A N.Z Labour Party Leader

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30745, 8 May 1965, Page 4

A N.Z Labour Party Leader

(Reviewed by T. H. McC.)

Harry Holland, Militant Socialist. By P. J. O’Farrell. Australian National University and Whitcombe and Tombs.

Mr O’Farrell’s life of Harry Holland, from 1919 until his death in October, 1933 leader of the Labour Party is at the same time an account of one facet of the development of the New Zealand Labour

Party and as such is a welcome addition to the historical material available to the ordinary citizen. There have been all too few books written in this field and some that have present strictly partisan accounts of the events they describe. The Labour Party began as an amalgamation for political purposes of humanitarians, socialists, unionists and members of co-operatives, all of whom had as their aim the amelioration of the conditions of the working man in the late nineteenth century. Many followed Holland’s route from nonconformist church to socialism.

In any political party members agree to submerge minor differences in order to achieve major objectives. Members of Parliament and other leaders in a political movement are forceful men and women and differences are bound to occur and be settled by the give and take of argument which should not be interpreted as the incipient breakdown of the group. Mr O’Farrell’s account mentions these differences involving Harry Holland but the events following his death show clearly the affection held for him by others in the Party.

From my memory of him I would say that Harry Holland was a vigorous advocate, if a rather unattractive public speaker. The outstanding impression he left was the torrent of words in an unusually high pitched voice and the state of perspiration he was in at the end of the speech.

Mi- O’Farrell mentions that in his last political campaign —the Lyttelton by-election of 1933 —the organisers were not keen to have him participate. I recollect some of the discussions at the time and my impression is that Mr O’Farrell gives somewhat too much weight to them. The Labour Party has always tried to match speakers to audiences and it was felt that Holland’s appeal to Lyttelton and Woolston would be greater than his appeal to Cashmere and the Peninsula.

While this book is primarily about Holland, many pass through its pages and one can see the political development

of others as well as Harry Holland. What I think is an inaccuracy is Mr O’Farrell’s statement that James McCombs resigned from the Labour Party in 1916 over a prohibition issue. My understanding is that he resigned from the presidency, not the Party, because he firmly believed that one should not resign from an organisation in protest against an action since that left the organisation free to carry on with the objectionable course.

This book shows how men are willing to make personal sacrifice for progress towards their ideals and how revolutionaries are tamed by responsibility. It recounts in Harry Holland’s person the Labour Party’s journey from anathema to respectability: it is interesting to note that New Zealand, and much of the world, now takes for granted as the basis of society many of the things Harry Holland and his colleagues fought for.