Sue Bradford, Nice Lady, Shame About the Politics Part 2

After her six months in China, courtesy of a Foreign Affairs scholarship, Sue Bradford returned to NZ in 1981 and became heavily involved in the anti Springbok Tour movement.

By then married to Bill Bradford, she was six months pregnant, but that didn’t stop her. Sue Bradford and her small “direct action” group in association with the co-ordinators of the Mobilisation Against the Springbok Tour organisation, developed strategies to divert police by causing disruption across Auckland. According to Metro, May 1993 “they then raided the Waiatarua TV transmitter and pushed enough keys to interrupt 20 minutes transmission of the first test. On the day of the second test the group burst onto Auckland Airport and occupied a commercial airport for 45 minutes. On the last day of the tour she was one of a group of 30 who went over an Auckland Airport security fence and lay on the tarmac.”

That year, Sue Bradford also joined the Workers Communist League. At the time the WCL was a newly formed, Maoist organisation, uniting student radicals with older ex Communist Party members, into a highly secretive and disciplined organisation.

Very strong in the anti Apartheid movement, student politics and some trade unions, the WCL was hated and feared, even by many fellow socialists. They were often called the “Weasels”, a play on their initials and a judgement on their alleged fondness for employing dirty tactics.

The WCL set up Unemployed Workers Unions in several centres in the early ’80s, as did the Socialist Unity party and later the Communist Party.

In February 1982, Sue Bradford was one of a group who set up the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Centre. This was the main focus of her activism for several years.

There were diversions, such as the protests against a proposed 1985 Allblack Tour to South Africa, but Sue Bradford became a leading voice for the unemployed as far as the media were concerned.

Incidentally another “champion of the unemployed” in the early ’80s was Jane Stephens, of the Wellington Unemployed Workers Union. She delivered a passionate speech at the 1984 Economic Summit, which gained huge media coverage. Stephens was the partner of WCL member, Dave MacPherson, later a leader of the New Labour and Alliance parties, now a Hamilton City Councillor and anti gambling activist.

By the late ’80s, Sue Bradford was national co-ordinator and spokesman for the Unemployment Beneficiaries Movement of NZ (Te Roopu Rawakore o Aotearoa). According to the Nelson Evening mail of June 12, 1989 “Her main goals have been to unify the many unemployed centres around the country, to give the unemployed a national voice and to develop links with other organisations, such as unions

The job was funded by a grant from the Roy McKenzie Foundation. She used the money to support her unemployed husband, Bill and four children.

In October 1988, the various communist controlled unemployed unions united in an uneasy truce to organise a nationwide March Against Unemployment. Sue Bradford was very active in the March and sat on the policy committee.

I was at the final rally in the grounds of Parliament and watched the Socialist Unity Party’s, Peter Hall-Jones and the Communist Party’s, Willie Wilson harangue the several thousand strong crowd.

During the late ’80s, the Pro Soviet, Socialist Unity Party formed a non public alliance with the Labour party. The SUP gave Labour, unflinching union support through the “Rogernomics” years in exchange for certain concessions.

This alienated the non SUP left and several small proto groups were formed as a potential alternative to Labour. The WCL was involved in several of these as were some former members of the Socialist Action League. The WCL had by now, moved away from an overt pro China line (though Bradford remained active in the NZ-China Friendship Society) and were linking with new groups, such as the Australian Socialist Workers Party. Several ex SALers were also close to the Australian SWP, including Keith Locke and Matt Robson.

The stage was set for a new party to the left of Labour.

In 1989, disgusted by the sale of the BNZ and after losing a contest for Labour’s presidency to Ruth Dyson, Jim Anderton finally quit Labour. Within days he announced the formation of the New Labour Party. The entire WCL joined the NLP as did the ex SAL members involved with the Australian SWP.

The NLPs first National Council contained no less than four ex SAL members (Matt Robson, Petronella Townsend, Keith Locke and Paul Piesse), a former SAL supporter, Francesca Holloway (wife of commentator, chris Trotter), one former covert SUP supporter, several probable WCL members and one definite member, Sue Bradford.

