Gordon Coates - Later Political Career

Later Political Career

After the defeat of the coalition government, Coates withdrew from public attention to a large extent. He experienced a period of financial difficulty resulting from the sudden loss of income, but his situation improved when a group of friends presented him with a large sum of money as thanks for his long service.

When United and Reform merged to establish the National Party in May 1936, Coates sat as a National MP. Some of his supporters urged him to seek the party's leadership, but others within the party believed that both Coates and Forbes remained too closely associated with the country's economic problems, and that the new party needed fresh faces. Forbes supported Charles Wilkinson for the leadership, but Coates and his supporters rejected this choice, going so far as to threaten a re-establishment of the Reform Party if it went through. Eventually, Adam Hamilton, a former Reform member, won the leadership ballot by one vote.

With the outbreak of World War II, the Labour government invited both Coates and Adam Hamilton to join a special War Cabinet. Their acceptance created a rift between them and their National Party colleagues — the Party replaced Hamilton as leader over the issue, and relations between Coates and the new leader, Sidney Holland, deteriorated. Coates strongly believed partisanship misplaced during the war, and attempted to convince both Labour and National to work together. He expressed pleasure when the two parties established a joint War Administration, with the War Cabinet serving as its executive body. The War Administration quickly collapsed, with National choosing to withdraw — Coates openly criticised National's decision, and remained in the War Cabinet. At this point, Coates decided that he would contest the next election as an independent National candidate, not as the National Party's officially-nominated candidate.

Coates' health, however, had begun to fail. He had smoked heavily for most of his life, and had also developed heart trouble. On 27 May 1943 he collapsed and died in his office in Wellington. The Labour Party eulogised him more strongly than did his National Party colleagues, although politicians from all sides of the House paid tribute to him.