Dick Scott

Profile
Dick Scott has a fine grasp on multi-cultural issues and writes about them as a humanist. His knowledge of history, both political and social, and his personal experiences as a trade union activist, provide books that have made a significant contribution to New Zealand’s literature.

Selected published works
Ask That Mountain: The Story of Parihaka, 1975; Dick Scott: A Radical Writer’s Life, 2004.

Biography
Dick (Richard George) Scott, historian and journalist, was born in Palmerston North in 1923. He completed a Diploma of Agriculture at Massey College in 1943. He has worked as the farming editor of the Labour daily, Southern Cross, as a publicity officer for the PSA, edited the union publication Transport Worker and was a secretary for the Saddlers, Riggers and Related Trades Industrial Union from 1953–61. He also edited and published the Wine Review, 1964–78. Scott was president of the Auckland Branch of PEN 1977–79, and a member of the New Zealand Literary Fund Advisory Committee 1989–91.

His first book 151 Days (1952) was an account of the Waterfront dispute of 1951. The Parihaka Story (1954) was the first of two books about the Maori pacifist leader Te Whiti, Ask That Mountain (1975) being a much fuller account. He wrote several histories of aspects of the Auckland region, including In Old Mount Albert: Being a History of the District (1961); Stock in Trade: Hellaby’s First Hundred Years (1973), the history of a meat company; A Stake in the Country: Assid Abraham Corban (1977, 2002), the biography of a pioneering wine-maker; and Fire on the Clay: The Pakeha Comes to West Auckland (1979). Seven Lives on Salt River (1987), has a strong bi-cultural emphasis. It is an account of settlement around the Kaipara district and relates the histories of seven families. It won the New Zealand Book Award for Non-fiction (1988) and the J.M. Sherrard prize for regional history. More general histories were Inheritors of a Dream: A Pictorial History of New Zealand (1962) and Winemakers of New Zealand (1964). Later Scott turned to Pacific history. He wrote Years of the Pooh Bah: A Cook Islands History (1991) and Would a Good Man Die? Niue Island, New Zealand and the Late Mr Larsen (1993), an account of the murder of a colonial official and its aftermath. Dick Scott: A Radical Writer's Life (2004) is his illuminating autobiography. Accessible and beautifully written, it focuses on his career as an historian and writer. It retraces his early life in Manawatu, his role in the Communist Party and the 1951 Waterfront lockout, and gives the background to his championing of waterside workers, Parihaka Maori, Pacific Islanders and Dalmation winemakers.

Dick Scott was awarded an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2001. He was made a Waitakere City Laureate in 2006. In 2007 he received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement.