On the 9th of June 1978, natives of the Southland city of Invercargill in the South Island of New Zealand were treated to a curious sight, 1,300 ewes (female sheep) wandering confused around Invercargill’s main shopping district.

The confused sheep created chaos as they dashed across roads making traffic come to a standstill, chewed on the local shrubbery and ran into shops looking for safety. But why was this happening? Who set these poor critters loose?

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Music sourced from:

“Day of Chaos” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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“Music for Manatees” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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“In the Basement of Charles Whitaker’s Cabin, Half Moon Lake, 1993” Divider Line (https://archive.org/details/divider-lines-music-for-films)
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The podcast version is the intended way to consume this story but we make a transcript available for those that would rather read instead.

This can be found below.

TALES II: Bloody Friday

On the 9th of June 1978, natives of the Southland city of Invercargill in the South Island of New Zealand were treated to a curious sight, 1,300 ewes (female sheep) wandering confused around Invercargill’s main shopping district.

The confused sheep created chaos as they dashed across roads making traffic come to a standstill, chewed on the local shrubbery and ran into shops looking for safety. But why was this happening? Who set these poor critters loose?

Southland farmers were furious that their sheep were past the date of their slaughter but had not yet been slain. The sheep were supposed to be killed at the beginning of the year but had not due to issues with the Southland freezing works.

The freezing works employees had been striking due to low wages causing a large ‘back up’ of approximately 700,000 animals waiting to be slaughtered during the killing season. The national freezing works union had been protesting all over the country over the prior three years, for instance, in 1976 and 1977 there were 732 strikes, this meant, on average each worker walked off the job at least seven times in two years.

Issues with the freezing works continued into 1978, specifically in Southland. Between January and May of ‘78 the works were stopped 116 times, in fact, up to that point in June 1978, there were only nine days in which all four Southland freezing works operated at once.

The economic fallout from these strikes was vast. The freezing workers themselves lost approximately $3,000,000 in wages. The farmers struggled due to not being paid for the slaughter, but also took on additional costs due to having to feed many additional animals as well as the cost of transporting the animals to slaughter, only to be told the works were closed. The farmers struggled to feed the sheep due to an ongoing drought, therefore, many of the old ewes were beginning to starve.

A plan was hatched on the 6th of June 1978 by frustrated Southland farmers, specifically Blackmount farmer Syd Slee and his cousin Owen Buckingham of Te Anau. Syd Slee told the New Zealand Herald on the 9th of June 2023, “[The sheep] were dying – we think they were dying at roughly a thousand a day and they should’ve been killed three or four months ago… That’s what frustrated farmers – we didn’t like to see our sheep starving… They were very, very frustrating times.”

The plan was for every farmer participating in the protest to bring ten starving ewes to the centre of Invercargill and release them on the corner of Tay Street and Dee Street, creating chaos and bringing attention to their plight.

The fateful day came three days later on the 9th of June 1978, the farmers planned on meeting just outside of Invercargill in the small settlement of Lorneville. Waikawa Valley farmer Joy Nicol spoke to the Otago Daily Times for the article ‘Remembering the day farmers took action’ on the 11th of June 2013 about her feelings on the morning of the protest, “Waikawa Valley is about 50 miles [80km] from Invercargill, and before we got to Lorneville we never saw another car and trailer. We wondered what sort of a protest it was going to be. Then we came round the corner and here were all these farmers with trailer-loads of sheep.”

Around 300 farmers turned up in total, carrying approximately 1,300 gravely emaciated sheep. The convoy made the 8 km journey south to the corner of Tay Street and Dee Street. 

Each truck and trailer in the convoy stopped at the corner and began releasing their ewes onto the main street of Invercargill. 1,300 confused and frightened ewes began dashing down the shopping district, creating chaos. Traffic slowed to a crawl as sheep ran across the road, some hungry ewes chewed on shrubbery, others ran into shops looking for food and safety. Some of the sheep were so emaciated that they simply died in the middle of the street.

