Sidney Holland

Politician

• Born: October 18, 1893
• Birthplace: Greendale, New Zealand
• Died: August 5, 1961
• Place of death: Wellington, New Zealand

Also known as: Sid Holland; Sidney George Holland

Significance: Sidney Holland led the New Zealand National Party during the 1940s and 1950s and, thanks to several electoral victories, served as prime minister from 1949 to 1957. He was instrumental in the National Party becoming a major political force during the second half of the twentieth century.

Background

Sidney Holland was born on October 18, 1893, in Greendale, New Zealand. One of eight children of Henry Holland and Jane Eastwood, he spent his early years in Greendale, Canterbury, where the family had a small farm and his father worked as a transport contractor. When Holland was five, the family moved to Christchurch. There his father purchased his own transport and import firm and became active in local politics. Holland’s father served as Christchurch’s mayor from 1912 to 1919, before becoming a member of Parliament in 1925.

Holland attended Christchurch West District High School. He quit school at fifteen and worked for a hardware store and later his father’s firm. During World War I (1914-1918), he served as an artillery officer on the Western Front. He contracted an illness, and though this ultimately meant that he was left with only one lung, he regained his health following several months in the hospital.

Once he was well again, Holland and one of his brothers founded a manufacturing business, Midland Engineering Company, and he served as its managing director. Maintaining a further presence in the business community, he was president of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce, the Canterbury Employers’ Association, and the Christchurch Businessmen’s Club.

Political Career

Holland got his start in politics by organizing his father’s parliamentary campaigns in 1925, 1928, and 1931. Shortly before the 1935 election, Henry Holland had an accident and became incapacitated. Holland ran in his place and was elected to Parliament as the representative for Christchurch North (eventually named Fendalton in the mid-1940s). He was reelected in every election through 1957.

Holland was involved with the short-lived New Zealand Legion, a radical conservative movement of business professionals who opposed the government’s failure to reverse the economic woes of the Great Depression. After its collapse, he became a founding member of the National Party, which valued capitalism and the national interest over sectional interests, in 1936.

During his first years in Parliament, Holland gained recognition for his debating skills and opposition to socialism, and frequently clashed with members of the Labour Party. The acting secretary for National Party leader Adam Hamilton, he took over as party leader in 1940 after a caucus vote forced Hamilton out. Holland successfully shaped National into a dominant center-right party that represented private enterprise and absorbed members from more radical conservative parties that had sprung up in the late 1930s. To appeal to farmers and gain the credentials to speak for them, he bought a farm near Greta, North Canterbury, where he bred sheep and cattle.

A member of the War Cabinet (1942) during Peter Fraser’s Labour government during World War II (1939-1945), Holland quit after just a few months in protest of Labour’s leniency toward coal miners convicted of illegal striking. Highly critical of the Labour government’s economic controls, bureaucratic regulations, and consolidation of state control, Holland promoted National as offering New Zealanders economic success and personal freedom. His attacks on Labour failed to sway voters in 1943 or 1946, but he steered the National Party to a win in the 1949 election.

Holland took office as prime minister on December 13, 1949. While for the first five years he held the finance portfolio, he held the police portfolio from 1954 to 1956. Despite his capitalistic ideology, he preserved the social security initiatives enacted by Labour. He eventually removed the war surtax and relaxed controls on prices and imports. In 1950 he pushed through legislation that abolished the Legislative Council, the upper house of Parliament.

Holland’s antipathy to organized labor was demonstrated in his response to striking workers in 1951. During World War II, the government had imposed longer working hours for most New Zealand workers. In 1951 a court lifted those regulations for many workers, but not for wharf workers. Labor unions attempted to negotiate better wages and conditions for wharf workers to no avail. On February 15, 1951, dock owners locked out their employees and the employees went on strike. In sympathy, coal miners joined the strike, which further disrupted the economy. Holland declared a state of emergency; authorized the use of police power to suppress strikers; suspended the freedoms of speech, the press, and the right to assemble; and banned assistance to striking workers. The strikers ended the strike without any gains on July 15. The 1951 waterfront dispute was a divisive moment in New Zealand’s history, with New Zealanders deeply split in their support of or opposition to Holland’s actions during the strike.

During the 1950s Holland further loosened government controls and sought to strengthen strategic alliances. He ended food and gas rationing and lifted price controls on land and property. Supporting closer foreign relations with Australia and the United States, he oversaw the signing of the ANZUS Treaty with them in 1951. Ever adamant on maintaining New Zealand’s loyalty to Great Britain, he also supported Great Britain during the Suez Crisis of 1956.

In ill health, Holland stepped down as prime minister on September 20, 1957, and was succeeded by Keith Holyoake. He retired from Parliament at the 1957 election and died in Wellington on August 5, 1961.

Impact

Decades after the 1951 labor strike, many people remembered Holland for his use of emergency powers to suppress striking workers and restrict the rights of those who held ideological differences with the National government. Among National Party members, he is remembered for establishing the direction of the party and making it a viable and lasting political party. Another of his other legacies is the use of police dogs, which he introduced to New Zealand in 1956 after observing them during a visit to a British police dog school. In recognition of his service, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1957.

Personal Life

Holland and Florence Beatrice Drayton married in 1920. They had four children.

Bibliography

“Death of Right Hon. Sir Sidney Holland.” Parliamentary Debates, vol. 327, 1962, pp. 1206–15.

Gustafson, Barry. “Holland, Sidney George.” Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, 2000. Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 2000, teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5h30/holland-sidney-george. Accessed 4 Apr. 2020.

McLean, Gavin. “Sidney Holland.” New Zealand History, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 5 Mar. 2018, nzhistory.govt.nz/people/sidney-holland. Accessed 4 Apr. 2020.

“1950, Sydney Holland: Honourable Suicide Squad.” NZ Herald, www.nzherald.co.nz/new-zealand-herald-150-years/news/article.cfm?c‗id=1503278&objectid=11141632. Accessed 4 Apr. 2020.

Small, Zane. “Government’s COVID-19 Emergency Powers Compared to 1951 ‘Waterfront Dispute.’” Newshub, 27 Mar. 2020, www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/03/government-s-covid-19-emergency-powers-compared-to-1951-waterfront-dispute.html. Accessed 4 Apr. 2020.