In June 1989, she was elected Vice-President of the NLP. Bradford said in her closing speech to the NLP conference that she “felt she was politically more left-wing than the body of the party, but was determined not to compromise on issues that were important to her. These were feminist issues, such as equal-gender representation, pay equity and abortion, as well as the concerns of the unemployed such as jobs for all at award rates.” Nelson Evening Mail, 12 June 1989.

Things soon turned to custard however when Anderton expelled two tiny Trotskyite sects from the NLP, David Bedggood’s, Communist Left and Bill Logan’s, Permanent Revolution Group. the Trots had embarrassed the NLP with their mad sloganeering at conferences, but Sue Bradford was appalledd. She resigned from the NLP in April 1990 as she saw a “definite move to the right“.

Around this time the WCL dissolved into a new organisation called “Left Currents”, which Bradford joined. The move was partially prompted by the Australian SWP’s name change to the Democratic Socialist Party. The DSP began publishing Green Left Weekly and began courting the Green movement. In NZ, many left Currents members joined the Green Party, including Sue Bradford. Left Currents kept involved with the NLP however and supported Keith Locke in his 1990 parliamentary campaign.

Sue Bradford only stuck with the Greens for four months however. After missing out on selection as Greens candidate for Auckland Central, she left the party and stood unsuccessfully as an independent.

Bradford kept her hand in on the protest front however. In April 1990 she was prominent in organising an AUWRC barricade of the Auckland Treasury offices. In July she spoke at a Wellington unemployed rally of a thousand people and helped organise an occupation of the Business Roundtable’s offices.

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6 thoughts on “Sue Bradford, Nice Lady, Shame About the Politics Part 2

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  2. What are your 50,000 thoughts a day creating?

    Our thoughts create our reality. This is a simple truth known by all people involved on the spiritual path. It is one of the most taught universal principles in the personal development field. Yet it is one of the most misunderstood!

    People practice visualisation, affirmations, they use hypnosis, subliminal programming or countless other tools to transform their lives. However they fail to recognise one key area in their lives that hinder these wonderful techniques from being effective.

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    Would you like to know the secret? Would you like to know why these people get no results? Would you like to hear one powerful statement that explains everything?

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    Most people believe that if they visualise for 10 minutes a day their lives will magically transform. This is not the case. You must change your core thinking. You think approx. 50,000 thoughts a day. How many of those thoughts are working against your ten minute visualisation?
    You can control the thoughts that enter your mind by changing the way you view the world. You can decide which thoughts you give energy to and which thoughts you discard.

    The thoughts that you follow and give energy to become more dominant than the thoughts you discard. Your subconscious mind records these as your dominant picture on the issue at hand. You then move towards this picture because your subconscious mind starts making your outside world reflect the picture that you have stored internally.
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    Let’s say you have been visualising a new house. You spend your ten minutes in meditation picturing yourself living in your dream home. You finish your session and get up feeling positive that you will achieve your goal. Then during the day you get a heating bill through the post and exclaim “Oh no look how expensive this is I cannot afford to heat this house”. Where is your focus in the present moment? What are you affirming? You are telling your subconscious mind that you cannot deal with what you have. You are affirming that your life is not how you want it to be. If you knew without doubt that within a week you would be moving to your new home would you honestly be worried about a heating bill? Perhaps other doubts creep in like “I should be happy with what I have”, or “I will never get this house looking the way I want it” and so on and so on.
    These thoughts that are not aligned with your goal. You are not giving complete attention to what you want. Whilst you are dealing with these other lines of thought your attention is not on your goal.
    If you are aware of your thoughts you will suddenly realise that you have spent much more energy on counter productive thoughts than on creating a dominant picture of the goal you want.
    Point your focus in the direction of you’re the life you want. Think about what you want NOT what you don’t want. It’s that simple.

    Your focus determines your reality. Change your focus and you change your life. The Secret

  3. Can you use hypnosis and self hypnosis to improve your health?

    Well in 1958 the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association and The British Medical Association concluded that hypnosis was indeed a viable therapeutic tool and approved its medical use.

