To use the hoary old rugby cliché (which he would have considered totally inappropriate), the life of Morry Gardner really was one of two halves. There were the first 24 years, until 1977, and then there were the remaining 31 years. In that year, at that dreadfully young age, Morry had a catastrophic hang gliding accident in Christchurch (he was into extreme aeronautical sports long before they became fashionable) which left him a quadriplegic for the rest of his short life. I knew both halves of his life and the contrast between the two was stark and irreparable. His paralysis (from the neck down, with limited movement in one arm and hand) left him permanently wheelchair bound, although in the final decade he was able to live alone and independent with the assistance of caregivers who stayed overnight to perform the multitude of vital daily physical functions (like turning over in bed and getting up) that the rest of us don’t even have to think about. Even laughing, which he did a lot whenever we were talking, was a real effort. The very last time that I saw Morry, in early 2007, made me realise with a jolt just how much we able bodied people take for granted. Becky and I visited him unannounced at his North Beach house. He asked me if I’d do him a favour. I said yes, so he asked us to come outside with him. There, somewhat to our consternation, he asked me to hose him down with the garden hose. Now, believe it or not, it actually goes against the grain for me to give a bloke in a wheelchair a good blast of cold water but he was insistent that he needed it to cool down on hot days (the inability to control his body temperature was just one of the things that was now beyond his control) and that unannounced visitors had their uses. Fair enough, so I let him have it. He was very grateful.

And the terrible damage (internal as well as external) wrought by that paralysis buggered up his health in a myriad of ways, drastically shortened his life expectancy and eventually killed him. Cold weather really knocked him around, he basically went into hibernation during Christchurch’s winters and he rarely went out at night at any time of the year. A simple cold could rapidly lead to pneumonia or a life threatening infection. In recent years his kidneys had packed up and it was congestion of the lungs that finally finished him off in June 2008 (winter, not coincidentally, and a cold one) aged 55. As far as was possible he controlled his own death, declining medication which would have prolonged his life, and dying peacefully at home with his family and friends. For his funeral he was driven in his bus (which, complete with a roster of friends as drivers, had been his magic carpet to being a part of the community), accompanied by family and friends, to be buried in the plot that he’d bought cheap years ago in Banks Peninsula’s remote and peaceful Pigeon Bay cemetery.

But there was nothing wrong with his brain (his head was one of the few parts of him not injured in the crash) and Morry lived a very full and active life of the mind during those long decades of paralysis. Visiting him was always intellectually stimulating, because he was keen to discuss ideas, theories and information. Which is not to say that he had wished for or initially accepted his situation. When I first visited him after the accident, in Christchurch Hospital, he was flat on his back and very, very angry. He was particularly angry that “I can’t even kill myself, Murray, I’m dependent on other people to do that for me” (as far as I know, none of his family or friends were ever put to that test). But as the years went by – 20 in an institution and the final decade in his own home - he achieved a Zen-like state of calm and even saw advantages in his situation. I was particularly struck by him telling me, in recent years, that he was happy that he no longer had desire (considering how much of our lives is ruled by that elemental emotion, Morry may have had a point).

Political Activist : From PYM To CAFCA

William Maurice Gardner was so much more than a “cripple” and he sure as hell didn’t want to be pitied (this was a man who, in 1997, hosted a grand Lyttelton party to “celebrate” 20 years of quadriplegia). He ironically dubbed himself Chairman Morry (a nod to our old mate, Chairman Mao and to the fact that Morry really was a man in a chair for more than half of his life). Morry had been very much alive before his accident and, as far as his limitations would allow, that continued for the 31 years after it. From 1987-2003 inclusive he was a CAFCA member. His situation meant that he could never attend any of the meetings or activities that we held during those years but he was a keen Watchdog reader and he was also a generous donor, both to CAFCA and to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account which provides my income. From 1992-2001 he donated a grand total of $2,735 to the latter (in amounts ranging from $250-$500 at a time), which is staggering generosity from a quadriplegic whose only income was a benefit. He resigned from CAFCA and stopped the donations because of the need to prioritise his mortgage. But he remained a keen CAFCA supporter in the final five years of his life.

