Gallery - Ending the Post Office Go-Slow

Brian Edwards on a Chicken and Egg Phenomenon

By Brian Edwards 29/05/2020

I’m not quite sure just how [Gallery producer] Des [Monaghan] pulled it off, but the appearance of Messrs [Ivan] Reddish and [Allan] McCready in the Gallery studio, face to face for the first time since the dispute began, reminded me a little of the old motto: "Difficult jobs done at once; the impossible may take a little longer."

During the course of the afternoon, in preparation for this improbable confrontation, I had come to two conclusions — that the continuation of the go-slow related less to the actual issues than to the complete breakdown of communication between the parties involved, and that the chicken and the egg phenomenon, with government refusing to talk until the Post Office Association called off the go-slow and the Post Office Association refusing to call off the go-slow until government agreed to talk, was, at this level of industrial relations, nothing less than infantile. By the early afternoon I had reached a third conclusion — that against this background, and assuming that we could get Reddish and McCready together and talking to one another, it was just within the realms of possibility that we might resolve a dispute on-air.

• Brian Edwards, CNZM, has done time as a television interviewer, talkback radio host, media advisor and author. This excerpt is taken from his 1971 book The Public Eye (AH and AW Reed, Wellington).