The Underground Life of a New Zealand Labour Historian: Bert Roth and the Austrian Socialist Underground

Interviewed by a newspaper late in his life Bert Roth, the doyen of New Zealand labour history, described himself as a "modest Champagne socialist". The "modest Champagne" reference was both a subtle acknowledgment of his comfortable material circumstance and also a tongue in check comment on the tendency to disparage the current leadership of the New Zealand Labour Party with the label "Chardonnay Socialists". His self description as a socialist is perhaps most interesting, it represented a strong continuity in Roth's political thinking. He arrived in New Zealand in April 1940 and from the very first day identified himself as a socialist. When approached by a reporter from the Evening Post, he described himself as a "socialist refugee from Austria".