This Saturday is Waitangi Day, and unless you happen to be a Kiwi, you probably will not have the slightest idea what I’m talking about. It’s a national holiday in New Zealand, commemorating the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between Britain colonists and the Maori chiefs, which made New Zealand a part of the British Empire.
Its hard to avoid the suspicion that we were not being entirely above board. The text of the treaty was different in the two languages, and the colonial courts later ruled it had no legal standing. So perhaps the Maoris really have little to celebrate, though there were a few of them taking part when I photographed the event in 2008.
London seems to have almost as many New Zealanders as there are left back home, and traditionally they have celebrated the event here – for reasons that remain obscure to me – with a Circle Line pub crawl. This has been an all day event, starting with beer for breakfast in Paddington and then working station by station around the circle line via Earls Court, getting off at each station and making for nearby pubs before rejoining the Underground.
There are a number of rules that have been set down, the chief among which appears to be that those taking part can only travel on Circle Line trains – and not the District Line which also runs on part of the route. And also drinking rather a lot of beer!
They aim to arrive at Parliament Square for tea-time, 4pm, when they indulge in the Maori haka, a kind of war dance which is normally performed at the start of rugby matches by the All Blacks, on the stroke of Big Ben, before continuing on to the final two stops to the finish at Temple – making 12 stations in all. I made a slightly shorter pilgrimage – from Gloucester Road to Westminster, and not coming from New Zealand didn’t feel bound to have a drink at every stop, or the pictures might have been even less sharp than usual.
This year, whether by accident or by cunning plan, the Circle Line is closed on Saturday for engineering works. This isn’t an unusual event as those who travel in London will know, for the past few years large parts of the Underground network close down at weekends. But this year the celebrants will have to walk rather than take a train.
I photographed the event in 2008 and there was a certain amount of friction between police, underground staff and the Kiwis, with various stations being closed. Boris Johnson then got elected and announced a ban on drinking alcohol on public transport, which perhaps had a certain dampening effect on the celebrations, though I suspect it was widely ignored during this event. The year I took these pictures there was already a ban in place on drinking in Parliament Square but there was no attempt to enforce this on those taking part in the Waitangi Day celebrations.
Although I had great fun taking the pictures I won’t be doing it again this year. It just doesn’t seem the same without the Circle Line.