Phillip Albert Amos (4 September 1925 – 8 June 2007) was a New Zealand politician of the
Labour Party.
Biography
Early life
Amos was born in
Wanganui
Whanganui (; ), also spelled Wanganui, is a city in the Manawatū-Whanganui region of New Zealand. The city is located on the west coast of the North Island at the mouth of the Whanganui River, New Zealand's longest navigable waterway. Whangan ...
in 1925, the son of John Amos. He received his education at Otorohanga District High School, later renamed as
Otorohanga College. He attended
Auckland Teachers College followed by the
University of Auckland
, mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work
, established = 1883; years ago
, endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021)
, budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021)
, chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant
, vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...
.
He was a
Royal New Zealand Air Force
The Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) ( mi, Te Tauaarangi o Aotearoa, "The Warriors of the Sky of New Zealand"; previously ', "War Party of the Blue") is the aerial service branch of the New Zealand Defence Force. It was formed from New Zeala ...
(RNZAF) pilot in the Pacific in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. After demobilizing in 1946 he went to Teachers' College and University, where he studied both anthropology and politics. He had a passion for human rights and was strongly opposed to racism, in particular the
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
system in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
and
Rhodesia
Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of S ...
. This lead him to sign up with the
Princes Street branch
Princes Street Labour is a branch of the New Zealand Labour Party in Auckland.
It is part of the Auckland Central (New Zealand electorate), Auckland Central Labour Electorate Committee. It is a "special branch" under the Labour Party constitution ...
of the
Labour Party in 1949 contrasting with the strong National Party affiliation in his father's family.
As a teacher Amos aspired to be his own boss and chose to work at a sole-charge school to avoid taking orders from a principal. He then won promotion to a
two-teacher school
A two-room schoolhouse is a larger version of the one-room schoolhouse, with many of the same characteristics, providing the facility for primary and secondary education in a small community or rural area. While providing the same function as a c ...
which he could also be principal of. He later taught at intermediate and secondary schools as well.
Amos and his wife Jill worked as teachers in isolated communities where they were confronted by the challenges facing Maori and Pacific people due to rural isolation and later urban migration. There they taught student notions such as non-violence, racial equality and belief in parental involvement in schools. Such attitudes were then uncommon in New Zealand education circles.
Political career
In he stood for Labour in the
Rodney electorate, coming second. He was then elected the Member of Parliament for
Manurewa
Manurewa is a major suburb in South Auckland, New Zealand. It was part of Manukau City before the creation of the Auckland super city in 2010. It is located south of the Manukau, Manukau City Centre, and southeast of Auckland CBD. The subur ...
from defeating cabinet minister
Leon Götz
Sir Frank Leon Aroha Götz (12 September 1892 – 14 September 1970) was a New Zealand politician of the National Party. Noted as a colourful character, he was commonly referred to by parliamentary colleagues as "the pirate" as he wore a black ...
. He was appointed Labour's education spokesperson by leader
Norman Kirk
Norman Eric Kirk (6 January 1923 – 31 August 1974) was a New Zealand politician who served as the 29th prime minister of New Zealand from 1972 until his sudden death in 1974.
Born into poverty in Southern Canterbury, Kirk left school at ...
while the party was in opposition.
Kirk appointed Amos
Minister of Education in the
Third Labour Government from 1972 to 1975, and also served as the last
Minister of Island Affairs from 1972 to 1974. As Minister of Education, he passed the
Private Schools Conditional Integration Act which drove the integration of Catholic and private schools with a system which provided them with state funding and worked towards the reduction of class sizes.
Allowing private schools to voluntarily integrate with the state system without sacrificing their particular character was seen as outside the traditional Labour Party policy sphere.
The integration policy was seen as the governments greatest contribution in the education space. Other accomplishments as Minister of Education were doubling the number of children enrolled in pre-school education, expanding community education and technical institute services, increasing opportunity for students to learn Maori, reducing class sizes and provided a standard bursary for all students in tertiary studies.
In he was defeated in an upset in the normally safe Labour seat by
Merv Wellington
Mervyn Langlois Wellington (6 October 1940 – 7 September 2003) was a New Zealand politician of the National Party.
Early life and family
Wellington was born in Inglewood in 1940, and received his education at New Plymouth Boys' High School a ...
. Amos found Kirk's leadership and vision inspiring and thought his death in 1974 to be a crushing blow to Labour. Consequently, he was unsurprised when in 1975 the Labour government was defeated by the National Party.
Later life
In July 1976, less than a year after he had lost his parliamentary seat and cabinet post, he protested the visit of the 20,000 tonne American cruiser in his small yacht the ''Dolphin''. He impeded its entry to
Auckland Harbour
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about It ...
. The cruiser was forced to stop mid-stream to allow grappling hooks to be thrown to pull the ''Dolphin'' clear. Afterwards Amos was arrested and charged with obstruction. He was convicted, but the conviction was overturned on appeal by criminal defense lawyer
David Lange
David Russell Lange ( ; 4 August 1942 – 13 August 2005) was a New Zealand politician who served as the 32nd prime minister of New Zealand from 1984 to 1989.
Lange was born and brought up in Otahuhu, the son of a medical doctor. He became ...
. Amos' protest instantly became a headline-grabbing piece of political drama from which he took a lot of personal satisfaction at bringing public attention to the anti-nuclear issue. Lange would later become Prime Minister and passed a law banning the visit by nuclear propelled or armed ships with Amos' support.
As a friend of the Tanzanian President
Julius Nyerere
Julius Kambarage Nyerere (; 13 April 1922 – 14 October 1999) was a Tanzanian anti-colonial activist, politician, and political theorist. He governed Tanganyika as prime minister from 1961 to 1962 and then as president from 1962 to 1964, aft ...