CAFCA membership is not something that Morry took up as a hobby after his accident. It was a logical progression from his life as a political activist before his accident. Morry and I go back together to the “good old days” of the Christchurch Progressive Youth Movement (PYM) of the late 1960s and early 70s. He was a couple of years younger than me which means that when I was starting out in PYM as a brash 18 year old, he was still at high school. In the course of researching this obituary, I contacted his 92 year old father Jim Gardner (a well known historian and one of my History lecturers at the University of Canterbury in the 70s. He retired in 1977, the same year as Morry’s accident).

Jim wrote a short eulogy of his son especially for Watchdog : “Though a gentle child, he was a free spirit and no conformer. He was sent to Christ’s College, but he was soon at odds with the school’s rules. He ended up as representative of the progressive Youth Movement. When told to cut his overlength hair, Morry expelled himself to Papanui High School. His College mates told him he was a fool to jeopardise his studies. But he upstaged them by getting an A grade at Papanui”. Morry hated Christ’s, the snobbiest private boy’s school in Christchurch, so much so that he told me that he went back some years after he’d left and firebombed the sports equipment shed (mind you, that might have been an apocryphal story).

As a schoolboy Morry was swept up in the ferment of the youth revolution which swept the world in the 1960s and into the 70s. He was active in the splendidly acronymed CUSS (Christchurch Union of Secondary Students). In those days secondary schoolkids had their own very lively groups which were an integral part of the wider protest movement against the big issues of the days, such as the Vietnam War and NZ’s sporting links with apartheid South Africa. A fellow CUSSer (and PYMer) e-mailed me : “… at its peak (CUSS) had at a representative member (or more than one) from 17 of the 21 high schools in Christchurch in that period”.

Morry was a PYM member although not one of the inner core who came to meetings (too boring for him, I imagine). He came to all the demos, of which there were plenty – they were held weekly for a period. And it’s important to remember that involvement in the counter-culture (doesn’t that historic term sound quaint now?) was a whole lifestyle, not simply one of political involvement. Morry was an enthusiastic participant of that lifestyle, he jumped in, boots and all, to a world of big communal flats, and the much ballyhooed but very real world of sex and drugs and rock and roll (no, it wasn’t invented by the scriptwriters of “Absolutely Fabulous”). It was a great, chaotic, time to be young.

A Lifelong Lifestyle

Now I don’t know about the sex but Morry was definitely a fan of the drugs and rock and roll, quite often in combination. After his death a mutual friend (and fellow PYMer and CAFCA founder) e-mailed me : “…We pieced together memories ... the time we had all gone to the most amazing concert in our memories - Santana, with some of Morry's hash cookies. That was one of his specialties. We had seats overlooking the stage, and had Carlos Santana just a few feet below us...” (I was also one of those who attended one of Santana’s two back to back concerts in one night in the Christchurch Town Hall in the early 70s and it remains the best concert I’ve ever been to. And, no, my appreciation of it wasn’t enhanced by hash cookies or anything else. I was a prude when it came to drugs of any kind). Morry remained a dope smoker for the rest of his life, he found it therapeutic. Hilariously, the reason he got expelled from his institutional home of 20 years was because the staff discovered his dope stash hidden in the frame of his wheelchair (he’d had previous warnings about having dope on the premises, so this was the parting of the ways and he went out to the big wide world of house ownership, where he could do what he liked in the privacy of his own home and be left in peace). And sometimes Morry quite literally combined the drugs with the politics. This is not an apocryphal story : he and another person set out to inject the home delivered milk bottles of Christchurch’s then Police commander with acid (LSD), presumably to “turn him on” (more wonderfully quaint language). I can’t remember if they succeeded or not with the injecting but if so it didn’t make any difference to that particular cop, now long dead. He was a nutter before and he remained a nutter afterwards.

Morry was a hands on activist. Paintups in those pre-spray can days were done with a good old paintbrush and tin. He was greatly taken by a story that I told him of a taxidriver who’d declared (to me) his opposition to the proposed 1973 Springbok tour of NZ solely based on the mass surrender to the Germans by South African soldiers in the World War 2 battle of Tobruk (now Tubruq, in Libya). Morry proceeded to do a paintup on a prominent central city fence proclaiming the mystifying message “No Tour. Remember Tobruk”. Unfortunately, it became even more mystifying because he was disturbed in the act and ran away, leaving the final slogan as “Remember To”, with a line of paint trailing away down the fence. It was there for years (and, yes, the Labour government stopped that tour).

