George Reid (Australian Politician) - High Commissioner

High Commissioner

Reid was extremely popular in Britain, and in 1916, when his term as High Commissioner ended, he was returned unopposed to the House of Commons for the seat of St George, Hanover Square as a Unionist candidate, where he acted as a spokesman for the self-governing Dominions in supporting the war effort. He died suddenly in London in September 1918, aged 73 of cerebral thrombosis, survived by his wife and their two sons and daughter. She had become Dame Flora Reid GBE in 1917. He is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery.

Reid's posthumous reputation suffered from the general acceptance of protectionist policies by other parties, as well as from his buffoonish public image. In 1989 W. G. McMinn published George Reid (Melbourne University Press), a serious biography designed to rescue Reid from his reputation as a clownish reactionary and attempt to show his Free Trade policies as having been vindicated by history.