Spy movies are one thing, but state surveillance for this Kiwi activist has been all too real.
The file on Maire Leadbeater was opened by the security services before she was even a teenager. Now, the veteran activist has written about the history of state surveillance in Aotearoa — and on her own family connections — in her new book The Enemy Within.
“It is time for the state to stop spying on society’s critics,” she told Q+A. “I’m coming down with the conclusion that there are other ways in which we can approach those issues other than secretive, unaccountable security services and intelligence agencies.”
Leadbeater has been prominent in New Zealand’s peace movement for decades.
A key figure in the campaign for nuclear disarmament, she’s highlighted human rights issues in South East Asia and the Pacific. Leadbeater is the daughter of communist parents, Jack and Elsie Locke and sister of former Green MP Keith Locke.
Maire Leadbeater’s Security Intelligence Service (SIS) file is a hefty 90 pages.
It states that she delivered a communist newspaper, the People’s Voice, to a neighbour in Christchurch when she was just 10 years old.
Now just shy of 80, Leadbeater said her intelligence file was “relatively modest” compared to that of her parents and brother. He died earlier this year, following a 12-year Parliamentary career with the Green Party, between 1999 and 2011.
Meanwhile, Leadbeater’s mother was a peace activist, writer, women’s rights advocate and a one-time member of the Communist Party.
Leadbeater expressed particular concern about the surveillance of her mother.
“There are things in my mother’s file that upset me,” she said, revealing that the Special Branch, which preceded the SIS, had intercepted and read her mother’s private correspondence.
In her research, Leadbeater was also surprised about the various groups and individuals who were under surveillance — such as New Zealanders who supported the Samoan independence movement of the 1920s.
“They weren’t just lefties. They were lawyers and they were quite established people in the community, and they were horrified at the way our government was governing Samoa.”
Watch the full story by Q+A’s Whena Owen in the video above
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air
