Up you, Pompidou

Norman Kirk's Ban-the-Bomb protest 50 years ago marked a sea change in foreign policy, writes DAVID BARBER, who was on HMNZS Otago.

- David Barber

Not many people remember this but New Zealand did not become a sovereign nation until 1947, when it finally became totally independent of the UK parliament. It took another quarter of a century before cementing its independence when then-prime minister Norman Kirk took a truly indigenous foreign policy initiative.

Fifty years ago this month, Kirk sent the Navy frigates HMNZS Otago and Canterbury into the South Pacific to draw world attention to French atmospheric nuclear tests. It was the world’s first government-sponsored Ban-theBomb protest.

French tests moved to Mururoa Atoll in Polynesia after France gave up its Sahara testing site following Algeria’s successful war of independence. Kirk said winds from Mururoa tests could blow radioactive fallout over New Zealand. France had no right to hold nuclear experiments in our backyard, he said.