Morry remained proud of his years as a PYM member and made a great effort to attend the 1989 20 th anniversary reunion dinner which I organised in a central city upstairs restaurant, with no lift. This involved him in the terrifying process of being carried up those stairs, chair and all, and even more terrifying, back down them again by people who’d had a few drinks in the interim. That PYM reunion became the setting for Russell Campbell’s documentary “Rebels In Retrospect” and, for me, the most poignant footage in it is a fleeting appearance of an able bodied Morry in a home movie that Russell incorporated into his film. Morry valued the old days and only a few years ago, earlier this decade, organised a reunion for a central city house where he (and umpteen others) had lived in the early 70s, a famous party house complete with its own resident disco ball. The house is long gone and is now a private car park, so that’s where the reunion was held – in the empty car park on a weekend afternoon (before we all retired to a nearby club for the night). This is only the second time that I’ve had to write the obituary of a PYM comrade (the other one being for Murray Shaw in Watchdog 56, June 1987 – he was killed, aged 35, in a railway shunting yard accident) and it simultaneously saddens me greatly and also reawakens a whole lot of scarcely believable memories. By coincidence the photo of Morry which accompanies this was taken at Murray’s 1987 funeral.

Morry was a child of his times. He was a university dropout (as was I, albeit a graduate one). “At university, Morry was turned off by the monotony of lectures and exams, and opted out of the ‘gravy train’. He needed to find a place where he could live the life he wanted. Morry went ‘over the hill’ and became a Coaster” (Jim Gardner). Like countless others who saw the movie “Easy Rider”, he got a chopper motorbike. He was one of those who moved to the West Coast (I was going to say one of those hippies who moved to the Coast but Morry was never a hippie and would not appreciate being posthumously labelled as one). He worked in a forestry gang on the Coast and this is the only job that anyone could tell me that he ever had. The early 70s were days of full employment (and by that I really do mean full employment, not “an acceptable level of unemployment” as we have today), living was cheap and the lifestyle that our crowd lived meant that you could survive on the smell of an oily rag. Particularly on the Coast – the Blackball house that Morry and countless others lived in (or used as a crashpad – more 70s language) cost $300 to buy! Plus Morry inherited money from a relative which meant that he’d didn’t need to worry about working. He was in a relationship for several years, and they lived in various parts of the Coast, finishing up in the high altitude Buller coalmining ghost town of Denniston. The relationship finished decades ago but they remained very close friends right up until Morry’s death – indeed, beyond it, because he made her the executor and beneficiary of his estate.

Love Of Flying Machines

He pursued his love of flying machines, which dated back to his childhood days as a champion model aeroplane builder and flyer. He set out to build a microlight powered by a chainsaw motor. A mutual friend e-mailed me after Morry’s death : “I lived in Blackball for a couple of years in the mid to late 70's and remember Morry calling in unexpectedly to stash a chainsaw that he'd snatched from a Greymouth hardware store while the assistant was out the back. He had temporarily hidden it outside of town and gone back only to be picked up by the cops and questioned. No evidence, no charges, so they had to let him go. He hid it at my place for a few weeks because he was sure his local cop would pay him a visit. He said he needed it for his flying machine”. The 1977 hang gliding accident and resultant quadriplegia meant that he never got to fly his homemade plane. But that didn’t stop his interest in flying machines. The same friend continued in that e-mail : “In the early 80's (the late Murray Shaw) and I would visit him when he was living at St John of God Hospital. We would be the bodies that could climb fences and retrieve the powered model aeroplanes that he and (another paraplegic resident and friend) designed, built, flew and crash-landed. As they got better at powered takeoffs and landings our legs became redundant…”.

