Obituary: Maurice Hurford faithful to many causes

Maurice Hurford and Edith Collishaw were married in England. Photo / Supplied

Maurice Hurford's garage in Bignell St Whanganui still wears the words "Think global, act local. Make New Zealand a better place to live" - the ideas he lived by.

The father of seven died on July 20, and those at his funeral remembered his many causes - peace, the environment, opposition to nuclear weapons and racism and promotion of a local Whanganui currency.

"He had this terrific commitment to social justice issues and he had absolute integrity," Jillian Wychel, who worked alongside Hurford in Project Waitangi, said.

He joined the Whanganui branch of Project Waitangi in the 1990s, and was its treasurer. When it ceased to operate he kept its bank account going.

"He kept nudging us, saying 'What shall we do with the money?' He held onto it for 10 years and in the end when we did the Pākaitore Oral History Project he said 'Let's put the money into that.' That's a measure of his faithfulness and integrity," she said.

Despite being "quite an activist" Hurford was also a quiet and friendly man, his daughter Jean said.

"He would stop and talk to just about anybody, and he would help anybody he could."

He was a keen gardener, and a member of Whanganui's Schola Sacra choir. In Whanganui he stood for council once, and was on the polytechnic's board.

Hurford was born in the English town of Totton on February 7, 1931, the only child in a working class family. He finished school at 14 and worked in a menswear shop, did farm work and gardening, and was a hospital porter and a postman.

He met fellow Labour League of Youth member Edith Collishaw at a seminar in London, and the two married and moved to Southampton. They had three children, the youngest aged six months, when they migrated to New Zealand.

"They had met someone from Riverside Community in Nelson. He decided he would like to live there," Jean said.

They couldn't afford the fare for the six week ship journey, and it was paid by someone else.

The two were at Riverside for about six years, and the birth of three more children. They left when the apple-growing community would not become organic, as Hurford wanted.

The family moved to Tuai, where there is a power station and he worked for the New Zealand Electricity Department. They were there until most of the children reached high school age, when they moved to nearby Wairoa.

In Wairoa a seventh child was born and Hurford joined the Values Party.

He managed first a Caltex and then a Mobil depot, selling bulk fuel.

Then he worked for an icecream distributor, then was unemployed and mowed lawns, before getting a job with the Ministry of Works as a storeman.

He was promoted in the Ministry of Works and the family moved to Te Kuiti. By then he had joined Halt All Racist Tours (HART) and was "totally involved" in the protests of the 1981 Springbok Tour.

"He was always totally involved in whatever he joined up with," Jean said.

He was still employed by the Ministry of Works when the couple moved to Whanganui in the early 1980s. He opposed nuclear weapons and Jean remembers him taking time off work to sell stuffed seals to raise funds for the peace movement.

He was still working when the government department restructured, and he stayed on briefly to store its records. After being made redundant he took early retirement.

In later years Hurford cared for Edith as her health failed. After she went into care his own health began to fail too, and he died aged 88 and still a member of the Green Party.

He is survived by his wife and seven children.