Democratic Labour Party (New Zealand)

The division was primarily between moderates, such as Michael Joseph Savage, Peter Fraser, and Walter Nash, and radicals like Lee.

Lee and his allies criticised the "cautious" approach taken by the party's leadership, and advocated a considerably stronger policy line.

MPs sympathetic to Lee’s credit ideas were Arnold Nordmeyer, Bill Barnard, Clyde Carr, Gervan McMillan and also Bill Anderton, Dan Sullivan, Gordon Hultquist and William John Lyon (Hultquist and Lyon both died while serving in World War II).

In the 1943 elections, the DLP fielded 52 candidates including Lee, Keith Hay, Alfred E. Allen, Colin Scrimgeour (who stood against Peter Fraser in Wellington Central) and Norman Douglas.

Leo Steve Dromgoole (RNZAF) got Captain Paul Lenihan (USMC) to drop election leaflets from a C-47 on a “test flight” over Auckland and Devonport on 22 September [5] Barnard stood for re-election as an independent rather than a DLP candidate, but was also defeated.