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    Olympic athletes, footballers, basketball layers, golfers etc., have known about the power of the mind for some decades now (perhaps the elite knew even further back). It has been shown in medical studies that when you visualise yourself performing a task your muscles respond in exactly the same way as they would if you were actually doing the task. Sports psychologist have used this to their, and their clients, advantage for years now.

    The power of the mind is becoming more evident to the medical establishment as well. Everyone knows about the beneficial effects of using a placebo. It seems that if the mind is convinced that something is true then it will make it true even if the situation appears to be the exact of opposite in the ‘real world’!

    It seems that the quickest way to get the mind to accept a new belief is through hypnosis and self hypnosis. Phobias can be eliminated in one session now and new beliefs planted in the same aount of time.
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    No-one can predict the scope of hypnosis for healing. However, everyone knows of miracle healings that have taken place when a sick person has visited a spiritual healer, bathed at Lourdes, prayed etc. If these healings can take place then I see no reason not to believe that hypnosis can have the same effect.

    Unfortunately, no large scale studies have been undertaken, to my knowledge, that have tested the power of hypnosis to cure chronic or terminal illness but I do believe there is enough evidence to suggest it is a very beneficial tool in recovery. self hypnosis

  4. What are your 50,000 thoughts a day creating?

    Our thoughts create our reality. This is a simple truth known by all people involved on the spiritual path. It is one of the most taught universal principles in the personal development field. Yet it is one of the most misunderstood!

    People practice visualisation, affirmations, they use hypnosis, subliminal programming or countless other tools to transform their lives. However they fail to recognise one key area in their lives that hinder these wonderful techniques from being effective.

    They sit day after day visualising their perfect scene and yet nothing happens. Why? They have followed all the instructions to the letter! They have chanted and imagined! They have formed a colourful, vibrant scene in their minds and affirmed that this is their reality. Then all of a sudden things get worse! What is going on?

    Would you like to know the secret? Would you like to know why these people get no results? Would you like to hear one powerful statement that explains everything?

    Yes?
    Good. I will tell you why these people get no results or even opposite results to those they are aiming for -simply because of the following truth. Consciously controlled thoughts such as visualisations do not materialise – ALL thoughts materialise!!!
    Most people believe that if they visualise for 10 minutes a day their lives will magically transform. This is not the case. You must change your core thinking. You think approx. 50,000 thoughts a day. How many of those thoughts are working against your ten minute visualisation?
    You can control the thoughts that enter your mind by changing the way you view the world. You can decide which thoughts you give energy to and which thoughts you discard.

    The thoughts that you follow and give energy to become more dominant than the thoughts you discard. Your subconscious mind records these as your dominant picture on the issue at hand. You then move towards this picture because your subconscious mind starts making your outside world reflect the picture that you have stored internally.
    Your mind should be on whatever you want. The picture you need to have is a positive vision of you already having achieved your goal. To realise this vision you need to focus and concentrate. Remember thoughts are real, they create your reality.
    Let’s say you have been visualising a new house. You spend your ten minutes in meditation picturing yourself living in your dream home. You finish your session and get up feeling positive that you will achieve your goal. Then during the day you get a heating bill through the post and exclaim “Oh no look how expensive this is I cannot afford to heat this house”. Where is your focus in the present moment? What are you affirming? You are telling your subconscious mind that you cannot deal with what you have. You are affirming that your life is not how you want it to be. If you knew without doubt that within a week you would be moving to your new home would you honestly be worried about a heating bill? Perhaps other doubts creep in like “I should be happy with what I have”, or “I will never get this house looking the way I want it” and so on and so on.
    These thoughts that are not aligned with your goal. You are not giving complete attention to what you want. Whilst you are dealing with these other lines of thought your attention is not on your goal.
    If you are aware of your thoughts you will suddenly realise that you have spent much more energy on counter productive thoughts than on creating a dominant picture of the goal you want.
    Point your focus in the direction of you’re the life you want. Think about what you want NOT what you don’t want. It’s that simple.

    Your focus determines your reality. Change your focus and you change your life. The Secret

  5. Bullshit! The Greens (Bradford’s Party) are the only Party in the NZ Parliament who actually have the guts to harass the government (and the National Party) over wanting closer links with the human rights abusing Chinese Communist Party through a “free trade agreement”.

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