Remembering John A. Lee
John Alfred Alexander Lee (31/10/1891-13/06/1982) believed in a fair share for all Kiwis. He could have been known as John A. A. Lee, having two A's for middle names, but unselfishly just used one. As a one-time Point Chevalier resident and writer, it was only fitting that this firebrand of social politics held court at the local library and had a corner location and pensioner flats named after him. John A. Lee corner is now demolished, his plaque has gone and rebuilding a five storey social housing block is planned. Onwards and upwards, like a mad general. Mad at injustice, inequity and toady behaviour. Vale Mr Lee, you shall return.
Nearly forty years after his death at the age of 91, Lee is still a controversial figure, at least within the Labour Party. He was just too righteous, too much of a firebrand, unwilling and unable to toe the party line. Yet, for some he remains an inspiration; very few New Zealanders — and even fewer politicians — have cleaved so powerfully to the beliefs they held true.
The bare facts of Lee’s life are well known. He was born in Dunedin in 1891, his alcoholic gambler of a father having already abandoned his mother. Being what might well be called a ne’er-do-well himself, young John stopped going to school and became instead a petty criminal. Apprehended, inevitably, he was sent to a boarding school for juvenile delinquents, from which he tried frequently to escape.
Finally he succeeded, though he wasn’t free for long, ending up in Mt Eden jail for liquor smuggling and breaking and entering. Such experience effectively cured him of crime. Instead, when the Great War broke out he signed up, was sent to the Western Front, fought in the Battle of Messines and ultimately lost an arm, his left, in combat in 1918.
Back home he started in business, became active in the Labour Party, and in 1934 wrote a novel, Children of the Poor, based on his early experiences. In the army he’d been known as “Bolshie” Lee for his socialist tendencies, and it was as a writer and a socialist, though not always necessarily a ‘socialist writer’, that Lee’s life would come to be defined.
He was first elected to Parliament for Auckland East in 1922. In 1931 he won the Grey Lynn electorate, which he held until he was expelled from the Labour Party in 1940 for his continuing habit of attacking its leader, Michael Joseph Savage, for the crime of being insufficiently socialist.
Lee then formed the Democratic Labour Party, which failed to gain any seats in the 1943 election; ironically, given his campaign against Savage, many of Lee’s supporters believed he had become too autocratic, and his political career was essentially over. But he continued to write, ultimately publishing 20 books between 1934 and 1987, and at least one, Shining with the Shiner (1944), is acknowledged as a New Zealand classic.
In 1975 the corner at the intersection of Great North and Point Chevalier Roads was named after Lee, as was a block of pensioner flats nearby. If I step out the door of my physiotherapy practice I can look across at that corner, where for a while a cutout of Lee’s famous one-armed pose — which we put there — stood. Until somebody stole it.
No doubt Lee would have laughed heartily at that.
John A. Lee was a socialist, undeniably. Yet that socialism was a subset of an overarching humanism; his passion was to overcome society’s problems in a way which would raise up not just the least of us, but rather everyone. As much as Savage himself, Lee was the architect of Labour’s state housing programme, from which hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders have benefited.
He was not perfect. None of us are. Still, if we can emulate some of John A. Lee’s passion, his talent and his drive, our endeavours will have counted for something.
The John A. Lee collection at Auckland Museum can be found online here.