Unionist Helen Kelly left a huge impact on New Zealand's political and industrial landscapes. Helen's biographer Rebecca Macfie speaks with Jo Malcolm about her life, times and legacy.

Listen to Helen Kelly's biographer Rebecca Macfie in conversation with Jo Malcolm.

According to Rebecca McFie, the Trades Hall bombing in 1984 was a pivotal moment for Helen Kelly, whose father Pat Kelly was a unionist working in the building.

Rebecca McFie:

The threat of violence sat with the household all the time. Helen's parents Pat and Cath used to kind of shrug it off, but Pat had put in a panic button in Helen's bedroom. It was on the floor by her bed and one of her friends accidentally set it off when they were playing one day. It set an alert off at the neighbours' next door. I mean he'd come home one night to find people who he thought were spies in the house rifling through things. He'd had the car painted Commie Go Home.

He'd had tyres let down. There was one time when Helen answered the phone and there's a man at the other end who describes in some detail how he's going to kill Pat. And then she rings up Pat, who's still at work, to say "there's this man and he rang and he talked about how he's going to kill you," and Pat probably brushed it off.

So it's hard to imagine what that was like. This is through the period when there's a lot of strike action going on, particularly towards the end of the seventies. We had gone through a long period of no strike action. After the waterfront lockout of 1951 there were two decades of practically no strike action. During that period, though, inflation increases and oil shocks then you enter that period of much greater levels of strike action. Meat workers and wharfies and people working on the Think Big projects. And so there's an increase level of hostility being directed at people like Pat Kelly.

And then you get into 1984 when Muldoon's still in power. And the Trades Hall bombing. This was an act of terrorism in downtown Wellington. People will remember the Rainbow Warrior bombing which was only a year later, but I don't think there's the same internalised consciousness of the Trades Hall bombing in the same way. Which tells us how we think of the legitimacy of the trade union movement, and the rights of the movement to organise, to further the interest of workers.

Jo Malcolm:

So Ernie Abbott, the caretaker, was killed. Was meant for Pat?

Rebecca McFie:…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details