2020: A Life’s Sentences Overturned
February 4, 2020
By AHNZ
Just learned that Gordon McLauchlan died on the 26th of January (2020.) An historian, newspaperman, TV presenter, literary figure, social commentator, encyclopedist. I met him only once, delivering fast food to him in his very exclusive old apartment building in central Auckland. A repeat customer, I assumed, I’d be back to have a chance to converse. Or, I’d find him at the beach one day at Mission Bay where he said he frequented in one of his books. Once again, I didn’t get around to it, and another old timer has slipped through my fingers.Not to say we’d have gotten along. His views were Statist, Establishment, even Socialist of a vintage sort. But McLauchlan was outspoken and expressed these views honestly and articulately; Nothing vague. Straight shooter who put his bullets into the bullseye of many a spade when others would have aimed at a non-spade for fear of offending.
“Every man has his price and the Kiwis, being lower than most, his corruption is not highly visible.” – Gordon McLauchlan; AHNZ
We shared a delight in ‘Littledene’, a 1930s sociological study in book form of the real North Canterbury town of Oxford. Through that I found his books, starting with ‘The Passionless People’ and the ‘Revisited’ version and his history books and his biography ‘A Life’s Sentences’. I was bitterly disappointed by the McLauchlans’ matter-of-fact marriage failure. He wrote about such personal things with the passionlessness typical of his (Silent) Generation.
There was always a repressed anger about McLauchlan that came through in a sort of unexpressed short temper or fatalistic Dunedin Celtic Calvinist anguished gloom. That’s opinion and not easy to prove because it was wrapped up in witty prose and apparent surface warmth of his presence. This, I think, is the real reason Gordon assailed our society and put a critical boot in. So, when Telecom paid him a pile of loot to hire his personal social capital as a mascot it upset Kiwis because they’d been buying in to a different Gordon to that. Apart from getting rich, it was a way for Private Gordon to distance himself from Public Gordon.“time is not a movement forward but a regurgitation that is simply better dressed each time it comes up.” – A Life’s Sentences, Gordon McLauchlan
So then! An invaluable contributor to our understanding of New Zealand. The Anarchist History of New Zealand was partly created to follow McLauchlan’s example and go one better. Better dressed, better mental furniture. I have typed out numerous quotable quotes which I’ll share when this Facebook post goes up on the website.- “I always chuckle when I hear earnest entrepreneurial prophets urging their listeners to ‘think outside the square’ or to ‘think laterally’. If they had any idea what creativity was, they would choke on those clichés.”
- “This is the sort of over-organized, self-perpetuating, introverted society we have created. One in which taxi services are operated for the benefit of taxi drivers, medical services for doctors, schools for teachers, the law for police and industry for trade unions and managements; and so on in an almost incredible arse-about-face way.”
- “Nothing has replaced the central position the Bible had in our culture, the other classical texts from ancient times to the twentieth century have fallen from use because schools have moved from education of the mind to education of the brain, from education for life to education for vocation. These texts have gradually been replaced by the scatology of television in a culture that tells us we cannot have dramatic quality, must take what we get because trash backed by commercials in all their childish awfulness can support a television service.” – A Life’s Sentences
- “At one time, the farming lobby was so strong in this country that the men of the land disparaged every urban activity as not only economically inferior to their work but also spiritually and morally deficient…That’s why they could so easily be persuaded to come into town on their horses to break workers’ heads in the interests of the nation..”
- “Upper middle-class New Zealanders have come to believe that socialism is far too precious to be shared with the poor.”
“Conventionality; resistance to examining one’s inner feelings and emotions; a tendency to project on to others some of one’s own aggressive impulses, like believing that others are bent on hurting or destroying one when, in fact, one is harbouring these same impulses towards others- the classic Kiwi passive-aggressive personality- and, of course, submission to authority.”
- “The New Zealander is socially a reactionary with authoritarian instincts.”
- “We only read other people’s sages, other countries wiseacres. Our seers, visionaries and artists are in seclusion where society deems they belong. And if they take it upon themselves to find a public platform and speak up, they are resented, hissed at, called arrogant that they should dare to attempt to influence events. “
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Image ref. gordonmclauchlan.com (Seemingly offline now but alive and well in 2017)
Image ref. McLauchlan on the show Weekend; NZ On Screen
Image ref. The Scatter Hypothesis; AHNZ
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Anarchist History of New Zealand: Because the flesh will get weak and the ashes will scatter
