Mark Fagan
New Zealand politician
Mark Anthony Fagan (17 November 1873 – 31 December 1947) was a New Zealand politician of the Labour Party and a union secretary. He was Speaker of the Legislative Council from 1939 until his death.
Biography
Early life
Fagan was born at Gaffneys Creek, Victoria, Australia, in 1873, and went to school in Waratah, Tasmania until he was 10. He then worked in various Australian towns as a miner. By the time he came to New Zealand about 1900, he had split from his first wife. In the West Coast mining community he was the "voice of thoughtful militancy in the 'Red' federation" of Labour. His second marriage was to Monica McKittrick (née Gardiner), a widow with three children whom he married on 10 September 1917 in Christchurch.
Political career
Fagan was expected by many to stand in the 1918 Grey by-election after the sitting member, Paddy Webb, was jailed for his vocal opposition to conscription, but the Labour Party hierarchy chose Harry Holland from Wellington instead based on the latter's strong showing in the Wellington North by-election a few months prior. Fagan stood in the 1925 general election in the Motueka electorate, but was beaten by the incumbent, Richard Hudson of the Reform Party. In 1928, he moved to Petone in the Hutt Valley and in the following year, he was the organiser for Walter Nash's successful Hutt by-election.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mark Fagan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.