Lillian Rita Smith (née Hampton, 9 May 1912 – 7 June 1993) was a notable New Zealand communist and political activist. She was born in

Perth, Western Australia Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

, Australia in 1912. Her parents, Ann Bawden Moses and Henry Hampton, had married in

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

in 1898 before their emigration to Australia. Hampton had four sisters and two brothers; she was the second-youngest of them. Trained as a nurse, she worked as a parlour maid for a wealthy family during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

. This opened her eyes to "the contradictions of capitalism", and she joined the

Communist Party of Australia The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian political party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membership and influence having been i ...

in 1936. In December 1935, she married Ted Smith in

Kellerberrin, Western Australia Kellerberrin is a town in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia, east of Perth on the Great Eastern Highway. The town serves as a stop on the '' Prospector'' and ''MerredinLink'' rural train services. It is also located on the Golden Pipe ...

, and they had one son. They moved to Auckland in 1941 and joined the

Communist Party of New Zealand The Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) was a communist party in New Zealand which existed from 1921 to 1994. Although spurred to life by events in Soviet Russia in the aftermath of World War I, the party had roots in pre-existing revolutiona ...

. She was on the party's national committee for nearly fifty years, and worked full-time for the party for two decades. Over the years, she stood at local and national elections at numerous occasions. She first stood in a

general election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

in , when she contested the electorate and came a distant third. Smith remained politically active all her life. When one ward of Starship Hospital was occupied by protesters in November 1992, Smith was one of the people arrested; she was 80 at the time. The speech she gave at her trial about public health cuts was described as "brilliant". Smith died on 7 June 1993 at Auckland City Hospital. Her husband had died in 1986. They were survived by their son.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Lillian Rita 1912 births 1993 deaths New Zealand communists People from Perth, Western Australia Australian emigrants to New Zealand Unsuccessful candidates in the 1949 New Zealand general election