Police using batons clash violently with protesters during the 'Battleworth of Molesworth St' in Wellington. Photo / NZME
Ross Meurant was on the frontline of the bloody 1981 anti-Springbok tour protests as a senior member of the police's Red Squad – including the aftermath of the wild scenes which cancelled the tourist's clash with Waikato. Forty years on, he opens up to Neil Reid
There was no shortage of urgent phone calls Ross Meurant fielded in the days after protestors stormed Hamilton's Rugby Park.
While anti-tour protestors celebrated the pitch invasion which forced the cancellation of the Springboks' clash with Waikato, their actions were deemed as a bitter "defeat" by police.
One phone call clearly sticks in the mind of Meurant; second in charge of the police's elite Red Squad unit set up to escort the Springboks.
On the other end of the line was then Prime Minister Robert Muldoon; the man many believed let the tour go ahead to successfully aid his chances of re-election.
Muldoon wanted answers about what went so badly wrong in Hamilton.
Earlier, Meurant – who as well as being a senior sergeant was also the secretary of National MP Jim McLay's Birkenhead electorate team – had told McLay of his frustrations about then Police Commissioner Bob Walton's post-Hamilton comment that: "If I had had the entire police force at the ground I could not have done more".
In Meurant's mind that was a "crock of crap". He told McLay: "If the Red Squad had been let out of its cage under the grandstand at Hamilton and been given the freedom to confront the protestors in the street before they broke into the ground unchallenged, Red Squad would have prevented that debacle".
"Muldoon had returned from abroad and he asked me to repeat what I had told McLay," Meurant told the Herald. "I did.
"This was heady stuff for me because here I was but a mid-rank cop and a junior volunteer in the National Party and the Prime Minister calls me."
The third scheduled game of the Springbok tour against Taranaki in New Plymouth – a match the visitors won 39-4 – went without any dramatic incidents.
But by the time the Boks arrived in Palmerston North for their next match against Manawatu, serious hostilities resumed.
As a "large body of protestors" gathered pre-match, the Red Squad was deployed.
"It was also the first time that the riot gear and long batons we take for granted now in New Zealand was displayed in a manner that signaled 'new rules'," Meurant said.
And as protestors closed in, Meurant recalled Walton "appeared at my side and said: 'I don't care what you do senior, but stop them'."
The timing of the comment stuck in Meurant's mind.
And seven years later – when both Meurant and Muldoon were National Party MPs – the former Prime Minister confirmed to him over a whisky he had taken a dim view of Walton's approach post-Hamilton.
"Muldoon said: 'I was very pleased to receive your report from New Plymouth and as a result I told Bob that if he didn't stop the protestors next time out, he would be out of a job'."
'Request denied and the rest is history'
Hamilton's Rugby Park was packed on July 25 for the planned Springbok / Waikato clash.
But fan hopes of seeing the 'Mooloo Men' taking on the Springboks were ended after hundreds of anti-tour protestors tore down the fence at one end of the ground and surged onto the field.
Broken glass and tacks were dropped on the playing surface.
The invasion – and fears a light plane stolen by a World War II Spitfire pilot might crash into the grandstand – led to the match's cancellation.
Forty years on, Meurant remains adamant the protestors would never have been able to set foot on Rugby Park had police top-brass listened to the Red Squad earlier in the day.
"[Police spies] advised Red Squad commanders and other police commanders preparing for the encounter that the plan of the protestors was to break into the rugby ground from the north fence line," he said.
"Hamilton brought a new dimension to the cohesiveness among protest groups that alarmed police because of the size of its mass.
"Red Squad recognised the threat early in the day and petitioned the scene commander to let Red Squad confront the mob in the streets as the mob approached the ground. This request was denied and the rest is history."
He added that police's initial attempts to carry the peaceful protestors off the field was "futile".
"The 'defeat of police by the protestors at Rugby Park did have an effect on most police and on me," he added.
"Whereas until that day I didn't give a damn, that event galvanised me to demand an opportunity to restore one's pride in an outfit [the police] which at that stage of my career I still had pride."
"A formidable disciplined unit unflinching in the face of overwhelming odds"
Meurant had been seconded from his position as control room supervisor to be second in charge of the Red Squad in the months leading up to the Springboks' arrival.
The unit consisted of 51 officers – including one woman.
Specialist training included time at the SAS' base at the Papakura military camp where the team were skilled up in "new riot/protest strategies and primed to travel as personal escorts to the Springboks".
A second unit called Blue Squad was created in Wellington.
Married with a young daughter, Meurant was also in his final year of studying towards a bachelor's degree.
"I had played senior first division rugby until 1980 but I was not enamoured with the tour and I had moved on from rugby culture, and was not enthusiastic about being taken away for three months from my wife, child and university studies," he said.
Any thoughts Red Squad's role would be largely restricted to being "personal escorts" for the Springboks was shattered by the events in Hamilton.
