Martyn Finlay

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.[1]

He got a scholarship to the London School of Economics and got a PhD in 1938 before becoming a Resident Fellow at Harvard. He returned to NZ in 1939 and was employed as a private secretary to Cabinet Ministers Rex Mason and Arnold Nordmeyer.[2]

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.[3] Years later 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."[4]

Between his spells in parliament he was Vice-President of the Labour Party from 1955 to 1960 and subsequently President from 1960 to 1964.[5]

Later he represented the Waitakere electorate from 1963 to 1969, then the Henderson electorate from 1969 to 1978, when he retired.[6]

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.[7] 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). A prominent speaker at that meeting was the trade unionist Jim Knox.[8] He also participated in a teach-in at the University of Auckland on 12 September 1966, which drew about 600 people.[9]

During a Labour Party conference in 1966, Martyn Finlay, at the instigation of the Labour Party leader and future Prime Minister Norman Kirk, proposed an amendment which advocated replacing New Zealand's artillery battery with a non-combatant force.[10] Despite his opposition to the Vietnam War, Finlay argued that New Zealand troops should not be withdrawn from Vietnam too quickly to avoid interfering with the Paris peace talks in 1969.[11] Later, he lost a notable 1969 election TV debate (on the NZBC's Gallery programme) against Robert Muldoon. When the United States Vice President Spiro Agnew visited the capital Wellington in mid-January 1970, Finlay along with several other Labour Members of Parliament including Arthur Faulkner, Jonathan Hunt, and Bob Tizard boycotted the state dinner to protest American policy in Vietnam. However, other Labour MPs including the Opposition Leader Norman Kirk attended the function which dealt with the Nixon Doctrine.[12]

Finlay (centre) at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, 1973.

Finlay was a Cabinet Minister, and was the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice from 1972 to 1975 and Minister of Civil Aviation and Meteorological Services from 1973 to 1975 in the Third Labour Government.[13][14] 11 years later he publicly recalled frustrations felt by the government in trying to put changes in policy into practice immediately following the election which, in Finlay's view, stemmed from a lack of positive cooperation from senior public servants who were biased to the National Party.[15] Finlay established the small claims court where "people owed $10 can be heard without having to pay a lawyer $30" and also established duty solicitors to look after the interests of poor people charged in court.[4]

He set up the Disputes Tribunal and was responsible for much of the work leading to the Matrimonial Property Act which would give divorced wives a right to share in their husband's possessions.[5] He also ended bread-and-water punishments in prisons and bestowed prisoners the right to write directly to the Minister of Justice without having their correspondence read prior by prison staff. Finlay also abolished a husband's right to sue his wife's lover for damages removing one of the last legal stipulations of a wife being deemed her husband's property.[4]

In 1973 he was a member of the legal team that represented the New Zealand and Australian government at the International Court of Justice in an attempt to ban French nuclear tests in the Pacific.[16] Finlay attracted world-wide attention with his performance leading the New Zealand team at the World Court in the joint New Zealand-Australia case seeking a ban on French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll. He said later "Ours was a much better case than the Australians and better received by the court," and eventually the court ruled it would be unlawful for France to continue atmospheric testing.[4]

He was made a Queen's Counsel (QC) in 1973.[17] He was the recipient of a harsh verbal attack from then prime minister Robert Muldoon in 1977. Muldoon said he despised Finlay, and the sooner the retiring MP was out of the house the better. However, in a rare move, Muldoon later apologised publicly for the outburst, stating that he had misunderstood the situation.[15]

In 1983 his daughter Sarah Jane was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment on charges of supplying and possessing heroin. In 1989 she was found dead in her Wellington flat.[15]

Finlay often weighed in on political issues after his exit from parliament. He was particularly critical of the economic restructuring (known as Rogernomics) by the Fourth Labour Government in the 1980s.[15]

Martyn died at the age of 87. Christine Cole Catley says: "He wrote two most moving letters to his wife, a year apart. She read them for the first time after he died ... He wrote of what he saw as his degeneration and his fear of becoming a burden on her and others. ... Two days later he ended his life."[18]

He was survived by his wife, son and daughter.[15]