The emergence of anti-tour groups led to the opposition to these groups emerging as pro-tour groups. These groups supported the tour, and thus believed that the tour was a good thing for New Zealand. They firmly believed that sports and politics shouldn't mix and thus reiterated this idea to the New Zealand public.
WARD (War against recreational disruption)
The WARD group, led by Robert Fenton opposed the anti-tour movement and the group had strong support from a majority of New Zealanders. The disagreement led to confrontations between the two movements and thus each group within that movement shared ideal views and strongly opposed the anti-tour movement.
|
SPIR (stop politics in rugby)
The SPIR group emerged as one of the leading groups for the Pro-tour movement and actually had support from the New Zealand Rugby Union, the Auckland Rugby Union and also various rugby-mad fans. The ideals of the group was to counter the anti-tour movement and thus they strongly believed that sports and politics were two completely different systems and thus one should not interfere with the other. Though due to their strong support for the tour, the group reiterated the fact that they did not support the apartheid-regime in South Africa.
Key ideas
The Pro-tour movement represented the other half of New Zealand of which was the majority for the support for the tour. The pro-tour movement also had a lot more support compared to the anti-tour movement thus it's popularity was at a much higher level then the anti-tour movement. The decision for the tour to carry on influenced New Zealand society for a long time, and thus the interest in politics increased in the younger generations as they saw politics as the key to gaining change. The decision for the tour to occur impacted New Zealand's identity as it saw them being independent to England as this was a decision in which New Zealand completely made without any influence. Therefore it was a key step towards gaining independent recognition from Great Britain.