, he accepted an invitation to be an education advisor as well as a Swahili interpreter/translator, assisting the local police, courts and other government agencies. He lived in a remote part of
Tanzania
Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...
from 1977 to 1988. In a brief return to Auckland in late 1978 he stated that the impacts of the
Muldoon government continuing sporting links with
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
were leading to people in Africa believing that New Zealanders were racist. He was so dismayed by the view of New Zealand in the area that he wrote a
letter to the editor
A letter to the editor (LTE) is a Letter (message), letter sent to a publication about an issue of concern to the reader. Usually, such letters are intended for publication. In many publications, letters to the editor may be sent either through ...
to a widely circulated English language newspaper in his area denying that the people in New Zealand supported the
Apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
system in South Africa. His wife Jill went back to New Zealand in 1979 and they later divorced.
He then worked as a lecturer at a teachers' college before moving with his second wife, a fellow lecturer Odilia, to work a farm near her home village on the remote slopes of
Mount Kilamanjaro (even climbing to the top himself). He made a living by operating a flour mill he built to serve local farmers and also grew bananas, avocados, pineapple, corn, and vegetables on the one hectare plot they owned.
Amos said the period in his life as one of finding new challenges which met his personal philosophies
In 1985 he made headlines in New Zealand again after it was rumoured he had died following a failure to reply to an invitation from David Lange to attend a reception he was also attending in
Dar-es-Salaam
Dar es Salaam (; from ar, دَار السَّلَام, Dâr es-Selâm, lit=Abode of Peace) or commonly known as Dar, is the largest city and financial hub of Tanzania. It is also the capital of Dar es Salaam Region. With a population of over ...
. Amos later said his "disappearance" was just an invention of the media.
His first wife Jill said it was unusual for a former cabinet minister to voluntarily live in such a remote place but also stating "...he always was an unusual politician." A parliamentary colleague
Richard Mayson
Charles Richard Mayson (born 13 October 1941), generally known as Richard Mayson, is a former New Zealand politician of the New Zealand Labour Party, Labour Party.
Biography
Mayson was born in Nelson, New Zealand, Nelson in 1941, the son of ...
who travelled to Tanzania to visit him, described Amos as living the life of a 20th-century version of
David Livingstone
David Livingstone (; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of t ...
.
In 1988 he returned to Auckland and immediately became disillusioned with the then state of the Labour Party and horrified by New Zealand's economic reforms,
Rogernomics
In February 1985, journalists at the ''New Zealand Listener'' coined the term Rogernomics, a portmanteau of "Roger" and "economics" (by analogy with "Reaganomics"), to describe the neoliberal economic policies followed by Roger Douglas. Douglas ...
, which pushed for free market economy and privatisation of state assets. He protested by joining
Jim Anderton
James Patrick Anderton (born Byrne; 21 January 1938 – 7 January 2018) was a New Zealand politician who led a succession of left-wing parties after leaving the Labour Party in 1989.
Anderton's political career began when he was elected to th ...
's
NewLabour Party
The NewLabour Party was a centre-left political party in New Zealand that operated from 1989 to 2000. It was founded by Jim Anderton, an member of parliament (MP) and former president of the New Zealand Labour Party.
NewLabour was established b ...
(NLP) soon after it was formed and later became president of the party.
He told Anderton he was "devastated by the actions of the Labour Party".
He received many invitations to stand for parliament again for the NLP, but declined after consultation with his family who thought he was of better use as a "supportive and wise head for the new breed of NLP politicians."
At the 1992 local-body elections he put himself forward as a candidate for the
Mount Albert ward of the
Auckland City Council
Auckland City Council was the local government authority for Auckland City, New Zealand, from 1871 to 1 November 2010, when it and Auckland's six other city and district councils were amalgamated to form the Auckland Council. It was an elected b ...
. Standing as an
Alliance
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
candidate (the NLP was a component party of the Alliance) he narrowly missed out on being elected by a margin of just 17 votes.
Death
Amos was a heavy smoker most of his life. He had been admitted to hospital several times in the months before he died in Auckland on 8 June 2007 of lung failure, aged 81.
He was survived by his first and second wives and children from both his marriages.
Personal life
He married
Jill Edwina Turner in 1949, the daughter of Ross Turner, and had two sons and one daughter with her. His second marriage was to Odilia.
Odilia Amos died in 2011.
Awards and recognition
Amos was awarded the
New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal
The New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal was a commemorative medal awarded in New Zealand in 1990 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and was awarded to approximately 3,000 people.
Background
The New Zea ...
. In the
1994 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a
Companion of the Queen's Service Order
The Queen's Service Order, established by royal warrant of Queen Elizabeth II on 13 March 1975, is used to recognise "valuable voluntary service to the community or meritorious and faithful services to the Crown or similar services within the pu ...
for public services.
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
:*''This interview was conducted by'' Neville Glasgow. ''This interview is'' cassette # 69 ''in this series.''
*
:*''This interview was conducted by'' Richard Thompson.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Amos, Phil
1925 births
2007 deaths
People from Whanganui
People educated at Ōtorohanga College
New Zealand Labour Party MPs
Members of the Cabinet of New Zealand
New Zealand left-wing activists
New Zealand anti-war activists
New Zealand anti-nuclear activists
New Zealand military personnel of World War II
New Zealand educators
NewLabour Party (New Zealand) politicians
Royal New Zealand Air Force personnel
New Zealand education ministers
New Zealand MPs for Auckland electorates
Companions of the Queen's Service Order
Members of the New Zealand House of Representatives
Unsuccessful candidates in the 1960 New Zealand general election
Unsuccessful candidates in the 1975 New Zealand general election