Assessment with affection

Press, 18 September 1976, Page 13

Assessment with affection

Walter Nash. Pioneer and Prophet. By Craig Mackenzie. Dunmore Press. 176 pp. $4.95. (Reviewed by Eric Beardsley)

Sir Walter Nash or St Walter Nash? Craig Mackenzie almost raises the question in his affectionate memoir, which has no pretension to scholarly biography, literary merit or disinterested assessment of a remarkable political career. It is a pity, for Mr Mackenzie knew the Nashes closely for 36 years and could, one imagines, have added a great deal of useful reminiscence to our knowledge of one of the most important figures among the remarkable band of men who set out in 1935 to transform New Zealand from the shambles of the Depression.

There is much to admire in what they achieved; and much of the credit belongs to Sir Walter Nash, who laid the financial foundations for Labour’s humanitarian legislation, designed to provide economic and social justice for New Zealand. His mobilisation of New Zealand’s resources in 1939 was a heroic achievement; and few New Zealanders yet realise the statesmanlike and impressive figure he was in Washington in the Second World War and in the post-war reconstruction conferences that followed. BCit within New Zealand the harsh verdict of history will be that in the end Sir Walter Nash lent himself to a bare-faced election bribe which, when it was accepted, inevitably had to be paid. It cost the party dear: defeat in 1960 and another long spell in the wilderness and the disappearance from political life of Sir Arnold Nordmeyer.

An account of how and why Sir Walter Nash connived at this rash decision would have been enlightening. Instead, Mr Mackenzie is rather vague and apologetic. “So here was Walter Nash at war with himself,” he says. “He obviously disapproved . . . but he knew nothing could be achieved by relegating himself to the sideline.” Much of the book is in this vein. Mr Mackenzie’s admiration and love show through clearly, too clearly. Walter Nash could not, in his eyes, put a foot wrong; and woe betide those who ever suggested he did. In a chapter dealing with the press he is unduly senstivie and one can only feel glad that Walter Nash died before the television grilling of political leaders ’ became a national evening blood sport. Mr Mackenzie suggests that Walter Nash was hounded by the press during his political career. There were, he says, “a multitude of low punches,” a “frenzied smokescreen” and a “relentless campaign” against him. The evidence is rather less damning. Indeed it is the late Leslie Hobbs who takes the brunt of his criticism. Hobbs’s book “The Thirty-Year Wonders” may not have been a highly-penetrating study, but it was a genuine attempt to assess Labour’s triumphs without the benefit of much hindsight. If there were errors, they were not malicious, as Mr Mackenzie seems to think. In fact some observers considered Hobbs was over-generous in his assessment. Admirers of Walter Nash will find items of interest in Mr Mackenzie’s book; it will whet appetites for the full-scale biography expected from Professor Keith Sinclair later this year.