William Pember Reeves

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William Pember Reeves (1925)

William Pember Reeves (born February 10, 1857 in Lyttelton , † May 16, 1932 in London ) was a New Zealand statesman , historian and poet who campaigned for social reform. He belonged to the Liberal Party .

Life

William Pember Reeves was the son of journalist and politician William Reeves and Ellen Reeves, b. Pember who had emigrated to Canterbury in 1857, just three weeks before he was born .

He received his education at a private school in Christchurch , the local high school and from 1867 to 1874 at Christ's College Grammar School . Before his political career he worked as a lawyer and journalist. He was editor of the Canterbury Times in 1885 and of the Lyttelton Times from 1889 to 1891 .

Political career

Reeves represented the constituency of St Albans from 1887 to 1890 in the New Zealand Parliament , then from 1890 to 1896 the constituency of Christchurch. In 1896 he resigned to take up the post of Agent General for New Zealand. He was Minister of Labor under John Ballance and Richard Seddon from 1891 to 1896 . During his time as minister, the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894 and the Immigrants Exclusion Bill were passed, which stopped immigration to New Zealand. His xenophobic policies earned him the nickname "Undesirable Bill 'Reeves". He was very committed to women's suffrage . He attributed his convictions in this regard to the work of the English philosopher John Stuart Mill .

In January 1896 he traveled to London , where he served as Agent-General from 1896 to 1905, and then as High Commissioner until 1908 , thus serving as New Zealand's highest-ranking diplomat in Great Britain. He was then director of the London School of Economics until 1919. During his time in England he befriended a number of left-wing intellectuals such as George Bernard Shaw , HG Wells , Sidney and Beatrice Webb . These all belonged to the Fabian Society and the London School of Economics. He was a member of the social reformation dinner club The Coefficients .

From 1917 to 1931 Reeves was Chairman of the Board of the National Bank of New Zealand and from 1913 to 1925 President of the Anglo-Hellenic League .

William Pember Reeves married the feminist Magdalen Stuart Robison in 1885 , who also joined the Fabian Society. They had a son, Fabian Pember Reeves, who died in World War I, and two daughters, one of whom was the feminist writer Amber Reeves .

The Reeves Glacier and the Reeves Firn Field in East Antarctica are named after him .

Works

  • Canterbury rhymes . Lyttelton Times, Christchurch 1883.
  • together with George Phipps Williams: Colonial Couplets: Being Poems in Partnership . Simpson & Williams, Christchurch 1889.
  • under the pseudonym “Pharos”: Some historical articles about communism and socialism, about their dreams, experiments, goals and influences . Lyttelton Times, Christchurch 1890.
  • together with George Phipps Williams: In Double Harness: Poems in Partnership . Lyttelton Times, Christchurch 1891.
  • various authors under the direction of WP Reeves: The New Zealand Reader . Samuel Costall, Wellington 1895.
  • The State and Its Functions in New Zealand . Fabian Society, London 1896.
  • Five Years' Political and Social Reform in New Zealand . 1896.
  • New Zealand and other poems . Grant Richards, London 1898.
  • New Zealand. Story of the Empire Series . Horace Marshall, London 1898.
  • The Long White Cloud "Ao Tea Roa" . 1898.
  • State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, Volume 1 . Grant Richards, London 1902.
  • State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, Volume 2 . Grant Richards, London 1902.
  • Women's political suffrage in Australia . Trans. V. Romulus Grazer [ie Romulus Katscher]. Leipzig, 1904 (= social progress, vol. 15/16). ( Digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • The Passing of the Forest and Other Verse . Allen & Unwin, London 1925.

Source:

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Sinclair: Reeves, the Hon. William Pember . In: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . 1966.
  2. Sinclair: Reeves, William Pember. In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography . Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, January 14, 2014, accessed December 17, 2015 .
  3. Immigration regulation . teara.govt.nz. 2007. Retrieved July 16, 2007.
  4. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 107.
  5. 1898, William Pember Reeves: The Long White Cloud. New Zealand Herald, October 29, 1898, accessed December 17, 2015 .
  6. Tim McKenzie: William Pember Reeves, 1857 - 1932. (PDF 106 kB) Kōtare: New Zealand Notes & Queries, accessed on December 17, 2015 (English).