Alleged Anti-Semitism
While the early international Social Credit movement was associated by some people with anti-Semitism, it is far from certain the New Zealand movement displayed this aspect in any significant numbers or for any significant period of time.
The history of anti-Semitism and the New Zealand Social Credit political movement was unique to the history of the country. Anti-Semitism has largely been absent in New Zealand, even in the Victorian period, as evidenced by the election without comment of a Jewish prime minister in the 1870s. The early Social Credit movement diverged from its international brethren. In New Zealand, Social Credit concentrated solely on the economic theories of the international movement without its attendant racial theories.
In a twist of history, the New Zealand faction of the League of Rights, unlike similar organisations in Australia and the United Kingdom, was structurally and historically unrelated to Social Credit. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it began to infiltrate Social Credit in order to have a wider platform for their views. This attempt was curtailed when it became identified and those members of the party were purged by Beetham.
In further twist of history, after the purge, politicians with League connections were to be found not in Social Credit but in the National Party, notably cabinet ministers George Gair and Ben Couch in the Muldoon administration. Even these connections with the League were transient, Gair indeed abhorred anti-Semitism and had not realised this undercurrent of the League when he first associated with it.
Indeed the autonomous existence of the League of Rights in New Zealand only occurred because anti-Semitism was not afforded a position within Social Credit.
Read more about this topic: Social Credit Party (New Zealand)
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