HART (Halt all racist tours)
The Hart movement group was formed in 1969 by Tom Newnham and Trevor Richards to oppose the 1970 tour of South Africa by the New Zealand All Blacks. In a matter of months, HART became New Zealand's main anti-apartheid organization. The group worked vigorously to end all sporting contact with South Africa as they were an apartheid-ruled nation; their regime did not allow for all people to have equal rights and therefore the Blacks of the country were largely discriminated. In 1980 John Minto became the National Chairman of the organization and he played a vital part in the protests against the 1981 Springbok Tour of New Zealand. These small protests turned into a nation wide protest, becoming massive. During Minto's reign as chairman of the organization, the groups main ideals changed into ending all contact with the apartheid South Africa. They believed this was one of the main reasons in which would lead to a change in the regime, hoping to send a strong message that New Zealand did not accept their apartheid regime.
In 1973, Hart had promised a campaign of civil disobedience if the Springboks toured New Zealand. This caused the Prime Minister of the time, Norman Kirks to prohibit the tour. There was an outrage of rugby fans complaining about this which led to them stating that politics should not interfere in sports. The Springboks were due to tour New Zealand in 1981, and thus this led to strong protest against the tour by HART. The newly elected Robert Muldoon refused to cancel the tour, and subsequently it went ahead. The refusal to cancel the tour led to the boycott of the 1976 Montreal Olympics by 21 African Nations as prior to the agreement of the tour, Commonwealth countries had signed the Gleneagles agreement in which strongly discouraged sporting contact with South Africa in hopes of sending a strong message to the nation that all Commonwealth countries do not accept their apartheid regime; demanding that all people are given equal rights. |
Prior to the 1981 Tour, there was a protest movement against the 1960 All Blacks Tour of South Africa, in which they used a strong slogan "No Maoris - No Tour". This was because up until 1970 South Africa refused to allowed mixed-race sports teams to tour South Africa, and therefore they were not happy with having to play against the "natives" of New Zealand. However the protest group was unsuccessful at stopping the Tour; but they succeeded in gaining attention leading to the formation of the HART group in 1969.
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