page_title: The Lee Affair
section_title: Rebellion
hierarchical_section_title: The Lee Affair / Rebellion
caption_attribution_description: English: Cartoon shows a man reacting in surprise as New Zealand politician John A Lee is thrown on to the ground through the window of the Labour Party Easter Conference in 1940. Lee's publications ("Lee letter", and "Psycho-pathology in politics") are thrown out with him.
context_page_description: The Lee Affair was an event that transpired in the late 1930s in New Zealand revolving around Labour Party MP John A. Lee's repeated vocal, public critiquing of his party's leadership. The affair culminated with Lee's expulsion from the Labour Party who then formed his own Democratic Labour Party causing a sizeable rift in party membership. The events have been described as the Labour Party's first major crisis of identity, the nature of which and manner of its resolution significantly affecting the subsequent development of the party for decades. Lee's biographer Erik Olssen stated that the Lee Affair "marked a key battle in the triumph of authority over democracy."
context_section_description: When Savage relented, to the extent of increasing by one the number of cabinet ministers, he selected David Wilson (and not Lee) as the extra minister. To Lee's fury his fellow dissidents nominated Gervan McMillan rather than himself for the position, Wilson winning 19 votes to 15. In December 1938 the infamous "Lee Letter" appeared. It contained many attacks on the financial orthodoxy and over-cautiousness of Walter Nash. It received wide publicity and led many in the public to question Labour's unanimity. Lee professed to have written it under the supposition that it would be seen only by Labour members, not the populace.
  The Labour National Executive called Lee to appear before it, and gave him warnings about the consequences to himself of such behaviour. However, Lee continued his attacks on the leadership, more and more publicly. It was to be an article bitterly accusing the cancer-stricken Savage of being "mentally as well as physically ill" that proved to be Lee's downfall. In a 1939 article entitled 'Psycho-pathology in politics', Lee wrote:
  An odd politician becomes physically, becomes mentally sick ... sycophants pour flattery on him ... He becomes vain of mind and short of temper. Whatever this problem of what I call pathology in politics occurred, except that the party managed to cut off the diseased limb, it went down to crashing defeat.
  Party and public alike were aghast that someone would write so critically of a prime minister who was widely known to be desperately sick. Lee was then sacked as an under-secretary by Savage and over 50 party branches endorsed Lee's expulsion. Without any preliminary notice, his expulsion from the Labour Party was moved at the 1940 annual conference. Following a rancorous deliberation by members, the motion was carried by a vote of 546 to 344. Lee's final conduct made it near impossible for many of his sympathisers to defend him, even if he retained a certain following among some supporters who continued to agree with his criticisms of cabinet autocracy. Savage died a day later.
caption: A cartoon showing Lee thrown out the window of the 1940 Labour Party Conference.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4520", "Image ImageLength": "3650", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "LZW", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image StripOffsets": "202", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image RowsPerStrip": "3650", "Image StripByteCounts": "22558013", "Image XResolution": "24003/250", "Image YResolution": "24003/250", "Image Software": "Onstream Trapeze 9.71", "Image ExifOffset": "2286", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}