We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.
“TO FREE THE WORLD – Harry Holland ” by James Robb (Steele Roberts, $50)
[The full title of To Free the World is To Free the World – Harry Holland and the rise of the labour movement in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific]
There is no doubt that Henry Edmund (“Harry”) Holland was a formidable figure in both Australian and New Zealand politics, finally becoming the leader of the New Zealand Labour Party. A fervent socialist, he championed many things that are now taken for granted. Holland died two years before the Labour Party first came into power in 1935, and while some reviled him (even in his own party), many have speculated that he could have been an astute Prime Minister. James Robb writes from a very socialist viewpoint, meaning there is a certain bias. But this is not a major flaw, given that all biographies are written from a certain point of view. Only very, very rarely does one find a biographer who is entirely impartial. So a socialist biography it is. To Free the World is a very detailed biography taking Holland (born 1868 – died 1933) from cradle to grave, and illustrated with many photographs and other images. After 425 pages of text there are over fifty pages of notes, sources and index. This is a very thorough work and I admit that it took me the best part of a week to read.
Holland was born in the hinterland of New South Wales. His parents were religious and as a young man Holland was a member of the Salvation Army. Although in young manhood he parted with organised religion, he always regarded himself as a non-denomination Christian. Some credited him which having learnt how to be an orator from his street-corner speeches when he was in the Sallies [or Salvos as the Aussies say]. When he was twenty he married his life-long spouse Annie and they were to have three boys and five girls. James Robb mentions Holland’s family only very occasionally, being more focussed on causes and politics which absorbed Holland. Holland’s left-tendency was first influenced by such Utopian works as Edward Bellamy’s bestseller Looking Back. He trained as a type-setter which was to be important in that he himself was later to set up and run various socialist newspapers and broadsheets.
In the 1890s Australia was suffering a severe economic depression which lead to the rise of radical socialism. There were riots over workers’ wages and the conditions in which they had to work, not to mention an economy in which prices made it difficult for workers to feed their families. Such unions as there were engaged in strikes, but there were many different types of socialism. The big rift in Australian socialism, which was to last for decades, was the rift between socialists who called for direct unionist action including strikes; and socialists who said that they should seek to win power by becoming a political party and entering parliament. The SFA (Socialist Federation of Australasia) was torn apart. Says James Robb - in very socialist terms - “The political separation between the class-struggle socialists and the class-collaborationist Labor Party was complete.” (p.55) Billy Hughes and William Holman became the best-known members of the parliamentary Labor Party, regarded by Holland and others as traitors to the socialist cause. There were many matters that concerned Australian socialists. Most opposed the separate states becoming, in 1901, the federation of Australia. At the same time the Socialist League and most unions endorsed the “White Australia” policy [which was abolished only in the 1960s] when unions feared that Asian workers would undercut them by accepting shorter wages.
Harry Holland was by now well-known for his lectures, his street oratory, and the radical socialist newspapers he published such as “The Socialist” and later “The International Socialist”. Like many of his comrades, he hailed the [abortive] 1905 Russian Revolution, believing it could create a genuinely democratic worker’s state once the autocratic Tsar was gone.
The biggest test for Australian socialists came in 1909, with first a strike on a large scale, then a lock-out, at the Broken Hill mine and in the coal-fields in northern New South Wales. There was a major stand-off, pitting unionists against armed police and “scabs”. The English socialist Tom Mann spoke about the exploitation of workers and was prosecuted for sedition. So was Holland, who was jailed for five months. Billy Hughes, now head of the Parliamentary Labor Party, managed to break up the striking unionists. In the federal elections of 1910, it was Billy Hughes’s party which made great gains in parliament, while the Socialist Federation of Australasia got nowhere. Holland wrote in 1910 “The great majority of the workers here are not prepared to accept the revolutionary working-class objective and tactics which mark the fighting of the workers’ movements in other counties. By more than 20 to 1 in West Sydney the Socialist candidate was turned down in favour of middle-class interests as represented by the Labor party… the only explanation is that the workers of Australia are as yet economically uneducated – as yet so unconscious of their class position and interests as to be easily tossed along in the whirlwind of political happenings.” ( quoted p.101) The fact is that increasingly many unionists were suggesting it would be wise to vote for the parliamentary Labor party even if they did not endorse all their policies. [Probably to Holland’s chagrin, the “ traitor” Billy Hughes went on to be Australia’s prime minister from 1915 to 1923.]
