1940: Savage Death
March 27, 2020
By AHNZ
Today in New Zealand history, 27 March, 1940, the death of New Zealand Prime Minister Michael J Savage (69yo) in office during the early hours of the morning. This brought the Labour Party Conference being held in Wellington to a shocking end.
Usually depicted as the gentle Uncle Fluffy with a bag of ‘Doctor Who’ Jelly Babies to share with everyone, I prefer this image (left.) It shows him for what he really was, the ruthless and hostile Mafia Lord that any Prime Minister definitively is.
We recognise that our war memorials became the surrogate grave for families denied that comfort. Well, MJ Savage was a walking surrogate Grave on Legs in my opinion. Youngsters loved him, so too the elderly because he would be the retirement plan they thought died with their sons in the war.
New Zealanders looked upon the crowd-pleasing popular old man as “..everybody’s bachelor uncle in person, the rich and benevolent bachelor uncle children might dream of and seldom have in real life.”*
Why didn’t they have such a one in real life? Because WW1 killed that man, that’s why. Had your uncle, your brother, your father not been wiped out in government wars or government plagues then in your fantasy imagination you would have had a man in your life like Uncle Michael.
Thus the mediocre socialist from Australia is projected upon by those with a hole in their lives. At a certain point, 1933 let’s say, Savage steps into the vacuum and becomes Uncle Mike.
Not for his personality or his intelligence, nothing like that…
“It almost seemed, indeed, as if the public created the Savage legend rather than the man himself.”*
B
ingo.
And as we see to this day, his Labour 1.0 manufactured image is conjured up. There it was this week when the Labour 6.0 Prime Minister addressed the nation. Savage’s Uncle Fluffy mug in the background.
—
* Ref. Hobbes (1967)
Ref. Also 1936: Savage’s Unconventional Family
Image ref. Savage thug; Alexander Turnbull Library; National Library
Image ref. Ardern heads into new territory with Covid-19 ‘address to the nation’; Newsroom
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