Frank Langstone

Photograph of Frank Langstone taken in 1935.

Frank Langstone (1881–1969) was a New Zealand Member of Parliament, Cabinet Minister and High Commissioner to Canada.

Early life

Langstone was born in Bulls in 1881.^[1] He was a shearer and was involved in the Shearers' Union in the King Country. Later, he was the proprietor of a railway restaurant in Taumarunui, and a fish-and-chip shop.^[2][1] He was involved with setting up the left-wing Maoriland Worker in 1910.

Political career

Langstone first contested the Waimarino electorate in the 1919 election, but was beaten by the incumbent, Robert William Smith of the Liberal Party.^[3][4] Langstone and Smith contested Waimarino at the 1922 election and this time, Langstone was successful. He held the electorate until 1925 and again from 1928 to 1946.^[5] He then held the Roskill electorate from 1946 to 1949.^[5] He was Minister of Lands (1935–1942), Commissioner of State Forests (1935–1942), Minister of External Affairs (1940–1942),^[6] Native Minister (1940–1942), and Minister for the Cook Islands (1940–1942).^[7] In 1942 he became High Commissioner to Canada.^[1] Langstone was President of the New Zealand Labour Party from 1933 to 1934.^[1] In 1935, he was awarded the King George V Silver Jubilee Medal.^[8]

He was described as "a cheerful, shortish extrovert with a better brain than most people thought he had". As he was deaf, he was allowed to listen to debates in the chamber on a small radio with headphones. When a dull back-bencher was on, he was known to tune into livelier commercial stations, when he would beat time to the music with his hands.^[2]

In 1949 Langstone resigned from the Labour Party over the issue of peacetime conscription.^[1] Later that year he stood in the Roskill electorate as an Independent but was defeated. In 1957 and 1960 he stood for Social Credit in Roskill.^[1]

Death

Langstone died in 1969.^[1]

Further reading

• Hobbs, Leslie (1967). The Thirty-Year Wonders. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs. 
• The 1949 General Election by S.E. Fraser (1967, MA Thesis-University of Otago, Dunedin)
• The Last Years of the First Labour Government 1945-1949 by R. McLennan (1963, MA Thesis-University of Auckland, Auckland)
• The Expulsion of John A. Lee and its Effects on the Development of the Labour Party by B.S. Taylor (1970, MA Thesis-University of Canterbury, Christchurch)

Notes

References

• Gustafson, Barry (1980). Labour's path to political independence: The Origins and Establishment of the New Zealand Labour Party, 1900–19. Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press. ISBN 0-19-647986-X. 

• Wilson, James Oakley (1985) [First published in 1913]. New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840–1984 (4th ed.). Wellington: V.R. Ward, Govt. Printer. OCLC 154283103.