We feature each week Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books
“PATCHED – THE HISTORY OF GANGS IN NEW ZEALAND” by Jarrod
Gilbert (Auckland University Press, $NZ49:99)
Some weeks
ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Jarrod Gilbert interviewed on Kim Hill’s
Saturday morning radio show. He was discussing the fact that research for Patched (which was developed from his
PhD thesis in sociology) involved his spending long periods living with, and
being accepted by, gangs. As he says in his introduction to this book:
“Perhaps the most important part of my research was the eight years I
spent in the field hanging around with various gangs doing ethnographic, or
participant observation, research. Gaining access to gangs was a long and
fraught process, and much of my time in the field was challenging both
physically and ethically. During these years, my life and my research merged.
Week in, week out, I immersed myself in the scene. The consequences of these
undertakings were not always desirable: a knife to the throat; involvement in a
large gang brawl; battling the fatigue that comes from partying days at
a time; and a couple of fights where I was soundly beaten are among those
events I can comfortably repeat here.” (pg. x)
What I found engaging in
Gilbert’s interview on the Kim Hill was his ethical ambiguity about much that
he witnessed. For example, after first saying “Oh God, my Mum’s listening to this!”, he mentioned witnessing group
sexual activity in gangs. This may be part of what he cannot “comfortably repeat” in his introduction.
While enjoying the interview, I
did wonder if Gilbert would suffer the fate of so many journalists who have
been “embedded” with armed forces during conflicts – that is, I wondered if he
would so identify with his hosts that (like those military journalists) he
would end up simply reproducing their viewpoint and perspective. Late in his
introduction, he does note that he has had to keep confidentiality, which means
he has been, as he puts it, ethically “stretched” and has had to suppress, or
remove individual names from, material that could be used in criminal
prosecutions.
I needn’t have worried. Patched does indeed convey much of the
perspective of gang-members; but the author keeps his own perspective as a
sociologist, is fully aware of the criminal activities in which gangs are or
have been involved, is sensitive to the perspectives of the wider community and
does not assume that all negative reactions to gangs are mere alarmism. Also
the book is very solidly researched from sources additional to direct
interaction with gangs, as the extensive bibliography makes clear. Interviewing
and observing gang members were only part of Gilbert’s research, and Patched is in no way a memoir. Indeed,
it is only occasionally that Gilbert refers directly to events he personally
witnessed.
There are some themes that run
through this text, even though it is a varied history of nearly sixty years of
New Zealand subcultures. One is the clear impact of socio-economic conditions
on the growth or decline of gangs. Most chapters in this book contain a brief
account of what was happening to the national economy and to political parties
at any given time. Another theme is the constant feeding of gangs off images
and models provided to them by (largely American) popular culture, from 1950s
bikers aspiring to be Marlon Brando in The
Wild One, to South Auckland youth aspiring to be LA Crips or Bloods after
seeing movies like Colors, to current
“boy racers” ODing on The Fast and the
Furious. Not that the media images provide the impetus to form gangs – only
the form that that impetus takes.
As Gilbert tells it (Chapter One), the 1950s in New Zealand were
essentially a prelude to later gang culture. The first rock ‘n’ roll era
“gangs” were milk-bar cowboy groups of mainly working-class Pakeha kids, mainly
from new state-housing areas, who did not last as gangs because the 1950s were
an era of high employment and economic security. Hence there was no inducement
for young men to stay in gangs when they could easily find a pay-packet.
Membership of gangs was transient.
However, gang culture changed
(Chapter Two) in the 1960s, although on the whole the economy was still
healthy. In what Gilbert sees as the first ‘pivot point’ in gang history, gangs
(following the lead of the early Hell’s Angels in Auckland) become patched, and
gang activity became a more visible public concern, as in the Hastings Blossom
Festival riots of 1960 and 1969. Gangs were beginning to be identifiable and
continuous. Clubs transformed into gangs with rules and a hierarchy. Gangs had
more time to “defend” territory and mana as the economy declined and members
made gang activity their major occupation rather than something that was
engaged in only when paid work permitted. Gilbert readily accepts the argument
that police harassment was one key factor in reinforcing group solidarity and
hence transforming clubs into gangs.
At this point (Chapter Three)
Gilbert differentiates between motorcycle gangs and the street gangs that began
to emerge in the later 1960s. Also at this point, he has to address more fully
the matter of ethnicity. Early cycle gangs were essentially colour-blind, as
were the first street gangs. But the street gangs rapidly became largely Maori
and Polynesian, especially with the number of kids alienated from both school
and home environments during the rapid urbanisation of Maori and the equally
rapid growth in immigration from the Pacific.
