OHMS! Protest! A Celebration of Resistance, our documentary focusing on the power of activism, screens at the Doc Edge festival in Wellington this week. The Vietnam War is raging. The Americans are there, boots and all. Here the streets are filled with protesting students, and peace activists. The protest is brief, bold and effective. Many of us remember that time well.

One of them, teenager Robert Reid and other like-minded students set up OHMS…Organisation to Halt Military Service, (nothing to do with royalty!)

As Robert explains if you know chemistry OHMs is the symbol for resistance. Clever.

If you were male aged 19 and your birthday popped up in the ballot you could be ordered off to camp for Compulsory Military Service, CMT. It was the original boot camp where sergeant majors supposedly made a man of you by shouting obscenities and treating you like low life. The Second World War was still fresh in many a male mind, so the military was intent upon having a war-ready band of brothers.

However this band of brothers, students, political activists, teachers and conscientious objectors joined OHMS and lead by Robert Reid began a short, sharp protest. It lasted nine months. Their aim, to overthrow CMT.

Hilary Watson, an OHMS supporter describes it as the shortest and most successful protest in Aotearoa’s history.

When Robert Reid asked me to make a documentary for the OHMS crowd, I was excited. It takes me back to the heady days at Canterbury University waving placards…for HART (Halt All Racist Tours) and shouting our opposition to the Vietnam War. My father who spent most of the Second World War in POW camps and later had his wounded leg amputated, was totally opposed to New Zealand’s involvement in the Vietnam war. He supported our protests, alarmed my three brothers might be conscripted.

At the time many are arrested for civil disobedience. Some activists end up in prison, including Geoff Woolford.

During my research I meet Geoff Woolford, whose 16 year old granddaughter Cara Truell is filming him for a school project about his stint in prison.

“I had no idea about the Vietnam War…. not many of my friends do either,” she says. “I’m so proud of my grandfather, so proud, that he went to prison for his beliefs.”

At the time Geoff Woolford was a young teacher at Taita College. His father was a Methodist minister and a conscientious objector. When Geoff’s name came up in the ballot he decided to forgo his summer holidays, don a scratchy uniform and give the army a whirl.

When it was time to return for his third bout of compulsory military training, he rang the Defence Department, told them he was not returning, suggested they pick up his neatly folded uniform on the grass outside his flat. And waited.

Soon there is a warrant out for his arrest. He continues teaching History and English at Taita College. But when he puts up an anti-conscription poster, allegedly in the wrong place, the police nab him.

When Geoff turns up in court he’s in for a nasty surprise.

“I was sentenced to three months jail. I remember being quite shocked. So that night instead of going home I ended going up to Mt Crawford.”

In prison Woolford works in the laundry and at night marks students’ assignments. He remembers being deeply moved to receive a card signed by students and teachers.

When he lodged an appeal the judge Richard Wilde, described the sentence as ‘a manifestly harsh penalty’ and reduced it to three weeks.

But there’s a postscript. Woolford leaves prison one day early. He is recalled to complete the sentence.

“I remember knocking on the door. It was dark and a prison guard said, “What are you doing here?”

His bunk is taken. There is no room in the inn. Geoff was returned home in a police car.

“I think I must be the only person in the country who turned up to fulfil my sentence and be refused admittance to jail.”

Geoff Woolford and other members of OHMS are interviewed by History Honours student, Arie Faber.

Like Cara Truell, Faber is impressed by the radical disobedience of OHMS members 50 years ago.

“What's been most interesting with OHMS for me is that it kicks back against the idea that young people are radical and grow out of it. For a lot of these men and women, OHMS was not just the only chapter of being radical in their lives.

OHMS was a first experience that sort of paved the way for future organising and future action.”

For Robert Reid and his mate Don Clarke activism started early and has never abated. They were students at Kaikorei High School in Dunedin when they embark on a campaign to abolish school cadets. Boys’ schools round the country had been running cadets for years. They dressed up as boy soldiers, sailors and airmen. The music boys lead the marching, blowing trumpets, beating drums and throwing drumsticks skywards. Others played with guns and were shouted at. The naval cadets had the best fancy dress.

Although their college had no cadets’ programme Reid and Clarke drafted a petition calling for it to be abolished nation-wide, delivered it to parliament and by the end of 1970 school cadets were over. “An absolute tragedy,” lamented Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park, a New Zealander famous for his role in the Battle of Britain.

Another OHMS supporter, Wellington artist and illustrator Bob Kerr becomes an ardent conscientious objector at high school. The librarian gave him Archibald Baxter’s book, We Will Not Cease. Baxter was a courageous conscientious objector during the First World War. ‘Conchies’ or shirkers as some called them, were subjected to appalling brutality because of their anti-war principles. Kerr needs no convincing. As a student in Auckland he joins OHMS.

Since then, he puts his anxieties about colonisation, racism and war on canvas. Exhibitions of First World War punishments include the crucifixion, where objectors were tied to posts with bombs landing nearby. Soldiers were ordered to drag conscientious objectors across duck boards and push them into muddy craters.

When he was studying at Auckland University, Bob’s job was to snatch CMT registration forms at the Labour department, race out the door to the team ready and willing to insert false names and addresses: Donald Duck, P.M. Keith Holyoake, and Micky Mouse featured regularly.

Bruno Lawrence and his band play at Auckland railway station as young men pinged in the ballot, board trains for Waiouru military camp. Tim Shadbolt is a star performer at a Victoria University anti CMT concert. Elaborate campaigns to frustrate the ballot at the Labour Department in Wellington mainly fail. In Christchurch the campaigners lie across the gates of Christ’s College, preventing a Bren gun carrier leaving.

There are crazy activities, hair brained schemes, fun and not much studying during this year of frantic efforts to overturn CMT. There are hundreds of arrests. But in November 1972 the general election heralds a change of government. Labour sweeps to power with Norman Kirk as the Prime Minister. Compulsory Military Training, the original boot camp, is kicked for touch.

On the side lines, conscientious objector photographer John Miller, Ngāpuhi/Māori Ngaitewake-ki-Uta/Māori, turns his lens on OHMS’ activities. He happily shares his photos with AC Productions.

Graeme Cowley, Beaconsfield Films ran around with his camera at the time and has generously gifted his beautiful footage. The Film Heritage Trust – Te Puna Ataata also helped us access archive. We gratefully accept the gifts because so far no TV channel is interested in these activists 50 years on. But anti-Vietnam War resisters in the States are in touch wanting our documentary on US TV.

50 years on the OHMS crowd gather in Wellington to celebrate their activism…. And we thank Doc Edge for saying YES to our documentary.

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