People

Michael Hirschfeld, President of the New Zealand Labour Party, NZLP, died in Wellington on 5 January at the age of 54, following a lengthy battle with diabetes.

The party's deputy leader Michael Cullen commented: 'The enthusiasm, commitment and drive he brought to all of his endeavours, in business and community work as well as in politics, will be sorely missed.'

A founding member of the Young Labour Party in 1967, Hirschfeld was the youngest person ever to gain a seat on the NZLP's executive at the age of 27 four years later. He captured the presidency in 1995.

Born in Wellington he was educated in England and New Zealand. A Jewish intellectual, he was the son of parents who had emigrated from Palestine in 1940. While he maintained close ties with the Wellington Jewish community, he saw himself as secular.

Hirschfeld was a man of multiple interests. At one point in his early career he was a part-time presenter for a radio show. He was a dynamic businessman with interests in his family plumbing business and in shipping. His passion was the theatre, but he was also a member of Amnesty International.

He is survived by his wife and three children.

A plaque was laid in memory of Bernt Carlsson, former Secretary General of the SI, on the tenth anniversary of his death aboard flight Pan Am 103 by the SI Secretariat at a ceremony in the Garden of Remembrance in Lockerbie, Scotland.