Sir Sidney George Holland (18 October 1893 – 5 August 1961) was a New Zealand politician who served as the 25th prime minister of New Zealand from 13 December 1949 to 20 September 1957. He was instrumental in the creation and consolidation of the New Zealand National Party, which was to dominate New Zealand politics for much of the second half of the 20th century.
Holland was elected to parliament in 1935, and became the second Leader of the National Party, and Leader of the Opposition, in 1940. He served briefly (1942) in a war cabinet but thereafter attacked the Labour government for its interventionist economic policies. Holland led the National Party to its first election victory in 1949. His National government implemented moderate economic reforms, dismantling many state controls. Holland's government also undertook constitutional change in 1950, by abolishing the Legislative Council, the upper house of parliament, on the grounds that it was ineffectual.
In 1951, Holland, having confronted locked out dockers and coal miners intent on what he called "industrial anarchy", called a snap election and was re-elected Prime Minister. In its second term, the National government signed the ANZUS defence agreement with Australia and the United States. Holland led his party to a third consecutive victory in 1954. Following ill health in 1957, Holland stepped down as Prime Minister to be replaced by Keith Holyoake.
Sidney Holland was born in Greendale in the Canterbury region of the South Island, the youngest child and fourth son of a family of eight children. His father, Henry Holland, was a farmer and merchant, who served as Mayor of Christchurch between 1912 and 1919 and became the Reform Party MP for Christchurch North between 1925 and 1935. During the First World War, Holland enlisted as a territorial in the New Zealand Military Forces in 1915 and later rose to the rank of second lieutenant. He served with the New Zealand Field Artillery and saw action during the Battle of Messines, before being invalided home after contracted a severe illness. Due to his injuries, Holland was hospitalised for six months and lost a lung.
Holland was a prominent sportsman and sports administrator, representing Canterbury at provincial and inter-island level in hockey. After retiring from playing, he managed the New Zealand representative hockey team on an unbeaten tour of Australia in the 1932 and was a prominent hockey referee. After the war, Holland and one of his brothers established the Midland Engineering Company in Christchurch, which manufactured horticultural spray pumps and operated a profit-sharing scheme with its employees. Holland later married Florence Drayton in 1920 and the couple raised a family of two boys and two girls. According to his biographer Barry Gustafson, Holland was raised as a Methodist but later became an Anglican.
Following his father Henry Holland's election to the New Zealand Parliament in 1925, Sidney served as his father's unofficial private secretary and campaign manager between 1925 and 1935. Due to this experience, Holland gained an intimate knowledge and interest in parliamentary politics. During the Great Depression, Holland also became the President of both the Canterbury Employers' Association and the Christchurch Businessmen's Club, which brought into contact with the conservative New Zealand Legion and the short-lived Democrat Party, which opposed the Forbes–Gordon Coates United-Reform coalition Government. As a result of his political experiences, Holland developed a distaste for Communism.
After his father Henry was incapacitated in a serious accident, the older Holland encouraged Sidney to take his place as the Reform Party candidate for Christchurch North during the 1935 general elections. Holland successfully retained the Christchurch North seat despite the Labour Party's landslide victory during that election. The new Michael Joseph Savage–Peter Fraser Labour Government, which ushered in a raft of social and economic reforms including the establishment of a Keynesian welfare state, nationalization of key economic resources, and the expansion of public works and state-housing projects. In response to Labour's electoral success, the Reform and United Parties merged in 1936 to form the National Party, which represented the farming and growing manufacturing sectors of New Zealand society.
Leader of the Opposition: 1940–1949
In 1940, Holland replaced National's first non-interim leader Adam Hamilton as the leader of the National Party. Prior to becoming the Party's leader, he had served as Hamilton's parliamentary secretary. As leader of the National Party, Holland sought to win the support of the party's farming constituency by establishing a farm in North Canterbury and breeding Romney sheep and Aberdeen Angus cattle. In addition, he also countered other rival conservative parties like the Liberal Party, the Soldier's Movement, and the People's Movement by co-opting them into the National Party in 1941. This merger helped strengthen National's support base by unifying opposition to the Labour Party. Holland served as Leader of the Opposition for nearly ten years until the National Party won the 1949 general election. He represented the Christchurch North electorate from 1935 to 1946, and then the Fendalton electorate from 1946 to 1957.
Following Japan's entry into the Second World War in 1941, the Labour Government reluctantly acquiesced to the establishment of a bipartisan War Administration in July 1942, consisting of seven Labour Ministers and six National Ministers. Sidney Holland served as the Deputy Chairman of the short-lived War Cabinet, which collapsed in September 1942 after the National Party objected to Labour's handling of an unofficial miners' strike in the Waikato region that same month. Holland's decision strained relations with both the Labour Government and several National MPs including Gordon Coates and Adam Hamilton, who withdrew from the National caucus and rejoined the War Cabinet as independents. The resignation of these two former Reform Party MPs helped strengthen Holland's control over the party caucus and organisation.
During the 1943 and 1946 general elections, National slowly eroded Labour's parliamentary majority. While the Labour Party still remained in power, it was forced to contend with a more vigorous opposition National Party. Under Holland's leadership, National repeatedly attacked the Labour Party's socialism, "big government" bureaucracy, collectivism, and the power of the trade unions. Some important policies propagated by the National Party included individual freedom, a free market, minimum bureaucratic intervention, restriction and regulation, and an acceptance of the welfare state. Holland repositioned the National Party to accept (albeit reluctantly) the main elements of Labour's welfare state, a policy switch seen as necessary for the party to become electable. During the successful 1949 general election, Holland capitalised on the threat of Communist expansion in Eastern Europe, the government's perceived unwillingness to counter the militant waterfront unions, persisting wartime restrictions, and rising inflation. This strategy secured National's electoral victory on 30 November 1949.
The Sidney Holland National Government implemented economic reforms, dismantling many state controls including butter and petrol rationing. His government also emphasised individualism, personal freedom, and private enterprise in accordance with its 1949 electoral platform. One of Holland's first acts as Prime Minister was to abolish the Legislative Council, the upper house of the country's Parliament on 1 December 1950. As a result, the New Zealand Parliament became a unicameral body consisting solely of the House of Representatives. Besides serving as Prime Minister, Holland also served as the Minister of Finance. However, Holland did not carry on with his Party's promise to abolish compulsory unionism, which Labour had introduced in 1936. Due to opposition from several trade unions, the government compromised by simply passing a law forcing unions to obtain majority support in a vote before the union could make donations to the opposition Labour Party, which was traditionally associated with the trade unions.