Arthur Nelson Field was a New Zealand journalist, writer and political activist. Born in Nelson he was the first son of four children born to Tom Field and Jessica Black. His father was managing director of Wilkins and Field Hardware in his native city, which his grandfather had founded, and served as a Nelson City Councillor and Reform Partymember of parliament for the electorate from to 1919. Field took up journalism and worked as a reporter for The Evening Post, Taranaki Herald, Poverty Bay Herald and Melbourne Argus, before returning to Nelson in 1907. He served as a Wellington Dominion columnist for the next 21 years. There was a break during this period when he served as a Royal Navy sub-lieutenant and adjutant at Portsmouth, and on board RNV Spenser in the North Sea. He returned to New Zealand when discharged in 1914.
Career and associations
While working as a journalist and serving in the Navy, Field became involved in right-wing politics. In 1909 he published The Citizen, an early far right publication which upheld motherhood, eugenics and monetary reform, and opposed "Maori Obstructionism" for seven years, 1912-1919. After that period, he also became involved with "The Britons", a group that specialised in publishing New Zealand editions of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and published a New Zealand edition himself. During the Second World War, he was kept under surveillance by the Security Intelligence Bureau of New Zealand'sDepartment of External Affairs. Field won later "acclaim" from kindred anti-socialists such as the League of Empire Loyalists and the late Eric Butler of the Australian League of Rights. Marcus van Rooij wrote a paper on A.N. Field's influence on Australian neofascism, suggesting his conspiracy theory discourse impacted on other such Australian organisations during the Depression era. In particular, The Truth About the Slump enjoyed widespread circulation and stimulated the interest of organisations such as the Guild of Watchmen of Australia, the Australian Catholic Truth Society, the League of Truth, the British Australian Racial Body, and Evangelical Publishing Company of New South Wales. Australian anti-Semite Patricia Lewin cited Truth About the Slump in her tract, The Key, as did numerous other Australian Social Credit and Douglas Credit Party figures that based their work on the monetary theories of C.H. Douglas. Rooij designated him the "Kiwi theoretician of the Australian Radical Right". Field was a creationist. He authored the book Why Colleges Breed Communists. It was republished in 1971 under the title The Evolution Hoax Exposed. Despite the recognition of his work in Australia and the United States, and the circulation of his books within those countries, Field preferred to work from his isolated Nelson homestead. In his later years, Field wrote a series of self-published tracts on his interpretations of economics, anti-socialist articles about the New Zealand Labour Party and trade union movement, and related matters. Some were republished in the United States in the early 1960s. Field died aged 81 in a private hospital in Nelson. His collected tracts and monographs were later deposited in the Alexander Turnbull Library of the National Library of New Zealand in 1968.
