A. J. P. Taylor

Every time I visit or pass by the local Epsom library, I ponder the two emblematic statues at its entrance. On its left side there stands a silver abstract eagle. On its right side there is, on a pillar, a weta.

These icons are unique to the Epsom library. When I recently remarked that the Epsom library also uniquely holds on its shelves a least one, often two copies of the classics books, I was discreetly told that is the special status given to the Epsom library.
Why we should be so blessed I assume is pure library usage. The monetarist barbarians have so far condescended not to bother us.

The classics are available at Central Library. They are banished to the basement and you have to ask for them.

The other community libraries carry no silver eagle. Wetas would flourish there. The libraries at least still recognise the eye-view of the solitary eagle while a thousand wetas flourish. Now if it were DOC, the solitary eagle would be ruthlessly and as soon as possible exterminated. It is not indigenous and its eagle eyes damage the natives.

My society has (complacently, through all my fifty years life-time) embraced the organic life style of the weta. It distrusts and fears the eagle. Its eagle-eyes see things before anyone else. Its main crime is its vision can be outside its own environment. Now the weta luxuriates always inside its immediate environs. It lives a normal life. Through the fifty years of my life time, weta thinking has multiplied and taken over all my country's institutions.

Such thoughts have made me think lately of the English historian A.J.P. Taylor. Through my lifetime that name has been a talisman to English people with the slightest touch of intellectual curiosity. He has been called the "people's historian" and his history talks were regular on English television.

I first took note of the name in a 1960s School Certificate history exam on origins of World War Two. The question went something like this.

"Hitler was no more wicked and unscrupulous than many a contemporary statesman. Discuss."

I was quite taken aback. I did know there were very strange people who denied Hitler was the most evil man in history. But to see it on a School Certificate History paper!

That single sentence that summed up Taylor's history book, "Origins of World War Two" got him into a heap of trouble. Taylor held to a great blunderers' version of history. No leader wants war but by ambition and ill-calculated bluff blunder into it.

"Origins of World War Two" was published in 1962. The Western capitalistic world was setting an example of freedom to world communism. That was their trump card. Then the communists could flaunt all the others.

So Taylor only endured open slather on television which he gave back rather viciously. It may also have led to his firing by Oxford University two years later. But in the spirit of the age Taylor simply moved to another prestigious teaching position.

Taylor was most credited for excellent journalistic and research skills. He was noted as the master of the pithy phrase. I noted yesterday on television exactly the same terms were used to describe "the history man", New Zealand historian Michael King.

That brings me to the next generation of the historians' craft. That is my generation. When at last thirteen years ago a New Zealand University actually agreed I had the skills to complete a dissertation (mini thesis), I embarked on an idealistic endeavour. I would objectively research the origins of the constitutional foundation of New Zealand. The three contemporary holy mantras, race, gender and class would be explored in that perspective. I would be with the historian elite but not necessarily of any party.

My dissertation was accredited although with an oddly low mark. Then the long awaited letter from the History Department arrived. My application to complete a M.A.thesis was declined. I could not stop staring at the underlined and circled declined. The office was not required to circle the declined but it seemed to be done with a heavy pen.

I went at once to see the Professor. "What is this," I asked. The Professor looked very uncomfortable in his office. My dissertation mark was too low. It was bottom of the accredited class. That was a technical point but important. Yes, the Department agreed I had excellent research and writing skills. But it wasn't academic enough. I should try my skills as a journalist, not as an academic. Then the telephone rang and the interview was over.

I left crushed but also vaguely relieved. My life was going to turn another chapter outside the History Department. But what does academic mean when it does not mean research and writing skills?

I wasn't good enough. That had happened to me before. I expected condescending sympathy from my former associates. Then I quickly noted something else that I found incredible. My university friends appeared afraid to be in my presence.

I thought and thought about it. There was no doubt I was in bad odour. I suspected but dismissed as too outlandish what I now hold and have the appropriate language expression. I was a Waitangi Treaty denier. In this contemporary corporate world there is no place even a solitary eagle's nest for the historical denier of foundation myths.

I considered my offensives so lightly and thoughtlessly committed. I had two strikes and I was out. Firstly, I had found out through reading the Maori bible that the treaty really was a swindle committed by the British missionaries and probably the Governor. I had tactfully written "dissembling". Secondly, I had found out that the preamble to the first Constitution Act listed all the preliminary Crown Acts for New Zealand but did not list the Treaty.

I also suspect I was faulted for my language. I failed to genuflect to Maori and women. Instead I judged everyone — even upper-class English men — with a sympathetic lofty air. I also suggested if Maori wanted Crown protection they should take responsibility for their actions towards the settlers.

Yet I also appeared to be the first historian to take note without comment that on the Waitangi Treaty day signing, a chief had asked the Crown “to respect Maori land and customs”. That was of course said in Maori. But there it was. Maori contemporary claims on the Treaty are there explicitly on the sacred day. In his last year's publication History Of New Zealand, Michael King quotes the chief. Of course there is no reference to me.

I have got the feeling that in the intervening years my hated dissertation has been drawn upon by members of the public. I detect just hints of vocabularly and insights. A Maori activist on television seemed to quote my discovery on the treaty deception exactly.

Then a few years ago I found something very surprising. The University Canterbury Library had cross catalogued my thesis under five subject headings and placed it in their Aotearoa New Zealand room. I, in curiosity, checked out Canterbury University's treatment of the dissertation of the top student of my class. His recorded mark could not go higher. Yet his dissertation was not cross-catalogued and not held in a library room.

Funny business. What happened? I think someone out there resolved I was too eagle eyed — not a native weta. So my dissertation would sit in a library room to be accessed for anyone with an axe to sharpen or mere curiosity about the past. One day its revisionism might draw sparks and start a new political conflagration. I hope that person was that Professor.