Morry lived for 20 years in that strangely Gothic Catholic institution on the outskirts of Christchurch (the hospital has since closed, to make way for a housing subdivision, so Morry would have to have moved out anyway). It always felt rather creepy to visit him there and now I know why, with the media full of the historic child sex abuse trials of former teaching brothers based there. He was much better off (except financially) living in his own home for the final decade of his life. And as I’ve already said, during his three decades as a quadriplegic, Morry lived a full life of the mind. The university dropout returned to serious study and picked up a couple of degrees (he developed a strong interest in criminology and psychology).

“It (quadriplegia) was a brutal test for him, but in a remarkable transformation he turned restricted existence into overflowing life. Am amazing feat was his graduation (MSc with Hons) in 1992. He retained and gained a wide group of friends who looked to him as their guru. His cheerful sharing of his wide knowledge and interests became a delightful experience for his visitors. Morry kept up his connection with CAFCA and other good causes. He was a key witness in a compensation case” (Jim Gardner).

He enjoyed as active a social life as possible. In the days when there were regular parties at our place (particularly the legendary Chairman Mao’s Birthday Parties, held on Boxing Day – which was the Chairman’s birthday) Morry would turn up, driven by a mate in his one man party bus, equipped with customised ramps to enable his wheelchair to get into and out of unmodified houses, with his very long hair plaited down his back in a ponytail (he cut it in his final years). He was a fixture at social events at our place and those of friends.

He enjoyed life and we enjoyed him. He didn’t want pity and he certainly didn’t want to be seen as some sort of a “role model”. He was as tough as nails and as far as possible, he lived life on his terms. He just got on with it and set about overcoming adversity. He always told us that he couldn’t expect to live a long life but that he had come to terms with that. Morry, old mate, old comrade, if there is a “somewhere else”, then I hope you’re running free in it. Even better, if it comes complete with wings, enjoy the flying.

DON McNIVEN

Don McNiven was a CAFCA member from 1997 until his death in February 2008, aged 78. This obituary is written by his daughter, Sue Carter. His CAFCA membership did not die with Don – it has been taken up by his son-in-law. Ed.

Donald McNiven was born in Liverpool in 1929. During the Great Depression, Liverpool was hit hard because there was no work in the shipyards so life was very difficult. During World War 2, Liverpool and its shipyards were targets for German air raids and Don, together with his brother and two sisters, was evacuated to the countryside. The weekly expense for four children was too much for the family to afford and they were brought back home. Don loved to recount the days as a young lad working with his grandfather delivering coal with a horse and cart. The horse knew every pub along the way and would stop and wait for his grandfather to re-emerge! Early in his life, Don developed a strong sense of social injustice.

He started working for English Electric at the age of 17, learning plumbing and electrical skills, but his ambition was to go to sea. To realise this ambition he went to evening classes to get his marine engineer’s ticket and subsequently got a job as second engineer on the great passenger liner; Queen Mary. He later enlisted in the Merchant Navy and spent many years working at sea. He became a delegate of the Maritime Trades Union and was loved by his colleagues for arguing their cause with management.

He met his wife, Thelma at the age of 17 on a blind date and they married at 22 and had a son and two daughters. In 1963, after hearing good reports about life in New Zealand, Don worked his passage on an empty ship that was travelling here, to check it out. He found a job working with the Union Steamship Company on their former interisland ferries and discovered Sumner, a small seaside suburb on the fringes of Christchurch, bought a section and built a house. Later Thelma joined him with the children and they lived there happily for 43 years. From approximately 1968 to 1990 he worked for the former Lyttelton Harbour Board on the dredge Peraki.

He Would Always Help The Underdog

He and Thelma revelled in the outdoor life; Don ran the local Scout Group whilst Thelma helped with Guides and Cubs. They later joined the over 40’s Tramping Club where Don was renowned for keeping everyone entertained with jokes and stories. He also assisted with the local Church Youth Group and for a short time he was a verger. He used his engineering skills to great effect within the community as he had a particular talent for fixing things and built himself an engineering workshop within the garage. He voluntarily maintained and fixed the filtration equipment for the school swimming pool. His talents were also called upon by the local cinema to repair the projector when parts where not available. Don’s strong sense of fairness and equality for all, his keen sense of humour and interest in politics was evident to everyone who knew him. He was affectionately known to his friends as Don the Pom. He would always help the underdog but did not want any recognition for his efforts and he loved to make people laugh.

