1972 was a watershed year for politics in New Zealand. After 12 years of government by the conservative National Party, a Labour Government led by Norman Kirk was elected in November 1972. Times were changing – and fast.

The 1960s had seen the inexorable rise of protest action in New Zealand. The ‘Save Manapouri’ campaign led the way in high-profile environmental activism – in May 1970 it presented to Parliament New Zealand’s then largest petition, signed by nearly 10% of the population, to save Lake Manapouri from devastation by hydropower development. In 1971 the Polynesian Panther Party was founded to counter marginalisation and discrimination with self-determination for Pasifika peoples. Ngā Tamatoa, formed to actively fight racism and discrimination, presented the 30,000-signature Māori language petition to Parliament in September 1972. The Māori Land March/hīkoi of 1975 with its catch cry ‘Not one acre more!’ heralded a new era of activism for Māori land rights – which culminated in the brutal police suppression of the 507-day occupation of Takaparawhā (Bastion Point) in 1977.

The feminist and gay movements grew in the early 1970s with protest against the entrenched conservativism, misogynism and homophobia of New Zealand society. In 1972, Gay Liberation groups sprang up in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch; others quickly followed and the national campaign for homosexual law reform began in earnest in the mid-1970s. The first issue of women’s liberation magazine Broadsheet was published in July 1972 and the first United Women’s Convention held in 1973. Key issues were fought and won for working women. Mana wāhine Māori became a public force to be reckoned with.

And all along, from the 1960s until well into the 1970s, New Zealanders relentlessly protested New Zealand’s support for the United States and active involvement in the Vietnam War.

The new Labour Government acted swiftly. Within months of its election, it halted compulsory military conscription, ‘postponed’ the NZ tour of a racially selected Springbok team, established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and withdrew the last New Zealand troops from Vietnam. Over the next three years, it sailed a naval frigate into the nuclear testing zone at Mururoa Atoll to protest French nuclear testing in the Pacific, legislated to save Lake Manapouri, established the Waitangi Tribunal as a first step towards acknowledging and resolving breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and took on many other domestic issues that had long driven rising popular dissent.

Such actions were born out of grassroots political activism. They signalled new hope that New Zealand might become more inclusive, and socially and environmentally progressive, while proudly forging an independent foreign policy. They were the culmination of years of hard work, sometimes bitter disputes, and marches — so many marches — by committed people up and down the country. There was frustration and resentment, too. High inflation was driving price rises faster than wages and strikes by workers over wages and conditions increased throughout the 1970s.

Norman Kirk died in mid-1974 and the Labour Government was not re-elected in 1975. A National Government was back, under Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, and political change was swift. By this time, high-impact political activism was part of the fabric of New Zealand society, but the focus of protest shifted as politics became much more divisive. Some of the most significant political action took place not in Parliament but on the streets of towns and cities up and down the country, much of it levelled directly against draconian actions of the Muldoon Government.

From 1974 to 1976, the dawn raids against ‘overstayers’, in particular Samoans and Tongans, which shed light on immigration law, police power, the role of the media and racism, sparked furious opposition, particularly in Auckland.

Throughout the country, protesters honed in on a swathe of government measures attacking women’s rights – to work, to childcare, and most visibly, to already limited access to abortion. The fiercely opposed SIS Amendment Act of 1977 cemented the State’s network of control over anyone who might exercise their right to oppose government policy. Industrial relations became a battleground as disputes over workers’ rights often became ugly and prolonged. One of the most high-profile disputes was on the BNZ construction site in Wellington, while on Māngere Bridge, a protest over redundancy payments in 1978 sparked the longest-running industrial dispute in New Zealand’s history. The struggles for the right to strike, to work, to have a decent livelihood, to childcare, to abortion, even the right to speak freely – fundamental democratic rights – were all under prolonged siege.

And then, stoked by the failure to prevent the All Blacks touring South Africa in 1976 while racism remained unaddressed here, public protest reached boiling point over the Springbok tour of New Zealand in 1981.

These photographs give a snapshot of those times, showing how protest action by ordinary people fuelled significant change in New Zealand.