published in The Republican.
It was only late in his life however that Jesson became better known to the general public, as respected political columnist for Auckland's Metro magazine and contributor to other magazines such as North & South and New Zealand Political Review. He also published four books about the neo-liberal revolution in New Zealand, and became a fellow of the Auckland University Political Science Department.
[edit] Entering politics
In 1990, Jesson joined Jim Anderton's Labour party splinter NewLabour Party, and stood as a candidate for the party in the New Lynn electorate. In 1991, he was elected to the Auckland Regional Council as an Alliance candidate, becoming chair of the Auckland Regional Services Trust between 1992 and 1995.
An anthology of his later articles has been published posthumously as Bruce Jesson: To Build a Nation - Collected Writings 1975-1999 (2005). He is affectionately remembered as a very learned but unpretentious radical who sought to shed light on the peculiarities of New Zealand politics, and who pioneered an independent left-wing analysis of local political affairs. The Bruce Jesson papers are archived at the University of Auckland Library. The Bruce Jesson Foundation was established in his honour.
[edit] Bibliography
- Traitors to class and country: A study of the Conservative Left
- The Fletcher Challenge: Wealth and Power in New Zealand (1980).
- Revival of the right: New Zealand politics in the 1980s
- Behind the mirror glass: The growth of wealth and power in New Zealand in the eighties (1987)
- Fragments of labour: The story behind the labour government
- "The Disintegration of a Labour Tradition: New Zealand Politics in the 1980s", in: New Left Review, #192, March-April 1992.
- Only Their Purpose is Mad, The Money Men Take Over New Zealand (1999).
- Bruce Jesson: To Build a Nation - Collected Writings 1975-1999 (2005). Edited by Professor Andrew Sharp.
