Martyn Finlay

Allan "Martyn" Finlay (1 January 1912 – 20 January 1999) was a New Zealand lawyer and politician of the Labour Party.

He was an MP in two separate spells and a member of two different governments, including being a minister in the latter where he reformed the country's justice system.

Martyn was born in Dunedin to Baptist missionaries who had worked in India.

His father died when he was two and his mother was forced by economic circumstances to take in boarders.

He used to push his brother Harold, ten years older and with polio, two miles to Otago University in his wheelchair.

With the oncoming depression, Martyn had to leave school to get a job at the end of fifth form - he had wanted to be a doctor.

With a job as an office boy in a law firm at the age of 16, he was able to study law part-time at Otago University for eight years before getting his LLM with First Class Honours.

In 1934 he was the winner of the Otago University Law Society's prize in evidence.

He got a scholarship to the London School of Economics and got a PhD in 1938 before becoming a Resident Fellow at Harvard.

He met many influential intellectuals in London including Harold Laski, who encouraged him to enter politics.

He returned to NZ in 1939 and was employed as a private secretary to Cabinet Ministers Rex Mason and Arnold Nordmeyer.

Finlay was impressed by Mason's mastery of the legal system and was impressed that he devised and drafted almost all of his legislation himself.

Martyn Finlay stood unsuccessfully for Remuera in 1943.

He then represented the North Shore electorate from 1946 to 1949, when he was defeated.

Finlay frequently challenged Prime Minister Peter Fraser in caucus over issues such as compulsory military training, earning him the ire of the party establishment.

After his defeat neither Fraser nor his successor as leader Walter Nash gave Finlay any assistance in returning to parliament because of his rebelliousness.

He stood for the Labour nomination at the 1953 Onehunga by-election but lost out to the comparatively inexperienced candidate Hugh Watt.

In later years Finlay frequently described himself and fellow Labour MP Warren Freer as the "only remnants" of the first Labour government, a government of whose record he was proud of stating "It was a government of very practical talents. If they saw people hungry, they knew hunger came from malnutrition and that malnutrition came from lack of money, in turn due to lack of a job. They knew nothing of such concepts as level playing fields. And they did not have the help of economists."

Despite his disagreements with Fraser, he spoke fondly of him when reminiscing.

Between his spells in parliament he was Vice-President of the Labour Party from 1955 to 1960 and subsequently President from 1960 to 1964.

From 1957 to 1960 he was a director of Tasman Empire Airways.

As party president Finlay was highly critical of the lack of drive in the party, feeling Labour should take the offensive over industrialization rather than sit about and answer criticisms as National made them.

He primarily thought the retirement of Nash as leader would be the remedy and after Labour returned to opposition after the 1960 election he began pressing for Nash to resign.

In October 1961 he gave notice of motion to the national executive that the caucus should be asked to consider the leadership.

In February 1962 Finlay withdrew his notice of motion after Nash met with the national executive.

By June Nash told Finlay and the caucus that be would resign at the end of the year unless caucus requested otherwise.

However by December Nash had still made no move to resign and Finlay penned a statement to the members of caucus, including Nash, bluntly requesting Nash's retirement from the leadership.

Finlay was criticised for the letter itself and the manner of its presentation, as instead of attending caucus and presenting it himself, he went to Auckland to appear in court, and left it to Jim Collins (a trade union member of the executive) to read it to the caucus on his behalf on 6 December.

At the beginning of the meeting Nash told caucus that he would resign at a caucus meeting in February and would not be a candidate for re-election.

Only after which Collins then read Finlay's letter.

The letter caused a stir in the caucus and it was resolved unanimously that the letter be not received.

Later he represented the Waitakere electorate from 1963 to 1969, then the Henderson electorate from 1969 to 1978, when he retired.

Soon after re-entering parliament he was designated Labour's Justice Spokesperson.

By the time he re-entered parliament Nash had retired from the leadership and been replaced by Arnold Nordmeyer.

Finlay though highly of Nordmeyer and his abilities, but thought he was too isolated from his colleagues to be a successful leader.

He still felt Nordmeyer was treated unfairly when he was toppled as leader by Norman Kirk.

Martyn Finlay was also one of the Labour Party's most active opponents of New Zealand's military involvement in the Vietnam War and questioned the New Zealand government's support for South Vietnam.

In 1964, he argued during a parliamentary speech that the Viet Cong were the only effective opposition in South Vietnam, but still accepted the general consensus within New Zealand government circles that the Viet Cong were being supported by North Vietnam and the People's Republic of China.

On 6 June 1965, Finlay chaired an anti-war meeting in Auckland which was sponsored by the Auckland Trades Council, the Auckland Labour Representation Committee, and the Auckland Peace For Vietnam Committee (PFVC).

In 1977 he said Fraser was a statesman of the highest order whose qualities few New Zealanders fully appreciated.