Obituary: Sonja Davies

Sonja Davies, Order of New Zealand (ONZ), unionist. Died aged 81.

Sonja Davies managed during a long career of championing people's - and especially women's - rights to be both an activist and a pacifist.

Her pacifist side dated way back. At 16, during World War II, she ran away from her Otago home because her stepfather, with whom she later became best of friends, considered that all pacifists should be shot.

Born Sonja Dempsey and brought up in a family of staunch National Party supporters, she had many such rebellious moments - "probably because I'm half-Irish", she used to explain with a laugh.

By 1955 the red-haired young woman was also an activist, sitting in protest with others on the Nelson railway line, which they did not want closed.

They failed, but captured much attention through such direct action.

Ms Davies became the sort of woman whom people seldom found at home. She would be out representing people's interests - from trade unions, councils and women's affairs, to anti-nuclear campaigns.

An early skirmish came during her nursing days, which involved back-breaking work and long hours. Those in authority also tended to turn a blind eye to nurses' high rates of infection from working in the tuberculosis wards.

Her sensible proposal to form a nurses' union was squashed by a God-like matron who, Ms Davies said in her autobiography Bread and Roses, "made it sound as if I was starting up a brothel".

She ended up with TB herself, the disease troubling her most of her life.

Ms Davies was tireless in her advocacy on improving attitudes towards women in society, home, workplaces, schools - even the Federation of Labour, which was then heavily male-dominated.

When she first rose to speak at trade union conferences the men would sigh heavily, pointedly read newspapers "or go out for a beer".

After some 14 years she was finally elected the vice-president of the federation in 1983, and was left clutching notes of a gracious speech conceding defeat as the conference gave her a standing ovation.

Ms Davies also had two terms as the Labour MP for Pencarrow.

As Rogernomics unfolded she remained generally mute out of loyalty to the party but was clearly unhappy at the economic strategy.

Sonja Davies knew tragedy in her life. Her daughter Penny died in 1994 after a long battle with motor neurone disease. The girl's father was a United States Marine Ms Davies met while nursing. He died in the war in the Pacific.

Her son, Mark, died in an accident at Turangi in 1978 and her trade-unionist husband, Charlie Davies, died in 1971.