Socred’s oldest activist — and optimist

Press, 12 February 1982, Page 13

Socred’s oldest activist — and optimist

By

KARREN BEANLAND

Ann Coales, who will be aged 90 in 1984, hopes and expects to see a Social Credit Government in New Zealand before she dies.

She is "by far" the oldest Social Credit "activist." She canvassed for the Sydenham candidate. Mr Richard Bach, in the general election last November, preparing and distributing pamphlets and door-knocking in the area around her Spreydon home. A spry grandmother of three. Mrs Coates says her 80s have been the happiest years of her life. She does not yet feel at home with elderly people and cannot understand why some people find old age “a misery." Her recipe for enjoying life is to keep on learning.

"In 1917 a lot of us were talking together about what we were going to do for the rest of our lives. I said I was going to keep on learning. I was laughed at — but I’m the only one still living."

Mrs ' Coates first came across the idea of continuing education when she attended an economics lecture at the Workers Educational Association in Dunedin shortly after its formation in 1915. She still works for the W.E.A. in Christchurch two days a week and is a member of its Wider Horizons committee.

That lecture about 65 years ago introduced Mrs Coates not only to the idea of continuing education, but also to economic reform. Her conviction about the need for monetary change developed long before Major C. H. Douglas visited New Zealand and Social Credit became a political force. "Although my father was very conservative in outlook, he used to say there was something wrong with the money system," she says.

She studied economics at the University of Otago and Dunedin Teachers’ Training College, and the only lecture she remembers is one on monetary reform.

Monetary reform is the chief attraction of Social Credit for Mrs Coates.

"People rubbish it. but if there is a better way why don't they come up with it?" she asks. "I think it would work. This system is not working."

She firmly believes the electoral dice are loaded against Social Credit, citing the last election result as an example. Nevertheless, she is

optimistic about the party’s future, saying slow growth will lead to eventual success. “Social Credit must have more lives than a cat — our death has been predicted so often. For a thing to last for so long with so many bashings, it must have something." Mrs Coates was one of those who argued that the Social Credit Association, which was formed in 1953, should be political rather than work as a pressure group. "Most of us younger people in the association just felt that we weren't getting anywhere and we would have to do it ourselves,” she says. She thinks it is good that the party has become more pragmatic, adding that the “pure" Social Credit promulgated by Douglas “was for the 1930 s and wouldn't work now."

Mrs Coates attended her first political meeting in the Wallace electorate when she was aged about five or six.

“Mother had to go and took us with her — there were no baby-sitters. I sat there gaga," she says. "I was playing speeches for days after and being a nuisance. I think that was the start of it."

It seems that Mrs Coates was ahead of her time in more than politics. “I was born a year after women got the vote so I was born a feminist and still am." she says. “But feminists now have gone anti-man and I think that is quite wrong.” Although she was born in Waihola, 40km south-west of Dunedin, she grew up in the “back blocks” on a farm south of Manapouri. The eldest of three daughters, she did not go to school until 1904. when she was nine. Her mother taught her to read until she was confined to bed for seven months after the birth of her third child. Mrs Coates is not related to the New Zealand Prime Minister who shared the same name, but she does see herself as a child of her environment.

“My father had a runholding with a lot of staff. The amount that was' dis-

cussed around our table was astonishing. Children were seen and not heard then — but I could listen. I did learn an awful lot and I don’t think it hurt me to go to school so late.”

Life on a remote farm was hard and lonely, she recalls. Her mother had to make all the basic requirements of the family, such as bread and butter. Washing was carried to a creek in kerosene cans. "There was one winter I remember when my mother didn't see another woman for six months," she says. Her mother was very keen on giving the children a good education and they had a teacher for four years, until the neighbouring children were too old. Then her mother leased a house in Otautau, so they could go to school there.

"It was then quite a big town. I worked very hard and was dux of the school." says Mrs Coates. “My father was not very keen. He w r as always disappointed that I was not a boy and he was infuriated when he found he had a bluestocking on his hands — a woman who was interested in books and learning." She moved oh to Southland Girls’ High School in Invercargill. One of her teachers there was Miss Mary King, who was later to be one of the founders of the Social Credit Association. Mrs Coates remembers there were few choices open to women in those days. They stayed at home until "Mr Right" came along or remained an “old maid" looking after the family. "I thought that was prettyunfair. I didn’t dare say it, but I didn’t want my life to be like that. I wanted a career and didn’t want to be married young," she says.

She wanted to work for the Otago Daily Times, but her father ruled out such an occupation. No daughter of his would work in an office or newspaper, she says. So she became a teacher.

At university and teachers’ college she studied physics and chemistry. subjects which were not taught at a girls' high school. She wanted to take biology, but was not allowed in the class.

One of the first graduates of the home science course in Dunedin, she left Southland in 1921 to work in Canterbury. She married at the age of 30 and had one daughter.

returning to teaching in Ashburton at the start of World War 11.

It was in Ashburton that Mrs Coates, a Labour supporter since 1935. first began working for Social Credit. Most of her work for the league has been done since she moved to Christchurch after the death of her husband, Samuel, in 1968. Last year she was made a life member of the league, an honour which is given to few.

One thing Mrs Coates has not done in her busy life is run for Parliament. She was asked to stand as a Social Credit candidate in 1960. but could not do so because of her family circumstances at the time. She says she would

have liked to stand, adding that there should be more women in Parliament. Mrs Coates never abandoned her ambition to become a journalist. She took up writing when she was 55, producing short stories and travel articles which have been printed in local newspapers. Last year she won the Jean Adams Cup for journalism from the W.E.A. for an article on Colonel S. J. E. Closey. another Social Creditor, who died last year at the age of 90. She has also been made a life member of the W.E.A. writers' association. Mrs Coates thanks her mother for the third source of strength she has found in her life.

"It is through her that I have had a sort of religious streak, though at times it has been pretty weak. She didn’t talk about it. but she lived it. She was a very good woman. She didn't ram it down your throat." Mrs Coates who did not retire from teaching until she was aged 74, cannot claim to have always enjoyed the best health. She has ari artificial hip and has been deaf for 14 years. She was advised to leave Southland because the climate did not suit her. "I don’t think it was that at all,” she says. "I think I didn't know how to live. I've found out that my brain has to work or my body deteriorates."