Sonja Davies

Sonja Margaret Loveday Davies ONZ JP (née Vile, 11 November 1923 – 12 June 2005) was a New Zealand trade unionist, peace campaigner, and Member of Parliament. On 6 February 1987 Davies was the third appointee to the Order of New Zealand.[1]

Sonja Davies

ONZ JP
Marching On is the second volume of Sonja Davies' autobiography
Member of the New Zealand Parliament
for Pencarrow
In office
1987 – 1993
Preceded byFraser Colman
Succeeded byTrevor Mallard
Personal details
Born
Sonja Margaret Loveday Vile

(1923-11-11)11 November 1923
Wallaceville, New Zealand
Died12 June 2005(2005-06-12) (aged 81)
Wellington, New Zealand
Political partyLabour
RelationsJob Vile (great-grandfather)

Early life

Sonja Vile was born in the Upper Hutt suburb of Wallaceville in 1923.[2] Her mother was Gwladys Ilma Vile, a nurse,[2] and a granddaughter of Job Vile.[3] Sonja Vile only learned of her father's identity, the Irish army major Gerald Dempsey, when she was 20, but never made any contact. She had four different foster homes before her grandparents took her in, and they lived in Oamaru and Woodville. Aged seven, she went back to her mother in Wellington to live with her younger sister and her new step-father. The family moved to Dunedin, then Auckland, and in 1939 back to Wellington; by then, she also had a younger brother. The speeches by pacifists Ormond Burton and Arch Barrington appealed to her social conscience but caused tension with her parents, and she consequently left home aged 16 supporting herself by work in bookshops.[2]

She married Lindsay Nathan in 1941, and began training as a nurse. She became pregnant after an affair with an American marine and her daughter Penny was born in 1944. Soon afterwards, Sonja was hospitalised for tuberculosis.[2]

Nelson

After divorcing Nathan, she married Charlie Davies in late 1946, who she had known before the war. The following year she was discharged from hospital, and the couple moved to rural Nelson. In 1953 they moved into the city, where she became politically active in a campaign to stop the closure of the railway. She was elected to the Nelson Hospital Board in 1956, and to the Nelson City Council in 1961.[2] In 1963, she was appointed as a justice of the peace.[4]

Involvement in unions

Davies helped to found the Working Women's Council, and in 1974 she became the first female executive of the Federation of Labour.

Member of Parliament
New Zealand Parliament
Years Term Electorate Party
1987–1990 42nd Pencarrow Labour
1990–1993 43rd Pencarrow Labour

Davies became the Labour MP for Pencarrow in 1987 and served two terms, retiring in 1993; Trevor Mallard replaced her.

In 1990, Davies received the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal,[5] and in 1993 she was awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal.[6]

Davies died in Wellington in 2005.[7]

Media

Her autobiography, Bread and Roses: Her Story, (ISBN 1-86953-162-0), was turned into a film in 1994. Directed by Gaylene Preston, the film was also called Bread and Roses. A second volume of autobiography, Marching On (ISBN 1-86941-296-6) was published in 1997.

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gollark: Anyway, it's perfectly fine as long as no pages with `repl` in the name get visited.
gollark: Leaving HTML support on on the public demo instance was in fact a poor choice of mine.
gollark: With some fiddling, you can probably make replicators which piggyback on other ones.

References
  1. "The Order of New Zealand" (12 February 1987) 20 New Zealand Gazette 705 at 709.
  2. Else, Anne. "Sonja Davies". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
  3. "Vile: John D. Vile and Ann Foster". Retrieved 29 May 2015.
  4. Lambert, Max, ed. (1991). Who's Who in New Zealand (12th ed.). Auckland: Reed. p. 152. ISBN 0-7900-0130-6.
  5. Taylor, Alister; Coddington, Deborah (1994). Honoured by the Queen – New Zealand. Auckland: New Zealand Who's Who Aotearoa. p. 117. ISBN 0-908578-34-2.
  6. "The New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal 1993 – register of recipients". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 26 July 2018. Retrieved 18 September 2018.
  7. Taylor, Kevin (20 June 2005). "Sonja Davies – 'A very great New Zealander'". New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
New Zealand Parliament
Preceded by
Fraser Colman		 Member of Parliament for Pencarrow
1987–1993		 Succeeded by
Trevor Mallard
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