Local Politics
Seddon's first real involvement with politics was with various local bodies, such as the Arahura Road Board. He was later elected to the council of Westland Province, representing Arahura. Gradually, Seddon became known along the West Coast as an advocate for miners' rights and interests, and he was frequently consulted over various political issues.
In 1877, Seddon was elected as the first Mayor of Kumara, which was to become a prominent goldmining town. He had staked a claim in Kumara the previous year, and had shortly afterwards moved his business there. Despite occasional financial troubles (he filed for bankruptcy in 1878), his political career prospered.
Read more about this topic: Richard Seddon
Famous quotes containing the words local and/or politics:
“To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self- congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.”
—Clifford Geertz (b. 1926)
“Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who’s out in front of nobody?... Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)