He was a member of the Labour Party. He became particularly interested in the activities of CAFCA as he felt that his adopted home, New Zealand, was being swallowed up by the activities of large transnational corporations and that the large tracts of land being bought by foreigners would be detrimental in the long term to New Zealand. He felt the world was slowly being dominated and controlled by a small group of influential and wealthy people, which would be unhealthy for true democracy. His philosophy was to make people think about this and to not accept the status quo. This frequently led to heated discussions with his friends, who were enlightened with big dollops of humour.

Don eventually suffered from a rare form of lung cancer and his final contribution to the community was to enlist in a drugs trial for the treatment of this condition. His last great joy was living long enough to hold his first great-grandchild three weeks before he died. He died in February 2008, leaving his wife, son, and two daughters.

MICK ROBERTSON

Mick Robertson was a CAFCA member from 1996 until his death in December 2007, aged 85. Over those years he was a regular donor. And although he was in his mid 70s when he first joined, he made up for lost time. The only time that I ever met Mick was at a Waihopai spybase protest earlier this decade, when he was already in his 80s. He’d driven all the way up from Oamaru and he played a full part in the weekend’s activities. At that time Mick was on a crusade to fight Meridian Energy’s illfated Project Aqua hydroelectric mega scheme on the Waitaki River.

At the conclusion of the Anti-Bases Campaign’s activities at Waihopai he asked if he could speak to us at our camp about Project Aqua, which he did with passion and eloquence. Then he abruptly finished, realised what the time was and announced that he had to get back on the road for the long drive home to Oamaru to get back to “the missus” (he was a classic old Kiwi bloke of his generation). Sadly, he’d spent the weekend taking photos but then lost his camera, which was never found. But he had the satisfaction of being on the winning side that time – Meridian canned Project Aqua (we’re still waiting for Waihopai to suffer the same fate). Mick was one of those salt of the earth activists who are the backbone of any movement and he’d been into every battle going for decades.

Not Afraid To Express An Opinion

I am indebted to the Oamaru Mail for permission to reprint its obituary and photo of Mick (28/12/07, Pete Christian). “A soldier, a greenie before his time, an old-fashioned battler for the underdog, a committee person, a prolific letter writer, a councillor, a thorn in the side of bureaucracy, Maurice John (Mick) Robertson was all of these. Robertson, passed away suddenly in Oamaru on December 19, aged 85. It is thanks to his determination that, among other things, Waitaki's electricity runs as well as it does, and motorised scooter users are not confronted by potholes. Born in Hamilton in 1922, Robertson attended Raglan District School going on to Hamilton Boys' High School before joining the Automobile Association (AA) as a sign writer.

“At the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force in the transport section, later training in radio and transferring to a radar station at Pandora, north of Kaitaia. During his six years of service with the RNZAF Robertson served two tours in the Pacific. During his war service he also married Hilda Maud Rose, of Morrinsville. At the end of the war he returned to the AA, but soon afterwards shifted to Morrinsville before returning to the family fold at Raglan and working for Robertson's Motors. Robertson stayed in the motoring trade until 1974 when he and Maud, as he called his wife, came to the South Island and purchased the Middlemarch Hotel as well as the town's store. When he retired he shifted to Hampden.

“Throughout his working life he was also heavily involved with sporting and service groups. He was the first president of Strath-Taieri Lions, a founding member of the Outward Bound Trust and a Social Credit candidate for Otago under Bruce Beetham's leadership. Mick also served for nine years on the Silverpeaks County Council, his last three as Chairman, before it amalgamated with Dunedin. At Hampden he became concerned with the condition of the village's rubbish dump and he instigated a form of recycling years before the term became fashionable. He joined Grey Power, becoming President for a time and he remained an enthusiastic member of the Oamaru Steam and Rail Society. He was also active in letter writing to newspapers large and small. He was not afraid to express an opinion. Robertson is survived by his wife, Hilda, four daughters and 36 grand, great and great, great-grandchildren”.