Holland now made it his business to write and lecture about accidents and lethal conditions that crippled many workers in factories. At about the same time, he himself suffered with knee problems. Although he had surgery, he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
His next fervent crusade was to oppose Australia’s Compulsory Military Act, which conscripted young men to take part in military drill and prepare for war. Holland wasn’t a thorough pacifist, but in the years before the First World War, he saw wars as the work of capitalists and imperialists who wanted to grab land and resources. War, in his view, was designed to crush the proletariat. When one of his sons was called up, Holland banned him from joining military drill. He was prosecuted and fined.
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And it is at this point that To Free the World moves its narrative to New Zealand. There was a growing Socialist Party in New Zealand, and Harry Holland was invited to come over and deliver socialist lectures. Holland was 43 when he first landed in New Zealand in 1912 and walked straight into the issue of the day - the major strike at the gold-mining town Waihi. Under the New Zealand Liberal party, an Arbitration and Conciliation system had been set up to deal with worker’s grievances and determine what were fair wages. This system appeared to work well. There were no strikes for twelve years. But gradually the awards given by Arbitration failed to keep up with the rising cost of living. Holland, still favouring direct workers’ action, wrote that the arbitration system was Labour’s “Leg-iron”, and said workers should “strive for our revolutionary objective: the overthrow of capitalism, the uprearing of the Socialist Republic. So organised – and with our organisation built on a solid foundation of working-class knowledge – with no divisions of race or creed, colour or sex, we might well laugh our exploiters to scorn, smash through the awards and penalties of their Arbitration Courts, tear down the superstructure if their legal power to oppress, and swiftly plant the Red Flag… on the world’s citadel of industrialism.” [quoted p. 154]
At this time Bill Massey’s Reform party was building in strength, mostly focussed on the farming sector and more conservative than the ailing Liberal party. There was the strike at the Blackball coal mine. Socialists set up the Federation of Labour (later nicknamed the “Red Feds”), some of their leaders having, like Harry Holland, come from Australia – Bob Semple, Paddy Webb etc. And then there was the major strike at Waihi. The striking workers were driven out of town, the police used force (one striker was killed) and what the strikers called “scabs” took their place. Holland wrote a book about the tragedy of Waihi which was reprinted a number of times and had a wide readership. After the breaking of the Waihi strike, Holland remained steadfastly militant, suggesting that workers should “along the lines of the [American] IWW [“Wobblies”] … fight uncompromisingly, with never a section of workers scabbing on any other section, together with unity in the political field, in one big revolutionary socialist political party.” [p.170] James Robb says that after the formation of the Red Feds “the achievement of the One Big Union, and of the one big revolutionary Socialist Party, was to be Holland’s chief preoccupation for the remainder of his life, and in the next few years in New Zealand its achievement would appear to him to come tantalisingly close.” [p. 154] But in 1913 there was the coordinated strike on the waterfronts of New Zealand’s major cities, with exports and imports being held up. This was too much for the farmers [whom the socialists had tended to overlook] and the strikes were broken up, in part by farmers on horseback nicknamed “Massey’s Cossacks” by the strikers and their allies. Socialists who had supported the strike in speeches and pamphlets were prosecuted for sedition. Peter Fraser and Bob Semple were jailed. Holland offer a detailed defence, but Robert Stout gave him 12 months.
