Harry Holland

Infobox_Officeholder
name=Hon. Harry Holland


order=10th Leader of the Opposition
term_start=16 June 1926
term_end=18 October 1928
22 September 1931 - 8 October 1933
predecessor=George Forbes (1925)
Gordon Coates (1931)
successor=Joseph Ward (1928)
Michael Joseph Savage (1933)
birth_date=10 June 1868
birth_place=Queanbeyan, NSW AUS
death_date=8 October, 1933
death_place=Huntly NZL
spouse= Annie McLachlan (1888)
party=Labour
constituency=
religion=

: "For the Reform Party politician and Mayor of Christchurch see" Henry Holland

Henry Edmund (Harry) Holland (10 June 1868 – 8 October 1933) was a New Zealand politician and unionist. He was the first leader of the New Zealand Labour Party.

Early life

Holland was born near Queanbeyan, a town in New South Wales located quite close to modern Canberra. Initially, he worked on his parents' farm, but later was apprenticed as a compositor for the "Queanbeyan Times". Holland did not receive an extensive education, but developed an enthusiasm for reading. He also became highly religious, joining the Salvation Army.

In 1887, Holland left Queanbeyan to work in Sydney. Shortly afterwards, on 6 October 1888, he married Annie McLachlan, who he had met at a Salvation Army meeting. The two were to have five sons and three daughters. In 1890, however, Holland found himself unemployed, putting the family in a poor financial position. Holland left the Salvation Army at this point, believing that its response to poverty was inadequate. He remained, however, quite strongly religious. Gradually, his political views became attuned to socialism, although this was probably more an emotional decision than a theoretical one — Holland was deeply dedicated to the elimination of poverty, but had little use for complicated economic models.

Political activity in Australia

Holland joined the small Australian Socialist League in 1892. Later, he and a friend began to publish a socialist journal — in 1896, he was convicted of libelling the superintendent of the New South Wales Labour Bureau, and served three months in prison. Upon his release, the journal was moved to Newcastle for a time, but eventually returned to Sydney.

In 1901, Holland stood as a candidate for the Australian Senate and the state seat of Lang. He was standing for the Socialist Labor Party, having rejected the Labor Party as too moderate. He did not make any significant impression. Later, in 1907, he stood in the New South Wales state elections, but was caught up in strong infighting between socialist groups. Holland had acquired a reputation of arrogance and egotism, and was convinced beyond all doubt that his views were correct.

In 1909, Holland was convicted of sedition, having advocated violent revolution against capitalism during the miners' strike at Broken Hill. He was jailed for two years. He received little sympathy from the socialist movement, which considered his actions during the strike to be provokation and posturing. This embittered Holland considerably, and he suffered from serious depression.

In 1912, after his release from jail, Holland soon found himself in trouble with the law again. This time, it resulted from his refusal to register his son for compulsory military training. Rather than pay a fine, Holland left Australia and travelled to New Zealand, accepting an invitation from the Waihi branch of the New Zealand Socialist Party.

Political activity in New Zealand

Waihi

At the time of Holland's arrival, Waihi was descending into chaos. A bitter miners' strike, the most significant industrial action that New Zealand had yet seen, was underway, and the conservative government of William Massey was responding with strong measures. The strike eventually led to the death of a miner in a shoot-out with police. Holland was encouraged by the strike, believing that it was the beginning of "class war" against capitalism. This view was not shared, however, by the New Zealand Socialist Party, which, when the strike broke out, had actually asked Holland not to come to Waihi. The New Zealand socialists, for the most part, saw socialism as a means to an end, and distrusted Holland's view that socialism was a goal in and of itself. Many New Zealand socialists resented Holland's arrogance, seeing him as a self-opinionated outsider meddling in a precarious situation that he did not fully understand.

Moderation

Gradually, however, Holland's militancy decreased. His co-authorship of a tract on the Waihi strike gained him a certain amount of prestige, as did his editorship of the Federation of Labour's newspaper. In 1913, a candidate of the Social Democratic Party (which the Socialist Party had merged into) was elected to Parliament with backing from the mainstream Liberal Party, and Holland was happy — at one stage, he would have condemned co-operation with any non-socialist organisation. Holland himself, however, still ran into difficulties with the law. In the 1913 waterfront dispute, he was charged with sedition, and served time in jail. This time, however, he was widely seen as a martyr, and gained considerable support.

Labour Party

With the gradual unification of the labour movement in New Zealand, the (second) Labour Party was founded in 1916. Holland was one of the founding members, although his opinions about the direction of the party were not identical to some of the party's other leaders. Holland believed that the Labour Party would lay the foundations for socialism, while the more moderate members of the party simply wanted to improve the wages and conditions of workers.

In 1918, Paddy Webb, a Labour MP, was jailed for refusing military service. Holland stood in the resulting by-election to replace him, and was narrowly elected. Holland was delighted with his victory, but other members of the party were less enthusiastic — Holland's majority was far lower than Webb's had been. Holland dismissed this, saying that his victory, unlike Webb's, had been for pure socialism rather than mere reform. Holland represented the Grey electorate 1918-19, and then the Buller electorate from 1919 until he died.

After the 1919 elections, the first contested by the Labour party as a united bloc, Holland narrowly defeated the moderate James McCombs for the parliamentary leadership of the party, becoming Labour's first leader in the modern sense. Most historians see his victory as being due to his public profile rather than to his policies, which many in the Labour Party considered too extreme. In Parliament, Holland was not a particularly strong performer. His aggressive oratory, while suitable for speeches, tended to oversimplify issues, and Holland was frequently criticised in Parliamentary debates as an impractical idealogue. Holland's opponents successfully characterised him as applying simplistic doctrines to complicated issues, and of failing to look at a problem from all sides.

As the Great Depression took hold, however, Holland began to doubt some of his convictions. At first, Holland had believed that the Depression marked the beginning of the end for capitalism, but as the economic problems continued, and many workers were cast into poverty, Holland began to question whether his theories were capable of solving the crisis. Suffering from depression, exhaustion, and ill health, Holland began to withdraw from the activities of leadership. Talk of a possible challenge to his leadership appeared, but there was not yet any willingness for an open confrontation.

Death

In 1933, Holland unexpectedly died of a heart attack, attending the funeral of Te Rata Mahuta in Huntly. He was given a state funeral, and hailed by his friends as a "compassionate champion of the common people". His successor, the moderate Michael Joseph Savage, went on to lead the Labour Party to victory in the 1935 elections. He has a memorial in the Bolton Street Cemetery in Wellington, near that to Richard Seddon.

References

"Harry Holland: militant socialist" by P. J. O’Farrell (1964, Australian National University, Canberra)