John Reid (diplomat)

On 6 October 1926 he married Wellington schoolteacher Doris Aileen Priestley (1900-1987), born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, from a long line of Methodist clergy.

Keith Sinclair argues that it was "this suggestion made initially by John S. Reid", that "laid the basis for the first universal pension scheme in the world".

[2] World War II convinced New Zealand (like Australia) that it could no longer depend exclusively on Britain for its protection and foreign policy, but urgently needed representation in the U.S..

The appointment was seen as irregular by the Opposition, which questioned it in the New Zealand Parliament, but also by Alister McIntosh, the new Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, constituted in June 1943.

Only after Nash was replaced in July 1944 as Minister (later Ambassador) by Sir Carl Berendsen, McIntosh's former mentor in Wellington, who also found Reid essential, was he accepted as a permanent part of the diplomatic service.

[3] Back in Wellington, Reid was left to handle the ambitious Australia-initiated project that became the Colombo Plan, about which McIntosh and the government of the day were decidedly negative.

These roles drew the attention of the UN's infant Technical Assistance Board, when in 1951-2 it was looking for a senior figure to represent it in Jakarta, who might be able to overcome the sensitivity of the nationalist government about taking advice from patronising neo-colonials.

In 1954 the UN Trusteeship Council entrusted Reid to chair its regular 3-yearly Visiting Mission to the Trust Territories in East Africa: - Tanganyika (assigned to Britain), Ruanda and Urundi (Belgium) and Somaliland (Italy).