There was another problem that worried him. A major war seemed to be coming, and like Australia, New Zealand now had a Defence Act. Holland saw this as sheer militarism because it included compulsory military service. Holland had believed idealistically that the workers of the world would not go to war against their fellow proletarians. For years he had touted the German Social Democratic Party as the model for any socialist party… so he had a rude awakening when, at the beginning of the First World War, the GSDP joined all other German parties and voted for war. Painfully he came to understand that even in New Zealand, for most of the proletariat, patriotism trumped socialism. There was a plan for all parties to join together for the duration of the war. The Liberal and Reform parties united and formed a combined cabinet headed by Massey (Reform) and Joseph Ward (Liberal); but the socialists stood aloof. In 1916, the New Zealand Labour Party was formed, welcoming nearly all socialist factions. In 1918 Holland, Bob Semple and Peter Fraser entered parliament and Holland became the leader of the party, a role he kept up to his death. Later, there were six Labour MP’s and by 1920 there were nine. Perhaps ruefully, James Robb tells us “The waning of the class struggle movement after 1919 was as rapid as its rise.” (p.281) Later he says “By the time of the 1922 general election, the course of Holland, Fraser, Semple, Parry, Hickey, Webb, Savage and all the other former Red Fed class-struggle leaders accepting the framework of capitalist electoral politics had become irreversible.” (pp. 304-305) Holland clung to many of his radical ideas, believing that Russia’s Bolshevik revolution would herald a new era of proletarian freedom… or if not them, then the botched uprisings in Germany after the First World War. But the fact was he was now a respectable parliamentarian leading a respectable party, even if radical words were sometimes spoken. Naturally the tiny New Zealand Communist Party accused the Labour Party of not being truly socialist.
In the 1920s, as well as steering a parliamentary socialist party, Holland can be credited with championing two major causes.
Near the end of the First World War there was formed in New Zealand a Protestant Political Association which preached that all the ills in the nation could be blamed on Catholics. The major non-Catholic denominations (Anglicans, Presbyterians) thought this was nonsense, but the PPA gained traction from the smaller and more marginal churches, had influence with some MPs, and managed to stir up much bigotry. Holland frequently spoke against this and made it clear that the Labour Party welcomed people of any religion or no religion, men or women, Maori or Pakeha. The PPA faded away by the early 1930s.
More momentously, Holland (and his party) condemned the way New Zealand officials were treating the Samoan people. The League of Nations had “Mandated” Western Samoa to New Zealand but Samoa was being treated like a colony. The Mau, a Samoan party seeking independence, was formed and made peaceful demonstrations. They pledged to use no violence. But the occupying forces did use violence, finally shooting into a crowd and killing protestors. It wasn’t only these events that Holland saw as an outrage, but also the dishonest way official dispatches and newspapers reported the situation. He spoke frequently about this in public and in parliament. Regrettably, his campaign fell on deaf ears. Samoa continued to be controlled by New Zealand until 1961.
As he reaches the later years of Holland’s life, James Robb reminds us that Holland did have interests outside current politics. He read poetry and wrote verses of his own. He wrote a book about Scotland’s most esteemed poet Robert Burns… but of course he admired Burns in part because he was a revolutionary and a radical.
By the 1930s, some members of the Labour Party began to see Holland as past his prime, and thought that a new leader was needed for the parliamentary party. The discussion didn’t last for long, however. Holland died of a heart attack in October 1933 while attending the funeral of an old friend , the Maori King, Kingi Te Rata Mahuta. The Labour Party became the government in 1935 and remained there until 1949, first under Michael Joseph Savage then under Peter Fraser. James Robb speculates that, had he survived to be prime-minister, “There can be little doubt that as a leader of a Labour government, Holland would have pursued a course much like that of Savage and Fraser in leading the working class into World War II – albeit perhaps with deep personal regret.” (p. 381) I myself speculate here that the “regret” Robb refers to is the fact that socialists who had opposed going to war in 1914 and been jailed for it (Bob Semple etc.) were only too eager to fight a war in 1939. Remember Michael Joseph Savage was the first prime-minister, in what was then still the British Empire, to pledge allegiance to Britain once war broke out. Fighting a war with Hitler was different from fighting the Kaiser.
In his last chapter, before he comes to appendices, notes and index, Robb criticises other writers who have written more negative biographies of Harry Holland than To Free the World . As I have not read these other biographies I cannot pass judgment on them. Robb writes clearly, his socialist views are honest ones, the book is thorough and the images are a great help. I can, however, dissent on one thing – although Robb doesn’t say it, it is clear to me that in the end Holland backed away from his original fire-brand variety of socialism, and came to understand that the parliamentary way was both more efficient and more genuinely democratic. And after all, in a generally stable society, who wants a revolution?
Footnote: In case you were wondering, I was not misspelling the Australian Labor Party as opposed to the New Zealand Labour Party. That is how the Aussies spell it.
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