Joseph Gordon Coates

Joseph Gordon Coates (~ 1930)

Coates home

Joseph Gordon Coates (born February 3, 1878 in Matakohe on the Hukatere Peninsula , New Zealand, † May 27, 1943 in Wellington ) was Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1925 to 1928 .

Early life

Coates was born near Matakohe on the Hukatere Peninsula in Kaipara Harbor , where his family ran a farm. His simple birthplace, Ruatuna, is registered with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust as a Category 1 Monument.

His parents were Edward (1843-1905), who came from the English gentry, and Eleanor (1851-1935), who emigrated to New Zealand in 1866. His parents founded a farm on 5,196 hectares of land that was mostly leased by Māori. His father experimented with new farm animals for New Zealand such as Shropshire sheep and Hereford cattle , which he imported to New Zealand for the first time. In preparation for his parents' marriage, a farmhouse was built in 1877, where Coates was born.

Gordon faced considerable responsibilities from a young age as his father suffered from bipolar disorder . He received his primary education at the local school and his educated mother also trained him. He became a good rider, although he permanently damaged his leg from a riding accident. The area's large Māori population resulted in Coates learning their language.

As the eldest son, Coates became a partner in the farm in 1900. Coates is said to have become engaged to Eva Ingall, a teacher. Her father, however, did not agree to a marriage because he feared that his own illness could be hereditary. In 1914 he married Marjorie Grace Coles in 1914, with whom he had five daughters.

Early political career

Coates had distinguished himself as the commander of the Otamatea Mounted Rifle Volunteers and had a good reputation in his neighborhood. He first came into contact with politics when he was elected to Otamatea County Council in 1905 . From 1913 to 1916 he was chairman of the council.

In the 1911 elections, Coates stood up as an independent candidate linked to the Liberal Party and entered parliament through the seat of the Kaipara constituency. In parliament, he usually voted with the Liberals and was a member of a group that enabled Joseph Ward to remain in office as Prime Minister. When Ward resigned and was replaced by Thomas Mackenzie , Coates turned down offers of a ministerial post.

Gradually Coates distanced himself from the Liberal Party, mainly because of his strong support for the form of ownership of the fee simple for the farmers, which the Liberals were generally opposed to. Coates had this conviction from his own experience with the leasehold won (leasehold) on the family farm. When there was a vote of no confidence in 1912 , Coates voted against the Liberals, helping the Reform Party opposition to come to power. In 1914, he also formally joined the Reform Party, but did not excel as an advocate of party interests and befriended politicians from various political currents. His political activities focused on improving conditions in the Far North District .

When the First World War broke out , he tried to register for active service, but the then Prime Minister William Massey dissuaded him from the idea because the Reform Party only had a slim majority. In November 1916, Coates obtained military service and received the Military Cross while serving .

When he returned to New Zealand, many saw him as a hero. Massey appointed him on September 2, 1919 as Minister of Justice, Postmaster General and Minister of Telegraphy in his cabinet. In 1920 he became Minister for Public Works. From March 1921 Coates was Minister of Affairs of the Māori, where his knowledge of the Māori proved useful. He befriended Apirana Ngata and worked with him to bring Māori affairs to Parliament. In 1923 he became Minister of Railways.

prime minister

Coate's notoriety gradually rose to the point where he was seen as a natural successor to Massey. When he died on May 10, 1925, Francis Bell became provisional Prime Minister for a short time, but did not agree to take office permanently. After an internal party election on a caucus , Coates was finally appointed Prime Minister on May 30, 1925. The losing candidate for the vote was William Nosworthy .

While Coates had charisma and a reputation as a good administrator, he lacked the ability to present himself well in public and to be sensitive to the public mood. He took over a large part of Massey's cabinet, although the public would have preferred new faces. Some of his supporters, who preferred a strictly conservative line, disliked his pragmatic approach to solving political problems, which was not oriented towards party political interests.

He was increasingly accused of lacking a vision for New Zealand's development. As a minister, he was able to concentrate on individual priority projects; as a prime minister, he was expected to set the general direction. This didn't seem to suit him very well. In the elections in 1925, the Reform Party still recorded a victory, but this was possibly more thanks to the organization by Albert Davy and the chaotic conditions in the liberal party.

When the New Zealand economy under the global economic crisis began to suffer, Coates and the Reform Party were exposed to considerable criticism. For example, I directed this against certain “socialist” measures against depression. Albert Davy left the party to build a new liberal party known as the United Party . In the elections, the Reform Party and the United Party received an equal number of parliamentary seats. With the support of the Labor Party , the United Party formed a government and Coates lost his post as prime minister.

coalition

In 1931, the Labor Party withdrew its support for the Reform Party in protest against various economic measures that were viewed as anti-working-class. Coates and the Reform Party then agreed to form a coalition with United, preventing new elections in which the Labor Party might have made significant profits. United leader George Forbes remained Prime Minister, but Coates and his Reform Party colleagues were given a number of important posts. Coates party colleague William Downie Stewart , for example, became Treasury Secretary.

The coalition remained in power in the 1931 elections, but Labor gained votes. However, the economic problems persisted and unemployment rose. Coates argued with William Downie Stewart over the government's response. Eventually Coates became Treasury Secretary himself. Forbes as premier became increasingly disillusioned and lackluster, so that Coates increasingly ran the business of government. However, there were rumors describing Coates as a heavy drinker.

In the 1935 elections, the coalition suffered a significant defeat and only won 19 seats, while Coates lost his mandate in Kaipara. The 35-seat Labor Party formed its first government under Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage .

Later political career

After the defeat of the coalition government, Coates largely withdrew from the public. Because of the sudden loss of income, he had a difficult time financially. His situation improved with a substantial sum that a group of friends gave him in gratitude for his long service.

When United and the Reform Party merged to form the National Party in May 1936 , Coates was a member of parliament. Some of his supporters urged him to take over the party leadership. Others in the party believed that both Coates and Forbes were too attached to the country's economic troubles and that the party needed new faces. Forbes supported Charles Wilkinson as a candidate for the party leadership, but Coates and his supporters rejected him. In their rejection, they went so far that they threatened to found the reform party again if he got the post. So eventually became Adam Hamilton , a former member of the Reform Party, with one voice projection winner of the vote on the party chairmanship.

With the outbreak of World War II, the Labor government invited both Coates and Hamilton to the War Cabinet . Their acceptance of this offer created a rift between them and their National Party colleagues. The party removed Hamilton as party leader for this reason, and relations between Coates and the new party leader Sidney Holland deteriorated. Coates was convinced that the pursuit of party interests in wartime was out of place and tried to get the Labor Party and the National Party to work together. He was delighted when the two parties set up a war administration whose executive was the War Cabinet. The war administration quickly collapsed when the National Party withdrew from it.

Coates openly criticized the National Party for its decision and remained in the war cabinet himself. At that time, Coates decided to run as an independent candidate in the next election, rather than as an official National Party candidate.

However, his health began to deteriorate sharply. He had been smoking heavily for most of his life and he also developed heart problems. On May 27, 1943, he collapsed in his Wellington office and died. After his death, the Labor Party honored him more than his colleagues in the National Party, but politicians from all parliamentary groups showed him respect. The Australian polar explorer Douglas Mawson named Mount Coates in Antarctica in his honor .

Web links

• Coates of Kaipara by Michael Bassett (1995, Auckland University Press)
• Joseph Gordon Coates. New Zealand Prime Minister's Office, archived from the original on August 1, 2008 ; accessed on October 25, 2009 (English). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} House Ruatuna on the NZHPT website