'I faced the Riot Squad...and lived!' T-shirt

This T-shirt references the controversial Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand which took place from July to September 1981. It features messaging and imagery about the violence of police against protesters: 'I faced the Riot Squad... and lived!' surrounds the New Zealand Coat of Arms which has been repurposed with two Red Squad policemen in attacking mode with their long batons.

A few hundred of these t-shirts were made after the tour and launched at an event in the University of Canterbury Students' Association (UCSA) building in Christchurch. They were sold through local networks to raise funds for legal defence for protesters who were making their way through the courts system (about 2000 arrests were made during the tour). This particular t-shirt was worn by Bronwen Summers who protested against apartheid and the Springbok Tour. She 'wore it anywhere and everywhere'.

The tour was a seminal event which exposed deep rifts in society. Pro-tour supporters argued that politics should be kept out of sport. Anti-tour protesters argued that sport was not separate from politics, and that playing rugby against South Africa condoned apartheid. Many saw the tour as an opportunity to address racism in New Zealand. Protests caused obstruction and the cancellation of games, and violence escalated between protesters, supporters and police as the tour progressed.

The role of the police was to maintain law and order, with specialist police (the Red and Blue Escort Groups, commonly known as the Red and Blue Squads) tasked with ensuring the security of the Springbok rugby team. But because of their high visibility as the front line of defence, and the violence of their riot control tactics, the police were sometimes accused of defending apartheid itself.

Images of the Red Squad in riot gear abounded in protest imagery during and after the tour. For some protesters, surviving clashes with the police, particularly the Red Squad, was a badge of honour, as evidenced in this t-shirt.