Since the party's coming to power in 1935, Lee, who headed its left-wing factions, had been a regular thorn in the side of Prime Minister Savage.
Probably because Savage had considered him incompatibly radical, "Jack" Lee had been denied a cabinet post before eventually being given the housing portfolio.
Regardless, Lee pressed for changes in the internal make-up of the party and generally fomented opposition from within to the leadership style and policies of the Savage government.
According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, at the party conference in 1939, Lee was censured for his attacks on the party leadership and direction, but nonetheless that year published Psycho-pathology in Politics, an article attacking the mental capabilities of a by-now seriously ill Savage.
Even his political helpmates considered this ill-advised, sentiments that reverberated when Savage died two days after Lee's expulsion in 1940.
He subsequently formed the Democratic Labour Party and in the election of 1943 won 4.3% of the votes but no seats in the House.
It was the end of Lee's parliamentary career, although he continued to attack the Labour Party from without for much of the rest of his life.
Quite apart from his colourful life, his heroic war service, his prolific and relatively successful writing career and his role in the early years of the New Zealand Labour Party, John A. Lee stands out in the history of the party as the only ranking MP to have been expelled from it.
As precedent, Lee sets a high threshold for political excommunication.
His attacks were constant and increasingly open; from 1935 on, he was leading opposition to the government from within.
Arguably, his stance was a real threat to the stability and longevity of the government to which he belonged, a government that, among other things, was grappling with the ongoing effects of the Great Depression and an impending world war.
All of which circumstances are a world away from those of Te Atatu Labour MP and former minister Chris Carter, who, late on Monday night, was expelled from the party following a meeting of its governing council.
Mr Carter, it will be recalled, orchestrated a particularly clumsy display of disloyalty toward his leader, Phil Goff, by sending an anonymous letter, suggestive of a leadership coup, to the parliamentary press gallery in late July.
He was duly found to be the author of the letter.
In it he claimed that Mr Goff could not and would not win the next election and should be replaced as leader of the opposition.
He was subsequently dismissed from the Labour caucus and has been treated since as an independent MP.
He recently announced his decision not to stand in the Te Atatu electorate in the 2011 general election.
By comparison with John A. Lee, Chris Carter is a pussycat and his actions ham-fisted misdemeanours rather than weighty political crimes.
There are also precedents in which the party has decided to forgive and forget.
Mr Goff himself led a group of MPs seeking Helen Clark's capitulation at a time when she was thought unelectable.
There was the case of Richard Prebble calling his leader David Lange mentally unhinged.
These MPs remained in the party.
On the opposite side of the political fence, National's Maurice Williamson openly challenged Bill English's leadership and survived.
I hold no brief for Mr Carter: he acted foolishly, seemingly in pique, and self-destructively - and if he threatened at Monday's meeting, as alleged, to dish the dirt on other Labour MPs, that action only serves to amplify his tenuous hold on certain political realities.
But the party must have - or should have - agonised over its response.
Mr Carter's "anonymous" letter provided an opportunity for Mr Goff and his leadership team to show decisive resolve, which they duly did by expelling Mr Carter from the caucus.
But to sever someone from the party he has served for several decades - someone who, removed from caucus and in 2011 from Parliament, is no real threat to either Mr Goff or the party - is not necessarily a sign of strength.
In fact, for a party that has always prided itself on being a broad church, it could be construed as a sign of deep-seated insecurity on the part of the leadership, and of weakness in the council in bowing to this.
It appears the council has relied on a provision in Labour's constitution to get rid of its errant MP.
Mr Carter, they decided, had brought the "party into disrepute".
In so doing, they traverse a fine line.
For history may decide that in stamping on dissent in such a heavy-handed manner, the party has achieved such an outcome all by itself.
Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.