Gilbert lingers over the
formation of the gang that was to last longest, the Mongrel Mob, whose style
was to be extreme and perverse rejection of social norms:
“Without
the impediment of adult supervision, the young men were unknowingly forging
enduring subcultural elements. The ‘law’ [described by one member] would
eventually be termed ‘mongrelism’ by the gang The concept is somewhat difficult
to define, but is basically any outrageous behaviour that distinguishes a
Mongrel Mob member’s actions from those that are socially acceptable. This
creed became embedded in the gang’s collective consciousness. Outlaw motorcycle
clubs like the Hell’s Angels were also engaging in defiant anti-social
activities, but the Mongrel Mob’s undertakings appear more extreme. Indeed the
gang would later commit some of the most notorious crimes of physical and
sexual violence in modern New Zealand history, and much of this behaviour is
linked to the ideals fostered within the Mongrel Mob during this time.”
(Pg.41)
(“Ideals” is a rather odd word in
this context.)
After the Mongrel Mob was formed,
Black Power arose partly from Maori and Polynesian groups who were intimidated
by the Mongrel Mob. At first Black Power had some social conscience, but these
two gangs soon became chief rivals for dominance.
Ironically
though (Chapter Four), the first serious “gang war” was in Christchurch in
1974-75, far from the North Island heartlands of Black Power and the Mongrel
Mob. It was between the mainly Pakeha Epitaph Riders and the Devil’s Henchmen.
It is at this point that Gilbert analyses seriously the mystique of the patch
and of territoriality. He also notes that less mature and well-established
gangs try to use the press to build up their reputations and profile with
boastful stories to journalists. More experienced gangs, better aware of public
scrutiny and the perils of self-incriminating material, tend to observe a
silence-to-the-press rule.
It was in the 1970s that there
occurred what Gilbert sees as the second ‘pivot’ in gang history. With the
murder, in Auckland, of a Highway 61 member by a member of the Hell’s Angels,
some Hell’s Angels served prison sentences and began associating with hardened
drug-dealing criminals. The connection between gangs and crime-for-profit began
in earnest.
As Gilbert
sees it (Chapter Five), despite much alarmist talk in the press and in
parliament, there were by the late 1970s and early 1980s some real and
constructive official attempts to deal with gangs in a positive, rather than a
punitive, way. Surprisingly, some of these were initiated by, and had the
blessing of, the conservative prime minister Robert Muldoon.
“During the 1980s, the government initiated New Zealand’s most
significant social policy drive targeting gangs. In an increasingly difficult
labour market, the policy aimed to put gangs to work in an effort to alleviate
the growing problem of gang violence. Up until August 1986, this social policy
agenda was heralded as a success. But then, in the space of a few months, three
major events, including the Ambury Park rape, and a radically changing
political climate created a ‘perfect storm’ of controversy in which the social
policy initiative met with a swift demise.” (Pg.107)
As neo-liberalism (“Rogernomics”)
took hold in the political scene, there was a strong backlash against payment
for gangs in work schemes. Suddenly both government and opposition were falling
over themselves to frame tougher laws against gangs, and to rein in subsidised
work. Partly this backlash was driven by media reports of ostentatious displays
of wealth by gang leaders including Abe Wharewaka, chief of Black Power in South
Auckland. When he gets to the 1986 Ambury Park serial rape of one woman by the
Mongrel Mob, Gilbert gives full details after first telling us about the gang
practice of ‘blocking’ - that is, gang
members having serial sexual intercourse with one woman, which he witnessed
when embedded with gangs. This is also the point at which he addresses most
fully the tendency of gangs to be male clubs, which regard women mainly as
sex-objects or chattels. Only late in this book does he note that women in
gangs have gained more respect now that gang leaders have aged and have
daughters of their own.
Some elements of the scene
changed considerably in the 1990s (Chapter Six). There was the brief emergence
of skinheads and white supremacists – they were seen off mainly by threats from
Black Power and the Mongrel Mob rather than by police action. An increased
Asian presence meant the beginnings of triads and their connections with the
Mongrel Mob. However 1990s Asian youth gangs did not achieve durability and
their membership remained transient. There was also the big question of gangs’
relationship with hard drugs. By now, as Gilbert notes, patched gangs are
“institutionalised”:
“The fact that New Zealand’s patched gangs became, and remain, so highly
regulated is perhaps, at first appearance, counterintuitive. As ‘antisocial’
groups, typically made up of rebellious men, one might expect gangs to be
anarchistic. In fact the reverse is true; because of the non-conformist nature
of gang members, the ever–present threat of police action, and risks posed by
opposition groups, gangs are particularly reliant on stringent rules to
function effectively.” (Pg.156)
Among these rules, many gangs
reject the use by members of heroin and other hard drugs. (On the gang scene it
was well known that heroin use largely destroyed the Auckland gang the Grim
Reapers.) Gangs also see loyalty to the gang as fundamental, though the outside
world is fair game for crime. Gilbert broaches the question of how much
charitable activities by gangs are simply a form of PR. He defines gangs as
“grey” organizations, at once both within and outside the law in the sense that
they tend to be accepted by their immediate community.