By the time the tour had moved to Palmerston North for the fourth match of the tour the Red Squad was operating under the "new rules", the numbers of barricades around venues had increased markedly and barbed wire was placed both around the exteriors of grounds and also between the playing pitches and spectators.
The latter saw the Wynand Claassen-captained team being dubbed the 'Barbed Wire Boks'.
Meurant said from the Palmerston North leg of the tour onwards Red Squad presented itself as a "formidable force".
Protests were a near-daily occurrence as the tour carried on.
While Meurant said the Red Squad "was pretty much immune from the day-to-day petty street clashes", they were thrust back into the limelight on the day of the second test against the All Blacks at Wellington's Athletic Park on August 29.
For security reasons the Springboks squad slept in a function room at Athletic Park on the eve of the test. In the hours leading up to kick-off violence erupted outside the venue as police were challenged by an increasingly "hard core" section of protestors.
"Often this grouping included gang members and were increasingly kitted out with motorcycle helmets, padded clothing, wooden shields and offensive weapons such as baseball bats and incendiary devices," Meurant said.
"The ensuing clash saw many protestors bloodied and beaten with PR 24 batons by the riot gear-equipped Red Squad."
"Day of infamy"
When the Springboks ran onto Eden Park for the third and deciding test on September 12, the protest movement had failed in their 56-day attempt to have the tour cancelled.
But they certainly weren't prepared to let the Boks finish their tour without a fight.
The most extreme of actions happened around some of the streets surrounding Eden Park – and in the airspace over the venue - in a day which Meurant said was still remembered as "a day of infamy in the view of many".
A police car was overturned, while officers were left with broken bones and other injuries after being attacked with fence palings, doors, rocks and other homemade weapons. Blood flowed, and other injuries were inflicted by protestors, after a heavily outnumbered Red Squad unleashed a series of baton charges.
At one point on Onslow Rd, a section of 21 Red Squad members had the task of trying to control more than 2000 "hardcore protestors".
"The violence which ensued was the most extreme the country had witnessed to this point of time in its history – with the exception of the Māori Wars campaigns – and nor has that level of violence been repeated since that day," Meurant said.
The notoriety of the day included the 'Clowns Incident'; where a trio of peaceful protestors dressed as clowns were badly injured after being struck by police batons.
Meurant said there was no doubt "Red Squad did over react at some point".
But he added: "When a minority sized squad of police facing overwhelming odds of armed violent rock-throwing, baseball bat-wielding, helmeted, incendiary device-throwing gang members rumbling for the fun of it with other protestors from the bent-on violence section of what was otherwise a peaceful protest movement happens, excesses on both sides were bound to happen."
As wild violence raged outside Eden Park, the 49,000 rugby fans inside the venue were enthralled by what has gone down as one of the most pulsating test matches played in New Zealand.
The All Blacks won the match 25-22.
While the fans weren't aware of the size of the violent confrontations outside the ground, they weren't immune from one of the more dramatic attempts to halt the test.
A Cessna plane buzzed Eden Park, at times making passes just above the height of its goal posts, dropping flour bombs – including one which felled All Black prop Gary Knight – flares and anti-tour pamphlets.
Pilot Marx Jones was later handed a nine-month jail sentence for his actions.
"A poisoned chalice"
The Springboks' departure from New Zealand the day after the third test was not the end of the tour saga for Meurant and the Red Squad.
And 40 years on, the magnitude of the events of 1981 sees the shadow of the 'Barbed Wire Boks' remaining around him.
Meurant said Red Squad members were later "intimidated, humiliated, treated unlawfully and persecuted".
Several officers from other units were charged in relation to their conduct, but no one from Red Squad was ever charged.
Meurant said that wasn't for a lack of trying.
"The demand for a Red Squad scalp was intense and on one occasion I was implored by a member of the Police Association – an organisation whose objective is to help police – to 'Give the Commissioner one. All he needs is one'."
The former senior officer said the tour has had a "profound effect on my life".
Before the Springboks' arrival he said he "couldn't give a damn about the tour".
"I had better things to [do] than traipse around the country looking after rugby players," he said.
But that all changed after the "humiliation" felt by police after the cancellation of the Waikato match.
"I wanted revenge," he said. "I wanted the tour to continue so the police could redeem."
In early 1982 he released his tour memoir, The Red Squad Story, which went on to be a best-seller.
In writing the book he disobeyed a directive from Walton, something which he believed saw him fail to gain a promotion in the next three years of Walton's tenure as Police Commissioner.
The Red Squad Story also firmly made him the public face of the unit, something which was to see Meurant increasingly cop "the vilification, odium and contempt that was being heaped upon Red Squad as the tide of public opinion which during the tour split the nation fifty-fifty . . . turned overwhelmingly to opposed to the tour".
He entered Parliament as the National MP for the Hobson electorate in 1987, remaining an MP until 1996.
But throughout his post-police career in politics and business, mention of the Red Squad hasn't been far away.
"I view my association with 'that period' as pretty much having been handed a poison chalice," he said. "A chalice which made me famous or infamous . . . depends on your point of view."
