His family experienced hardships after his father was prematurely retired from his job at the Railway Department after organising employees against salary reductions.
[3] Bill Sutch (another outspoken leftist public servant) said Lewin was an able, brash, determined and aggressive left winger who was "difficult to intimidate or subdue".
He led the PSA in fighting a vigorous campaign to catch up, listing demands for increases would have cost some £2 million according to government estimates in 1948.
Fintan Patrick Walsh, who was a member of the Stabilization Commission, also warned that if the public servants maximum demand were accepted an Arbitration Court award would follow giving increases to all salary and wage earners, at a cost of some £45 million.
Dick Campbell, Chairman of the Public Service Commission, warned employees that anyone attending a stop-work meeting was liable to be dismissed.
Then, after seeking legal advice, he issued a public statement about Communist efforts to use industrial disputes for their own disruptive purposes and at the same time published Holmes' letter and Lewin's notes as evidence.
Holmes was duly sacked and the Public Service Commission recommended that Lewin likewise be dismissed but this was overruled by Fraser and he was reprimanded instead.
Campbell then wanted to reinstate him to settle the matter but the government went to the Court of Appeal which held, by a majority, that Holmes was not a probationer and hence could not be dismissed summarily.
He also claimed a breach of the United Nations Charter on Human Rights and that an invasion of personal privacy had occurred with the publication of private papers that had been stolen.
The government swore that when the police brought the papers to Nash they did not disclose their source, so that he did not know they were stolen, to which National MPs were induced to laughter.