The downturn of the economy in
the later 1990s (Chapter Seven) meant there were more full-time and otherwise
unemployed members of gangs. And, despite the caveats on drug use by gang
members, there was also a major rise in gangs’ involvement in drug trade. The
marijuana trade expanded, tinnie houses proliferated, then methamphetamine P
became common. We are told of gangs “taxing” people associated with them, of
extortion and of the intimidation of witnesses, which led in 1997 to a law
allowing witness anonymity.
In Chapter Eight, Gilbert
discusses the way the media and MPs from both sides of the house set in motion
a series of laws concerning the proceeds of crime and their attempts to deal
with the fortification of gang headquarters, which assumed that all gangs were
operating sophisticated criminal networks. Gilbert makes up the term “blue
vision”, meaning the tendency of police to use only that data that seems to
confirm their preconceived notions, in this case the notion that organised
gangs were responsible for most crime in New Zealand.
Finally in Chapter Nine,
surveying the current scene, Gilbert notes the ironical decline in motorcycle
“clubs” in recent years, as rebellious young petrol-heads aspire to be “boy
racers” instead. And there is that ongoing problem of hard drugs to be dealt
with. Gilbert moves into personal mode:
“In one outlaw club with which I had significant dealings throughout my
research, the effect of P was dramatic. The substantial financial cost involved
in using the drug habitually forced members into debt – both to the club and
outsiders. Although certain members were dealing, the trade only supported its
use; and before long it failed to do even that. One member could not afford the
payments on his motorcycle and it was repossessed; two others sold their bikes
to fund their habit. Another member suffered a mental breakdown and was
committed to a psychiatric hospital for several months. All four were expelled
from the gang, but the drug remained tolerated because key members among the
dwindling group were unwilling to give it up…..” (Pg.247)
He goes on to note that similar
problems have hit the street gangs. After initially profiting from the P trade,
Black Power and the Mongrel Mob now have chapters banning the marketing and use
of the drug among members. Gilbert’s account of gangs and drugs is remarkably
benign. He does report that whole chapters of some gangs have been busted for
drug-dealing, but he insists that drug-dealing tends to be the business of
individuals within a gang rather than of the gang as a whole (pp.271-272)
There is now the rise of LA-style
street gangs, wearing bandannas and acting out music video imagery (Killer Beez
etc.). They are often seen as rivals to the ageing patched gangs. Gilbert fades
out his history on the failed efforts of Michael Laws and others to have gang
patches banned in Wanganui. He says of such efforts that
“Uninformed
by research, based on unsupported assumptions, and driven by populist politics,
public policies around such gangs remain mired in sensationalist claims that
fail to address their existence as complex social institutions that will
survive and evolve in the face of attack.” (Pg.283)
You will note I have done little
more in this notice that summarise the contents of Gilbert’s book, with the
minimum of critical comment.
Only a few additional remarks
need be made.
Patched began as a thesis, so it has some of the characteristics of
a thesis – each chapter ends with a neat paragraph, which serves as a sort of
“abstract” of the chapter. The final
chapter is a “Conclusion” which, like the final chapter of a thesis,
recapitulates the themes of the book, tying the fortunes of gangs and their
flourishing to socio-economic factors and noting matters of class, gender,
ethnicity and public perception of gangs, as well as cycles of official and
media attention.
Concerning the public perception
of gangs, Gilbert does sometimes buy into that modish term “moral panic”,
especially (see pg.217) when he is describing Mike Moore’s attempts to drum up
tougher laws against gang association and harassment in the mid-1990s. However,
when dealing with earlier mainstream reactions to gangs, he does not assume
that all mainstream attempts to address gang problems were inept.
In the 1974-75 Christchurch “gang war”, he does suggest that
police surveillance prevented more serious conflict. In Chapter Six,
chronicling the police Operations Shovel and Damon (in Timaru and Foxton in
1990s) he notes the effectiveness of short-term police surveillance and
crackdown on gangs which had been associated with specific crimes, and sees the
operations as good and justified policing. In Chapter Four, he gives an oddly
positive account of Robert Muldoon’s much-publicised conference with Black
Power and Muldoon’s conversion to social policy and a work-scheme approach to
gangs. Also, after giving his account of the Moerewa riot in 1979, Gilbert
politely dissents from the view of Jane Kelsey and others that the government
response to this event was “moral panic”. In Gilbert’s view, even if police
were thenceforth issued with new-type riot equipment, the incident was
significant “not because it sparked a
moral panic and knee-jerk suppressive laws, but because it led to the concerted
development of social policy to combat the problems surrounding gangs.”
(pp.100-101)
The whole
topic of gangs is obviously fraught with emotion. What I am saying here is that
Gilbert, despite his understanding of the origins and dynamics of gangs, and
despite some evasions, is not presenting an apologia or whitewash job on gangs.
Patched is a solid and balanced book.
