Labour Party Profile 2 Ruth Dyson

Labour party File 1 here

Minister of Social Development and Employment Ruth Dyson, is undoubtedly one of Prime Minister Helen Clark’s very tight inner circle.


Dyson has a socialist background and like her colleague Maryan Street, was once close to the pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party (SUP).

Through most of the 1980s, through the early 1990s, the New Zealand Labour Party was unofficially allied to the SUP-led at the time by the country’s top trade unionist, CTU president Ken Douglas.

Former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky, in his 1990 history of the KGB, alleged that New Zealand and Australian communists were being “run” by the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He said “I know the situation in New Zealand very well; only 500 members (the Socialist Unity Party) but they are invaluable because each was ready to do something. It was like the KGB had 500 agents in the country.”

Gordievsky added “plus some of them penetrated the trade unions,… and then they penetrated the left wing of the Labour Party”

By the early ’80s The SUP had gained control of the Federation of Labour and almost all New Zealand’s major unions, especially in the Engineering, Dairy, Hotel and transport industries. These unions were affiliated to the Labour Party and enjoyed block voting rights at Labour Party conferences. Every financial member of an affiliated union was counted as a member of the Labour Party.

This gave affiliated unions thousands of votes each, which if coordinated properly guaranteed the SUP’s ability to influence the make up of Labour’s executive and policy council.

The SUP took advantage of this system to devastating effect. Since the mid ’80s the majority of Labour Party senior officials were SUP sympathisers or in some cases secret members. By the late 1980s SUP supporters had become the leading power bloc in the Labour Party.

During this period Ruth Dyson had some links to both the Socialist Unity Party and the Soviet Union.

Ruth Dyson joined the Westport branch of the Labour Party in 1979. In 1985 she moved to Wellington “to help Fran Wilde with her Homosexual Law Reform Bill.”

By 1986 Dyson was on thr Labour Party executive, becoming senior vice president in 1987. From 1988 to 1992 Ruth Dyson served as Labour’s president.

In the late 80s, Ruth Dyson was closely involved with Peter Bloor, a Wellington “industrial advocate”. Bloor was also a Labour Party member, but occasionally contributed articles to the SUP newspapet Tribune.

Dyson herself was reportedly on close terms with SUP general Secretary Marilyn Tucker, the partner of then party leader Ken Douglas.

In 1989 Dyson led a Labour Party delegation to the Soviet Union at the invitation of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

The Soviets returned the favour in November 1989 when N B Bidekin, editor in chief of the CPSU’s theoreticl journal Kommunist and V P Kudenov an official of the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, visited New Zealand to observe that years Labour Party conference.

Ruth Dyson and Ken Douglas proudly posed with the Soviet visitors.


In July 1992, in a meeting chaired by Maryan Street, Ruth Dyson was selected to stand for Labour for the Lyttelton seat in the 1993 general election.

Labour Party file 3 here

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5 thoughts on “Labour Party Profile 2 Ruth Dyson

  1. Ruths father passed away last night, how insensitive of New Zeal to renew its smeer campaign against her at this time.

  2. So the KGB were running the SUP who were running the Labour party who brought us Rogernomics?

    That makes some sense now that I think about it – a fiendish plot to destroy our economy. Soon we’ll be joining Iceland in begging for loans from Russia.

    Smash Capitalism – Vote ACT!

    Cheers

    Sam Buchanan

  3. Ruthie has come along way since she hooned around Mirimar on her Triumph Tiger 500 back in the early seventies. She was radical even then. But a good looking radical. Unlike those Ruskies. Man they are ugly.

    Dirk

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