Eventually the police showed up. Police were informed that a protest was taking place but were told that the sheep were to be dropped off at the Lorneville sale yard and were not prepared for 1,300 ewes in the middle of the Invercargill.

Sergeant Derek Beveridge confronted Syd Slee who was leading the protest, “Where are these sheep going to be killed? Are you aware that you can’t kill them in a public place?”

Syd assured him, “They’re not going to be killed in a public place”.

“Where are they going to be killed then?”

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you that, but it is not a public place. It’s private land.”

It had been previously decided that the sheep would be herded to an empty patch of land on the corner of Victoria Avenue and Bond Street for slaughter, approximately a 20 minute walk from Dee Street. The farmers had previously contacted the owner of the land and he agreed to let them use it, but also told them, “Go ahead, but I don’t want to know about it”.

After about an hour of woolly chaos, the ewes dined on what would become their final meal, the blooms outside the Centennial Hall on Victoria Avenue. 

All the sheep were rounded up and herded to the slaughter site, the corner of Victoria Avenue and Bond Street. A trench was dug to cater for the bloody carnage which was about to unfold.

As the sheep arrived, farmers stood with knives in hand, ready to carry out the mass slaughter. About 150 onlookers witnessed sheep after sheep having their throat cut, their blood running into the pre dug trench, before the ewe’s carcass was thrown to the side.

As the corpses mounted up, the trench was found to be too shallow as the pool of blood began to overflow. Over the next hour, the trench became a lake of blood as the slaughter continued. Systematically, one by one, knives were carved across the creature’s necks. 100 dead, 200 dead, 500 dead, 1,000 dead, until eventually all 1,300 ewes were slaughtered.

The dead were loaded onto the back of the farmer’s trailers and were transported to the West Plains abattoir to be rendered down into blood and bone garden fertiliser. Syd Slee told The Country podcast on the 9th of June 2023, “They [the abattoir] agreed to take them – which was good of them – and my brother [and I] just carted them down there… It sounds pretty awful to town people what we did but believe me, we really cared for our animals”.

In the aftermath of the protest, folk continued to find sheep in the days after the demonstration, some alive, some dead. Most grim was a decomposing sheep found inside the Windsor shopping centre. However, the protesting farmers denied being responsible for the carcass at Windsor, claiming that it was placed there to discredit them.

News about the event that eventually became known as Bloody Friday spread throughout New Zealand quickly. Some dubbed the farmers heroes for standing up to the union, others were more critical in their judgement.

In a time before the internet, letters to editors of various newspapers showed the divide on this topic. In one anonymous letter using the alias Once a Farmer’s Daughter, the writer wrote about her disgust, note: many of these letters have been edited for brevity, “Sir, — Disgust is not a strong enough word to use to describe the way some of the farmers handled their sheep during the latest protest. Seeing the pathetic condition of these animals was bad enough, but to know they were brought to Invercargill and made to walk the hard pavement made me sick… If all this is not a case of cruelty, I’ll eat my hat… I can almost hear the farmers saying when they read the letters to this paper – “All this fuss over bloody sheep” – but let me remind them that those same animals feel pain and hunger just as they and I do. Kindness costs nothing and yet gives so much.”

The Southland Branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals even got involved in a letter to the editor from their President G. C. Healey, “Sir, – While I fully sympathise with the farmers on the deplorable strikes and stoppages in the freezing industry, I certainly do not condone the way in which the protest was carried out. Maybe it was more humane to slaughter the sheep than to let them die a slow, lingering death of starvation but there was no need to subject them to additional distress and suffering by throwing them from trucks in the middle of town. This matter will be investigated further with the possibility of prosecutions to follow”.

In another letter, Rachel offers a solution to the ageing ewe problem, “Sir, – I would like to offer a solution to the farmers’ problem of disposing of old ewes. Let every householder fence his lawn. Then, when farmers come to town, let them place one old ewe in each enclosure… Now what is in it for the new “shepherd” , a pet for his children, a source of manure for his garden, maybe even a fat lamb for his Christmas dinner, and an end to lawnmowing… What is in it for the old ewe – a happy retirement home.”

