Bruce Beetham

Bruce Craig Beetham (16 February 1936 – 3 May 1997) was an academic and politician from New Zealand, whose career spanned the 1970s and early 1980s.

Born in New Plymouth on 16 February 1936, he was the son of Stanley Develle Beetham (a carpenter) and his wife Frances Agnes Amy Watts.

Beetham attended New Plymouth Boys' High School from 1951 to 1955.

He then went on to the Auckland Secondary Teachers College where he eventually acquired a BA (honours) in History and later an MA. He worked as a secondary school teacher and worked in New Plymouth, Taupō and Piopio before lecturing at Hamilton Teachers' College.

The Beetham family were Anglican but he instead joined a Presbyterian bible class and prior to training as a teacher he gave serious consideration to entering the ministry.

Beetham married Raewyn Natalee Mitchell, a dental nurse, on 21 August 1965 in Matamata.

The two settled in Hamilton and had three sons and one daughter.

A lecturer at Hamilton's University of Waikato and at the Hamilton Teachers' Training College, he was elected leader of the Social Credit Political League (which he had joined in 1969) in 1972, at a time when the party was in disarray and many were questioning its chances of survival.

Beetham joined the then Social Credit Political League, during the 1969 general election campaign, after attending a talk by Don Bethune the Social Credit candidate for Hamilton West.

A brilliant organiser and an electrifying speaker, Beetham succeeded in rebuilding the party, and by the late 1970s it was challenging the stranglehold on the two-party system of the long-dominant National and Labour parties.

Later, Beetham was elected as one of the vice presidents of the party in 1971.

Also in 1971 he ran his first election campaign, an unsuccessful attempt for a position as a Hamilton City Councillor.

His rapid rise in the Social Credit ranks was complete when he was elected Leader in 1972.

At 36 he became the youngest leader of a political party in New Zealand's history.

He presided over Social Credit's 1972 and 1975 election campaigns, in which they failed to get any members elected.

In 1976, Beetham was elected Mayor of Hamilton in a by-election to replace Mike Minogue, who had resigned to take up a seat in Parliament.

One of his early ideas as Mayor was to finance municipal projects with interest-free "rates vouchers", but the council, dominated by his opponents, passed a 20 percent rates increase instead.

His frustrations caused by political gridlock, as well as the difficulty of simultaneously leading a national political party while serving as a Mayor (a post generally expected to be apolitical in New Zealand), were factors in his decision not to seek a second term as Mayor in 1977.

Ross Jansen succeeded him.

On 18 February 1978, Beetham won election to Parliament in a by-election for the Rangitikei electorate, to fill a vacancy caused by the death of its long-time member, the Parliamentary Speaker, Sir Roy Jack.

He retained the seat in the general election later that year, and the Social Credit Political League polled 16 percent of the vote nationwide, its best result to date.

His marriage to Raewyn had ended in 1978, with her remaining in Hamilton with the children.

They divorced in 1980.

Later that same year, Beetham married Beverley May Clark (née Morrison), who had two sons from her previous marriage, and came from a Social Credit family.

Soon after the Beetham's moved to the outskirts of Marton.

Beverley was an interior decorator by profession, who helped sharpen Beetham's style and dress sense.

In the 1981 election, the party polled just over 20 percent – the best showing for a third party since the 1920s, but fell short of its goal of holding the balance of power; its support was too evenly spread to translate into more than a couple of seats under the First-past-the-post electoral system in use at that time.

The party, and Beetham himself, strongly promoted a form of proportional representation, but this was not adopted till many years later.

However this saw the addition of Gary Knapp as a second Social Credit MP, meaning the party could make more of an impact inside Parliament itself.

In May 1982 National Party Prime Minister Robert Muldoon announced plans to build the controversial Clyde Dam (part of Think Big), but faced backbench dissidents voting against it.

Initially opposed to the dam, Beetham and Knapp visited the dam site in Otago and reconsidered their stance.

Social Credit agreed to vote for the necessary legislation in return for policy concessions from National.

However, Muldoon did not deliver on most of his pledges which made Beetham and Knapp look naïve.

The affair caused considerable damage to Social Credit's popularity.

In line with his party's policies, Beetham attempted to organise a barter trade deal with Fiji.

Prime Minister Robert Muldoon vetoed the deal.

A major heart attack in 1983 curtailed his activities for much of that year and early 1984, and his disappearance from the public view made it possible for a new political party, the New Zealand Party (founded by millionaire businessman Bob Jones) to fill the vacuum.

This party succeeded in attracting much of the protest vote that Social Credit had previously enjoyed.

A number of factors resulted in a sharp drop in support for the Social Credit Party in the general election of 1984.

One of these factors was Beetham's ill health.