Percy Dowse

Percy Dowse CBE JP (1898 – 9 December 1970) was a New Zealand politician. He was mayor of Lower Hutt from 1950 to 1970. He was appointed a CBE in 1965.

Early life

He was born in Lancashire and educated at Wigan Technical College. His coal miner father James was killed when he was 8 and his mother with three children got compensation of only £140; Percy thought that "things didn’t seem to be quite adding up". In West Alton Percy was secretary of the Trades and Labour Council and Organising Secretary of the Independent Labour Party. He became a mines inspector. He married Mary Kirkman in 1922, and the voyage to New Zealand was their honeymoon (they had considered migrating to India instead). They had a son and daughter together. Dowse served in the Royal Air Force during World War II.

Political career

He was president of the Lower Hutt branch of the Labour Party when he stood for the Lower Hutt Borough Council and the Power Board, and his wife Mary stood for the Hospital Board in 1935. He was a councillor from 1935 to 1938, and then a Lower Hutt City Council councillor from 1947 to 1950.

He was mayor of Lower Hutt from 1950 to 1970, and on other local bodies e.g. the Wellington Regional Planning Council. During his tenure, the Town Hall and War Memorial Library and several local community centres were built.

In 1951 the new Labour council under Dowse faced its first challenge with the proposal to relieve High Street congestion by putting a new road through Riddiford Park, linking Barraud Street (then a cul-de-sac) to Kings Crescent. The alternative was a road alongside the stopbank which the City Engineer said was too expensive and of dubious value. The Barraud Street extension (now Queen's Drive) required moving forty houses from north of Laings Road, and according to the previous mayor William Gregory: "Riddiford Park was one of the most beautiful spots in New Zealand, and its whole character would change if a road was put through it". Five councillors voted against the road, but it went through after an empowering act was passed by Parliament.

The city now found it had a tenacious mayor, determined to drag it up out of the village mentality of the twenties in order to face up to the needs of the fifties.

During this period of maturation (the mayor was) a man who did not make mere platform pronouncements, and who was astute in political backroom negotiation, Percy Dowse was a ruthlessly practical visionary, a firm man in negotiation, and one who preferred to listen before he spoke. Although his public manner was low-keyed, no-one left his office with any other impression than that he was a quick-witted captain who ran a tight ship.

Death

The Dowse Art Museum.

He died of cancer in Hutt Hospital in 1970. His wife Mary had died in a car accident in 1964. Dowse Drive in Maungaraki and The Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt are named for him and his wife.