CONSTANT RADICAL by Jenny Chamberlain

Bad girl of NZ politics - Sue Bradford. It seems like she has been part of the scene forever,  born to a life of revolution, and this has been her whole life.  Sue is almost to the day exactly 10 years older than me, so I grew up with this angry, confronting woman, all those communist left labels attached to her. The media and politicians of the day did a great job of demonising her! I gradually came to respect her enormously for her courage, her staunchness, her self belief, her complete commitment to social justice.  And then suddenly she was almost mainstream and everyone wanted to hear from her. Her success in bringing about the anti-smacking law will always be hers, what an achievement. 

This excellent biography by veteran journalist Jenny Chamberlain is much much more than the chronicle of a life, still being lived. It is a potted history of New Zealand since the very early days of European settlement in this country, when Maori and Pakeha first interacted. She takes the reader on a social, political and economic history of this country from those days in the 1820s, when Sue's forebears first arrived here in the capacity of missionaries. And why is all this early history necessary? Because if we want any understanding of this powerhouse of a woman, who has challenged the white middle class establishment of this country, who has put herself through numerous arrests, who has endured some really tough times, who has pages and pages of her actions meticulously detailed in NZ's secret service files and who never, ever gives up, then we really do have to go right back to those first footsteps in NZ's early settlement days. 

Sue's early life was a combination of middle class bohemian intellectualism. Two brilliant parents, Sue the eldest child of 4, the only girl, herself intellectually brilliant, was always going to be 'trouble'. School was difficult, her relationship with her father was never easy, her mother having lost her spirit, Sue became the stroppy female from a young age, easily open to politicisation and making a difference And it just grew from there. Her life has been so intense, so rich, so busy, and would have crushed many, but no, she gets back up and just keeps going. 

I grew up in a household the complete antithesis of Sue's: a compliant and dutiful first born child, in a family conservative and proper. I loved this book, am in complete awe of Sue, what she has achieved, her work ethic, her own immensely strong core values, her own unwavering devotion to her family - I just find her dazzling. Her political career may not have panned out as she wished, but it seems that she earned the respect of almost every politician she worked with, I can only imagine how terrified and/or scathing most of them would have been with her entry into parliament. 

 Chamberlain's research is huge, the list of names in her acknowledgments and the 100 plus items in her bibliography letting the reader know that this is not just the story of a life, but with the detailed background, it is also the story of a society and how we came to be as a country. The book is equally about the writer - she has turned all this material into a hugely readable and interesting book. I know that, as a journalist this is what she is trained to do, but this is nearly 400 pages of A5 size book, densely written, I hope she also is proud of what she has written. Such a great book.