Jim Thorn

Thorn was born in Christchurch, educated at Christchurch Boys' High School. He worked in the Addington Railway Workshops and as a journalist. Thorn was a bugler in the third New Zealand Contingent to the Boer War in 1900–1901; the experience turned him into a pacifist.[1] He was engaged in trade union and party activity, including 1909–1913 in England and Scotland.

He unsuccessfully stood for the Independent Political Labour League in the Christchurch South electorate in the 1905 and 1908 election. In 1907–08, he was President of the Independent Political Labour League.[1] In 1909, he went to England and then Scotland and worked for labour parties there.[2]

In 1914, he moved to Palmerston North and unsuccessfully stood in the 1914 election in the Palmerston electorate representing the new Social Democratic Party against the incumbent David Buick and two others, with Buick getting elected.[1][3]

He met his future wife while living in Palmerston North; Margaret Anderson (1897–1969), 15 years his junior, who had joined the Social Democratic Party with her father. The Thorns married on 8 December 1917 in Wellington.[4] He was imprisoned for opposing conscription in World War I.[1]

He was president of the Labour Party (1929–1931), and vice-president at various times (1925–1927; 1928–1929; 1936–1938), and national secretary (1932–1936).[5]

He unsuccessfully stood in the Otaki electorate in the 1931 election.[2] He represented the electorate of Thames from 1935 to 1946, when the seat was abolished.[6] From 1943 to 1946 Thorn was Under-Secretary to the Prime Minister.[7] In the 1946 election, he contested the Otaki electorate again, but was beaten by National's Jimmy Maher.[8]

From 1947 to 1950 he was High Commissioner to Canada, and was President of UNESCO in 1949.[2] In 1952 he wrote a biography of Peter Fraser and later published a history of the First Labour Government.[7]

Thorn died in 1956 and his ashes were buried at Karori Cemetery, Wellington.[9]