NOTABLE CAREER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 April 1940, Page 5

NOTABLE CAREER

MR. FRASER’S EARLY INTEREST IN POLITICS LONG SERVICE TO LABOUR PARTY. STUDENT AND INDEFATIGABLE WORKER. Born 56 years ago at Fearn, a Rossshire village a few miles from the Moray Firth, Mr Fraser was educated at the village school and at night schools. In his own words, he received the usual education of a working-class child in the nineteenth-century Scotland. If his formal schooling was brief, it implanted in him a genuine love of learning, and like many another Scot' of humble origin he has been a life-long student of sociology, philosophy and literature in the widest sense of the term. From the beginning Mr Fraser took a keen interest in politics and became secretary of his village Liberal Association. Going south in search of wider opportunities he abandoned Liberalism as a spent and dying force; and while in London in 1908 he joined the Independent Labour Party. Arriving in New Zealand two years later he worked first as a labourer and watercider in Auckland, Wellington and other parts of the North Island, and for a period was president of the Auckland Genera] Labourers’ Union. He also joined the Socialist Party as an active propagandist. When the industrial Labour movement gained strength after the Reform Party’s accession to power in 1911, he joined in enthusiastically and was appointed to the executive of the newlyformed Federation of Labour. However, his true inclinations were more toward political than industrial action in the interests of the workers, and on the formation of the Social Democratic Party, which emerged from the Unity Conference in 1913, he was elected its national secretary. Later, when it was reconstituted as the New Zealand Labour Party, he became an executive member and eventually vice-president and president.

Mr Fraser entered the House of Representatives at a by-election for the Wellington Central seat, which he first won jn 1918 by a substantial absolute majority over three other candidates. His record of continuous service in the House exceeds that of any other member of the Labour Party. He was reelected for the seat in 1919 and again in 1922, when he received the highest number of votes cast for any candidate in New Zealand, the largest majority over the next highest candidate and the second largest absolute majority. Mr Fraser- became secretary of the Parliamentary Labour .Party in 1919, and when, on the death of Mr H. E. Holland in 1933, Mr Savage, the de-puty-leader, became leader, Mr Fraser was elected deputy-leader. Soon after he entered Parliament Mr Fraser was recognised as an able and resourceful debater. His chief interest was social reform, and the needs of what he and the Labour Party regarded as Ihe under-privileged classes. Mr Fraser also acquired an almost unequalled knowledge of Parliamentary procedure, and used it with great tactical effect in the “stonewalls” which Labour continually raised against measures of former, governments.

In Wellington Mr Fraser’s name will be long remembered for the active and helpful part he played with Mrs Fraser during the influenza epidemic of 1918. He served on the Wellington City Council from 1919 to 1923, and again from June, 1933, till he resigned on his appointment to Cabinet in 1935. In 192.3 ho contested the mayoralty against Mr R. A. Wright, and'was a close second in a three-cornered contest. He has also served as a member of the Wellington Harbour Board. When Labour gained office in 1935 the portfolios of Education and Health went to Mr Fraser as a matter of course, and in fact almost of right. His policy in regard to health has laid special emphasis on the welfare of mothers and infants, school children and the Maori people. Just before he became a Minister of the Crown, Mr Fraser visited Great Britain as a member of the New Zealand delegation to the meeting of the Empire Parliamentary Association in London, which coincided with the King George V jubilee celebrations. When the late Prime Minister, Mr Savage, left in 1937 to attend the Coronation of the present King and Queen Mr Fraser carried out the duties of head of the Government for several months, and he also administered the portfolio of Finance during the absence abroad at the same time of the Hon W. Nash. Long hours are worked by Mr Fraser and he devotes the whole of his time to the affairs of the State. The illness of Mr Savage last Augustmade Mr Fraser an obvious choice for the position of Deputy-Prime Minister. Less than a month later he undertook heavy responsibility for.detail matters in the communications with the Imperial Government which brought New Zealand promptly into the war. He was then called upon to make an arduous journey to Britain by air in order to represent the Dominion at the Imperial War Council. Mr Fraser met all the Allied war leaders, visited ths Western Front and returned to tell a' stirring tale of his experiences and sound a trumpet call for a maximum war effort.

In his work, Mr Fraser has received constant help from his wife. Mrs Fraser has also for many years been a stalwart worker for the Labour Party. Mi- Fraser has no children, but a stepson, Mr Harold Kemp, married a daughter of the Hon H. T. Armstrong, a Ministerial colleague.