Politically, Mick was a Democrat and the Party’s magazine, the Guardian Political Review, also ran an obituary (Issue 54, 2008), which was, in turn, taken from the Otago Daily Times. “Mick Robertson always acknowledged he was a born stirrer. Mr Robertson, who died at his Oamaru home on December 19, aged 85, was well known to readers of Letters To The Editor. He wrote hundreds, if not thousands of letters, on all sorts of topics to publications throughout New Zealand and also to politicians.

“Always interested in politics, he was schooled in the doctrines of Social Credit in his late teens, and stood for the party in the in the Otago electorate in 1981, winning 24% of the vote (Guardian : Mick stood again in 1990 for the renamed Democrats). He was elected to the Silverpeaks County Council in 1983 and 1986, becoming Chairman for three years. Mr Robertson said he was a firm believer in people’s rights and responsibilities. He believed there was a responsibility to ensure people did not abused by bad judgment, by poor politicians or by injustice.

“In North Otago he was heavily involved with North Otago Grey Power, of which he was a life member, and Age Concern. He also helped with Meals on Wheels and the SPCA and stood for the Waitaki District Council. He was an avid reader and read everything he possibly could. He was referred to by some as the ‘community’s conscience’” (Guardian : In his 1990 election leaflet, Mick quoted Omar Khayyam. “Ah voter! Could thou and I with Fate conspire, To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits and then, Re-mould it nearer to the heart’s desire!”).

TREVOR WRIGHT

Trevor Wright was a CAFCA member from 1999 until his death in January 2008, aged 83. I am indebted to his widow, Pat Wright, for the information on his life. Norman Trevor Wright was born in Timaru in 1924 and his early schooling was in Totara Valley, where his father farmed. The family moved to Ashburton, where he finished school and got a job in a local menswear shop. World War 2 coincided with his teenage years so, on turning 18, he joined the Air Force as ground crew. After demobilisation he returned to Timaru retail work in menswear, including as a country traveller. He married Patricia Rollinson in 1948 and they had a family of four sons and one daughter. They shifted to the Hutt Valley where Trevor managed the Petone branch of a national department store.

Ill health caused his early retirement from retail, so they shifted back south in the early 1970s, where Trevor worked as a civilian in the store at Burnham Army camp (I never met Trevor but our paths may have unknowingly crossed at Burnham in the 1970s. During the second half of that decade I worked for the Railways’ household removals section and the Army was our biggest client. I spent a lot of my work time in Burnham Army Camp. Small world, eh?).

Pat Wright e-mailed me : “On retirement we built a house in Rangiora and after a short time bought the Rangiora Health Food Shop. This was complementary to our interest in organics and enhanced an awareness of the broader spectrum of what was beginning to happen to New Zealand's clean green image. At this stage Trevor also was aware that there needed to be Government cooperation to encourage and uphold NZ's image against foreign control, hence his interest in politics” (he was active in the Democrats).   

Leading Figure In Organics Movement

Pat is being altogether too modest when she refers to “our interest in organics”. She and Trevor were leading figures in the organics movement and in the Soil and Health Society. This is Bob Crowder’s obituary of him in Soil and Health. “ Both Trevor and his wife Pat have long been advocates for organic living and were well known figures in Rangiora through their health shop which they ran for many years. But then Trevor decided it was time to get more radical and together with Pat they set up the North Canterbury Branch of Soil and Health which prospered under their leadership, they were indeed a partnership which worked.

“In 1987 under this leadership the North Canterbury Branch of Soil and Health applied for and was awarded the opportunity to host the National Conference of Soil and Health the following year. This was Trevor’s finest hour and indeed thanks to his energy and vision in locating Lincoln University and the Biological Husbandry Organic Unit (BHU) as the venue it also became the finest hour for that location as well. The Conference was a brilliant success, over 600 registrants brought an unprecedented number of organic minded people to Lincoln University and was directly responsible for the University giving recognition to the organic movement and establishing the BHU on a more sound financial footing with more land, extended to ten ha, and a full technical position available to establish a manager for the area.

