Sir Graeme Davies, guest speaker
Vice-Chancellor, University of London
When, in
February 1958, I was preparing to enter my final year as an Engineering
undergraduate in the University of Auckland at Ardmore near Papakura it
was inconceivable and unimaginable that some 50 years later I would be
in London addressing a dinner of New Zealanders and their friends and
supporters.
For my
generation the Treaty of Waitangi signed on the 6 February 1840 was
something of a vague historical event – at best remembered because of a
2 1/2d stamp issued as part of the special 1940 Centennial issue –
information on the Treaty was, at least in my Grammar School which was
not untypical, less a part of the school history curriculum than the
signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede on the River Thames in 1215.
That
Waitangi Day has become a prominent feature of the New Zealanders’
calendar is, in my opinion, admirable although this has not been
achieved without difficulty. The first formal proposals came in 1957
which led to the Waitangi Day Act 1960 which
enabled any
area of the country to substitute a Waitangi Day holiday for its
provincial anniversary day. This was done for Northland in 1963. The New
Zealand Day Act 1973 made the sixth of February a public holiday in New
Zealand.The
ultimate reinstatement came with the Waitangi Day Act of 1976.
But it is
wholly appropriate that we are here today to celebrate our “… national
day of thanksgiving in commemoration of the signing of the Treaty of
Waitangi …" – a celebration within the theme of ‘fellowship’ and which I
will seek to interpret in terms of social integration and education.
That the
Treaty was so unemphasised is, on reflection, quite surprising for two
principal reasons
-
the recognition of the importance of integration of Maori
and Pakeha in our society, and
-
the emphasis on education as central to the future of New
Zealand as a nation.
Although
Maori were very much a minority in numbers in the years when I was
growing up there was emphasis on the extent to which there was
integration and had been since the earliest times – New Zealanders
seemed to feel that they were a model for other multicultural societies
– and despite some of the rough waters between then and now this appears
to be a view that most NZers would still hold – certainly from the point
of view of one who has been outside their homeland for more than 40
years the impact of Maori language and customs reinforces that view.
Who could
have imagined that the installation in 2004 of a New Zealander as the
Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University would have involved him being
handed over to Oxford, clad in a Maori cloak, by a University of
Auckland kaumatua and a kuia - a cloak which he then
exchanged for his Vice-Chancellor’s robes - or that the outgoing VC
would address him in Maori - “esteemed John, I bid you welcome … thrice
welcome” - or that John, himself would include a Maori greeting in his
Inaugural Address which concludes with the statement
“Ma to rourou Ma taku rourou Ka ora ai te iwi
With your efforts With our collective efforts Our University will
be sustained”
Perhaps the
lack of educational emphasis is even more perplexing not least because
of New Zealand’s uncompromising and continual commitment from the 1850s
to a broadly based, inclusive, meritocratic system of education.
This was
brought home to me during the eight years I spent as Vice-Chancellor of
the University of Glasgow when I was made aware of the deep commitment
to education that is embedded in Scottish society – a commitment which
was translated to NZ by emigrating Scots and which was largely taken for
granted by successive generations – certainly it never crossed my own
mind in the 1950s that I and my contemporaries who were suitably
qualified would not enter University if they so wished.
It has also
become apparent to me in my current role as Vice-Chancellor of the
University of London. We have an External Degree programme which is,
this year, celebrating its 150
th Anniversary. We had our
first New Zealand student – Mary Temple of Dowling Street, Dunedin - in
1884! John Ballance, Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1890 to 1893,
was also a London External graduate.
Unusually,
we also educated many prisoners of war in both World Wars – one of
these, John Guest from Christchurch (who had been a university lecturer
in Otago before joining up), developed his own university in Stalag IVb
in Muhlberg-on Elbe where law, philosophy, foreign languages, English
literature and history were taught under the banner of the University of
London. – education was a permitted activity under the Geneva
Convention.
Finally, it
would be remiss of me if I did not draw to your attention the new Centre
for New Zealand Studies, set up in the University of London. The Centre
will bring together the work, research, connections, resources, and
energies of what is an extensive though dispersed group of academics and
non-academics. It will promote New Zealand Studies at UK and European
universities, facilitate the exchange and dissemination of information
and research, and act as a base offering support for New Zealand
academics engaged in the broad spectrum of subjects that can be defined
as New Zealand studies. It will establish collaborations between
universities in New Zealand and the Northern hemisphere.
Thus it
would appear that, in the 1950s, the lack of emphasis on our own history
was more of an oversight than an error of commission – New Zealand is
now much changed and the fact that we are here today joining together in
celebration of Waitangi Day is firm evidence of that – this is a
gathering and an occasion that makes me feel proud and privileged to be
a New Zealander.
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