The Reverend The Reverend is an style (manner of address), honorific style most often placed before the names of Christian clergy and Minister of religion, ministers. There are sometimes differences in the way the style is used in different countries and c ...

Colin Graham Scrimgeour (30 January 1903 – 16 January 1987), also known as Uncle Scrim or Scrim, was a New Zealand

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related Christian denomination, denominations of Protestantism, Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John W ...

Minister and broadcaster.

Biography

Life and ministry

Born in Wairoa, Hawke's Bay, he entered the Methodist Ministry in 1923 and concentrated on social work. He was

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about I ...

Methodist City Missioner for six years. After broadcasting from Radio Station 1ZR – run by the firm of

Lewis Eady Lewis Alfred Eady (12 May 1891 – 21 April 1965) was a New Zealand music retailer, company director and benefactor. Early life Eady was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on 12 May 1891. After leaving school in 1906, he worked for his fathe ...

– he established the Friendly Road Broadcasting Station 1ZB in 1933, associated with the Friendly Road church ( Aunt Daisy broadcast on these stations, and they supported the Labour Party). Shortly before the 1935 election on Sunday 24 November, an address by Uncle Scrim which was expected to urge listeners to vote Labour was jammed by the

Post Office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...

. The minister in charge of the P&T Department, Adam Hamilton, was blamed, although he denied responsibility. As a close friend of

Michael Joseph Savage Michael Joseph Savage (23 March 1872 – 27 March 1940) was a New Zealand politician who served as the 23rd prime minister of New Zealand, heading the First Labour Government from 1935 until his death in 1940. Savage was born in the Colony ...

and John A. Lee of the

First Labour Government The first MacDonald ministry of the United Kingdom lasted from January to November 1924. The Labour Party, under Ramsay MacDonald, had failed to win the general election of December 1923, with 191 seats, although the combined Opposition tall ...

which came to power in 1935, Scrimgeour became Controller of the government-run National Commercial Broadcasting Service.

Peter Fraser Peter Fraser (; 28 August 1884 – 12 December 1950) was a New Zealand politician who served as the 24th prime minister of New Zealand from 27 March 1940 until 13 December 1949. Considered a major figure in the history of the New Zealand Lab ...

– an enemy of Scrimgeour – succeeded Savage as Prime Minister after the latter's death in 1940. In the 1943 elections, Scrimgeour stood against Fraser in as an

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independe ...

candidate. He performed so well that Fraser (hitherto expected to win his seat comfortably) "only sneaked back on a minority vote".Erik Olssen, '' John A. Lee'', University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 1977, p. 189

Entertainment – radio and television career

Scrimgeour was suspended and then sacked in 1943. He moved to Australia, and worked in radio and television there, helping establish the Mercury Theatre in Sydney, New South Wales with Peter Finch. He also worked for a time in (

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a ...

) China before he retired to New Zealand in 1968.

Awards

Scrimgeour was awarded the King George VI Coronation Medal in 1937 and the Chinese Star of Friendship (NZ Roll of Honour, p. 949).

Legacy

Mervyn Thompson wrote a 1976 songplay about the Great Depression, ''Songs to Uncle Scrim''.

Notes

References

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