“The New Zealand organic movement owes Trevor a debt of gratitude for this alone but he went on seemingly for ever stimulating interest and activity in organics and working for a better world based on environmental philosophies. It was always my pleasure to call in on my visits that took me through Motueka where Trevor and Pat eventually chose to retire close to the centre of their family. Always there was still that energy and vitality that characterised that man and always eager interest in the direction that organics and the world would take. Trevor was indeed a great advocate of the organic movement and the world is a better place for his presence. Rest in peace Trevor you deserve it for a job well done”.

MARTIN LAWRENCE

Martin Lawrence was a member of, and regular donor to, CAFCA from 2001 until his death in December 2007, in Auckland, aged 72. Politically, like Mick Robertson and Trevor Wright, he was a Democrat. The following obituary by Tim Leitch appeared in that Party’s magazine, the GuardianPolitical Review (Issue 54, 2008). “Martin Lawrence will be remembered for his equable nature and his genuine enthusiasm for things he undertook. Not just in the ‘invasion’ of Parliament’s Room 216 on 3 November 1988 as part of the ‘Democrat Dozen’ and in clambering along a bushy cliff edge in Browns Bay to display the huge sign ‘It’s a cliff-hanger – Vote Garry Knapp’ (who was then a Social Credit MP and Party Leader. Ed.) in the 1985 General Election and campaigning at doorsteps and on the streets, but in consistently attending Party meetings and conferences over the years. Martin, with his legal training, was often the one to bring things on to a more sensible tack.

“We were privileged to enjoy the benefit of all this in the Social Credit movement over many years. How Martin was also able to spread his wonderful characteristics across so many other activities in his life is something that is difficult to appreciate. But people from so many groups expressed this wholeheartedly at a celebration of his life at the Rothesay Bay Ratepayers Hall in East Coast Bays on 10 December 2007. The place was overflowing. They came not just from his Democrat associates but also from his marathon running colleagues, his fellow Law tutors at the Auckland University of Technology, the co-author and publisher of his legal textbooks, his Sunbeam Car Club, Model Railway Club and music friends, and his union acquaintances, to name but a few. It was a gathering of friends, all there to recognise Martin and support his loving wife HeatherAnn McConachy and her family, and his son David and daughter Emma. On behalf of us all, Garry Knapp eminently expressed heartfelt appreciation for the support received from Martin and his family over many years, in good times and bad. All of us who knew Martin have a great deal to remember him for and be grateful about”.

DEATH IN THE FAMILY

CAFCA extends our condolences to Max Wilkinson for the death of his partner Aileen Finucane. This tribute was written by their friend, Helen Smyth. Photographs of (Annie) Aileen Finucane tend to emphasise the place rather than the person, and in so doing offer an insight into her personality. Aileen died peacefully at home on 3 April, 2008, just a few weeks short of her 90 th birthday. An only child of Catholic parents, she lived in Wellington all her life, attending St Mary’s College. It was during the Spanish Civil War from 1936, when she was a teenager, that Aileen began to question her Catholic roots. World War 2 and the Vatican attitude cemented her doubt. She became instead increasingly sceptical and politicised. She admired the work and writings of John A Lee and they became friends and correspondents until his death in 1982.

Aileen’s community and political involvements were many, including early days of Playcentre, the original group having been established in Wellington in 1942. She was also a leading member of the Peace Council in Wellington and the main force behind early anti-nuclear work before the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was born in 1959. “She spent every weekend canvassing, petitioning and organising meetings”, says long time partner Max Wilkinson. Max and Aileen became friends when Max returned to New Zealand in 1955, having lived in China for seven years. The 1952 Japanese film “Children of Hiroshima” was a powerful tool of the time. “Every week we took it about to community groups, churches, etc”, Max says. “Aileen spent an awful lot of time getting a wide range of groups on board”.

Another pursuit was saving the Wellington suburb of Thorndon from developers and the Ministry of Works, leading to the formation of the local residents’ association. Also in Thorndon, Aileen was active in saving Rita Angus’ cottage, now a residence for local and international writers. A natural environmentalist, walking on beaches was her favourite pastime. Aileen loved travelling within New Zealand, and never left the country after plans to travel in later years were thwarted by ill health. She was able to stay at home in her final months thanks to Max’s vigilant and loving care; a most dignified exit for a kind, quiet, intelligent woman.