Veteran activist from the Land March to Ihumātao

One rarely meets someone of such steadfast integrity as Jimmy O’Dea. He will always be one of my heroes. I first met Jimmy, who has died aged 86, with his family at Takaparawha (Bastion Point) in 1977. They lived on Kupe St, just along the road from the Ngā ti Whā tua land wanted by private property developers for luxury housing. Jimmy was already a legend by then as a staunch battler for justice and human rights, particularly for the poorest and most marginalised.

Jimmy was a committed socialist, and I heard a few of his stories from intensely grim times growing up in Ireland. His anger at the terrible injustices faced by Irish workers and their families smouldered in his breast all his life, as did his anger at what big business and its government representatives were doing to New Zealand workers and beneficiaries on low incomes.

He never sought the limelight. He was a humble man who had the best built-in bulls..t detector I’ve come across. He was scathing of most Labour Party activists and politicians. Some were well-meaning, he would say, but they could never be relied on when the going got tough. He was particularly scornful of their empty ‘‘we’ve got to change the government’’ rhetoric when National was in power.

He was likewise contemptuous of trade union leaders who sold out workers, just as he was of the so-called ‘‘communism’’ of the Soviet Union.

Jimmy was never a bystander. He joined the Communist Party and saw class-based politics as the only way to bring freedom and justice for working people. He was a staunch unionist all his life, telling everyone ‘‘you must have faith in the working class’’.

While working at TNT All Trans, to the fury of the company, he instigated a ban on handling any container with racist or fascist graffiti on it. These had to be returned (most were from Christchurch). At the same time, he was happy to encourage graffiti using anti-racist slogans or calling for Mā ori land rights.

When the company wound up, he was involved in redundancy negotiations – winning an unprecedented ‘‘17 and seven’’ agreement for the workers (17 weeks’ pay for the first year of work, and seven for each subsequent year) and made sure the ‘‘tea lady’’, a union member, was included in the deal.

There are myriad stories of his activism. At one time during the Dawn Raids, the police had taken several Pasifika workers to a ship for deportation to the Islands. Jimmy and a Mā ori woman went to the ship and convinced the seamen to refuse to sail a ‘‘prison ship’’ with deportees on board. The crew agreed, but the victory was shortlived as the police took the deportees to the airport and flew them out.

He was nearly 50 when he took an infamous beating from four Red Squad members as he lay under a Patu! shield on the pavement in Onslow Rd, Auckland, during the protest against the last game of the 1981 Springbok tour.

At close to 80, he gave literal meaning to the term ‘‘putting your body on the line’’ when he lay under a truck trying to remove the first state house from Glen Innes.

Jimmy O’Dea was born an illegitimate

child in Ireland. As was the norm in those days, he was taken from his mother and put in an orphanage – the sorts of churchbased institutions where life expectancy was low, and unmarked graves of children were commonplace.

H is mother later defied the Catholic Church and reclaimed her son, raising him as a solo mother in the midst of appalling social prejudice and discrimination. It was tough for his mother, and tough for her only child.

At 17 he moved to England for work, and later to Australia, where he worked in mining around Alice Springs and was horrified at the discrimination against Aboriginal people.

In 1956 he moved to New Zealand, working on the building of the Meremere power station in northern Waikato, and becoming active in the union. He married Katherine Cummings in 1958 and they had three sons. He had two further sons from a second marriage in the 1980s.

In 1959 he became involved in his first political action against racism. The spark was the refusal of the Papakura Hotel to serve Dr Henry Bennett in the lounge bar. Bennett was the country’s first Mā ori psychiatrist, and his treatment in the pub reflected the racism that was commonplace at that time.

Jimmy was involved in many struggles to support Mā ori rights. He gave up his job and volunteered as the bus driver for the 1975 Land March from the Far North to Parliament, and took part in numerous land protests such as those at Raglan and Bastion Point (he was arrested at both). He was in his 80s when he was active in the struggle at Ihumā tao.

He supported families facing eviction or obstinate bureaucracies, and was on the tiller of a small aluminium dinghy facing US warships in Auckland harbour. And with his Irish heritage, he was heavily involved in campaigning for a united socialist Irish republic, and was a staunch supporter of the New Zealandbased Information on Ireland.

To Jimmy, justice was more important than the law. He lived his values. It doesn’t mean he didn’t make mistakes, but that he always put what was right ahead of what was comfortable and ahead of his personal interests. He was a genuine champion of the working class.

At a public gathering a few years back, the late playwright Dean Parker was asked who should be recognised as the most important New Zealander of the past 50 years. His immediate answer was a sincere ‘‘Jimmy O’Dea’’. So true.

I’m proud to have known this man. He lived a big life in a small country.

Jimmy is survived by his wife Sonya, four of his five sons, two grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Hā ere rā e Jimmy, hā ere, hā ere, hā ere.