Ultimately, even with threats of prosecution from both the police and the S.P.C.A, no one was arrested for organising or participating in the protest.

However, leaders of the protest Syd Slee and Owen Buckingham were both blacklisted by the freezing works union for six months, but according to Syd this was not a problem as he told The Country podcast on the 9th of June 2023, “We had so much support. Farmers rang and said we could sell your stock for you, or we can send them down to Lorneville… So, the blacklisting didn’t really work very well. In fact, I think it worked against the unions because people felt sorry for us.”

The 9th of June 1978, Bloody Friday, went down in New Zealand history as a curious and hopeful tale for some, and a distressing and sombre tale for others. Whatever your feelings on the protest are, it would seem that the demonstration was a success. Alex Miller, a farmer in Te Anau told the Southland Times on the 10th of June 2013 for the article Bloody Friday farmers praised for bravery, “[The protest] was the best thing we ever done. We’ve had no problem with the union since” and Southland Times former chief reporter Clive Lind said it was a “glorious piece of civil disobedience”.

Protest organiser Syd Slee told Stuff.co.nz on the 7th of June 2013 for the article Farmers to relive ‘Bloody Friday’, “I feel proud of what we achieved – for more settled industrial conditions for the future. It was dramatic, but it made politicians and the union take notice.”

Syd Slee’s sister Dr June Slee even wrote a book about the event in 1979 which was republished with more material in 2013 as Bloody Friday Revisited: Recollections of the 1978 Southland Farmers’ Protest. The book’s dedication reads, “This book is dedicated to those Southlanders who, in June 1978, had the courage to confront the widespread abuse of power within New Zealand’s meat industry.”

A 35th anniversary reunion for the event dubbed Bloody Friday was held at the Invercargill Workingmen’s Club on the 8th of June 2013. Approximately 200 people showed up to remember the event, 100 of which were farmers from the original 1978 protest including protest organiser Syd Slee. 

On the 45th anniversary of Bloody Friday in June 2023, a now 80-year-old Syd Slee spoke to Jamie Mackay of The Country podcast where he was asked if he would carry out the protest again, to which Syd replied, “There are other ways of doing things – you can have a protest without what we did – but that’s what happened at the time.”

SOURCES

Wikipedia, Invercargill, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invercargill
Te Ara, Story: Agricultural processing industries, https://teara.govt.nz/en/agricultural-processing-industries/page-7
Stuff.co.nz, Farmers to relive ‘Bloody Friday’, https://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/8761902/Farmers-to-relive-Bloody-Friday
Stuff.co.nz, Bloody Friday farmers praised for bravery, https://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/8775148/Bloody-Friday-farmers-praised-for-bravery
Stuff.co.nz, Farmers’ sheep-slaughter protest revisited, https://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/editors-picks/8639392/Farmers-sheep-slaughter-protest-revisited
Invercargill Vegan Society (INVSOC), Slaughter Protest on Invercargill Streets 1978, https://www.invsoc.org.nz/slaughterprotest/
NZ Herald, ‘Bloody Friday’: Organiser recalls protest where nearly 1500 sheep were slaughtered in an Invercargill street, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/the-country/news/bloody-friday-organiser-recalls-protest-where-nearly-1500-sheep-were-slaughtered-in-an-invercargill-street/RZ5JGQQDCBAG5MZCNVLDKGYZLU/
Otago Daily Times, Remembering the day farmers took action, https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/southland/remembering-day-farmers-took-action
Otago Daily Times, Recalling ‘Bloody Friday’ protest, https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/southland/recalling-bloody-friday-protest
Rural News, Reunion of ‘Bloody Friday’ Protesters, https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/rural-news/rural-general-news/reunion-of-bloody-friday-protesters