- Ritchie Macdonald
Ritchie Macdonald (
1897 -14 March 1987 ) was aNew Zealand politician of the Labour Party.He represented the Ponsonby electorate from 1946 to 1963, and then the Grey Lynn electorate from 1963 to 1969, when he retired. The then Mayor of Auckland Sir
Dove-Myer Robinson said about him when he retired "His is the old style of personal assistance. The majority of modern politicians do not know what that means."He was born in Scotland, and died in Auckland aged 90. After farming in the Waikato, he worked at the
Otahuhu Railway Workshops and became a union secretary.Robert Chapman said that "the Parliamentary superannuation scheme" (introduced in 1946) ".... encouraged thoughts of retirement even among Labour's sempiternal back-benchers for, after all, Ritchie Macdonald did retire, not die, in the end" [ New Zealand Politics and Social Patterns: selected works by Robert Chapman; page 266 (1999, Victoria University Press, Wellington) ISBN 0 86473 361 5 ] .
References
* Obituary headed "Old-style MP Dies" from New Zealand Herald, Auckland, of 17 March 1987*"New Zealand Parliamentary Record 1840-1984" by J. O. Wilson (1985, 4th edition, Government Printer, Wellington)
*"From the Cradle to the Grave: a biography of Michael Joseph Savage" by Barry Gustafson (1986, Reed Methuen, Auckland) ISBN 0474001385 (with Biographical Appendix)
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