Aussie WI: Harold Holt lives?

[RogueBeaver]

Assuming that he doesn't go swimming that day. Does the Coalition continue on its steady decline? Holt gets overthrown by a party revolt?What happens in the 1969 federal election?

[Cook]

A significant problem with Holt was that he was unwilling to enforce party discipline and loyal to a fault to ministers who should have been sacked for misdeeds. In other words he was a nice guy, not a great leader. But Australian’s liked him and while at times bumbling and nowhere near as eloquent as Gough Whitlam he was a far better performer in Parliament than John Gorton was so it is reasonable to expect a better result for the Coalition in the 1969 election where they historically lost 16 seats in a swing of 7%.

When Labor finally defeated the liberals in 1972 it was with a swing of only 2.5% and a change of 8 seats. And that was after the Machiavellian infighting in the Liberal Party and the elevation to the top job of the truly mediocre Billy McMahon.

If Holt had decided to restrict his swimming to safer waters and remained in power, doubtless he’d have won the Khaki election of ’69. Labor would have picked up seats but nowhere near as many as they did against Gorton.

At the ’72 election it is hard to imagine the Coalition doing anywhere near as badly; there would not have been a leadership challenge simply because Holt had been the anointed heir of Sir Bob and there was no-one anywhere near his stature at the time in the Liberal Party, as shown by the two chosen ‘leaders’ of the time. Plus with a better result in ’69, the ALP would need to do better to get over the line. So a Liberal win of 4 to 8 seats wouldn’t be unlikely and Gough would have had to wait until 1975 for it to be time.

An ALP victory in 1975 would then be almost inevitable because the Liberals would have been in power for 26 years, an entire generation and an appallingly long time for one party to be in power. Added to which the country would have been suffering from the economic troubles of the mid 1970s – so whoever was in government would likely be turfed.

[Riain]

I heard that Holty was taking strong opiate painkillers on the sly, therefore was stoned when he went swimming against advice.

Anyway, if he lived the "Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Pool" wouldn't be quite so darkly hilarious.

[Cook]

I heard that Holty was taking strong opiate painkillers on the sly...
They weren’t on the sly; they were prescription for the shoulder. His doctor had advised him not to swim until the shoulder had had a chance to heal. Being a typical bloke he ignored his doctor and took a dip.

[MerryPrankster]

The conspiracist view is that he was killed (or kidnapped via submarine) by the CIA because he opposed Australian involvement in Vietnam or something like that.

Not that I believe that, but that leads to...

What would his Vietnam policy be?

[anon_user]

On another note, what would Aussie conspiracists fixate on instead?

[Riain]

On another note, what would Aussie conspiracists fixate on instead?

How Gough wanted to close US facilities so the CIA conspired with GG Kerr to have him sacked.

[ColeMercury]

The conspiracist view is that he was killed (or kidnapped via submarine) by the CIA because he opposed Australian involvement in Vietnam or something like that.

Not that I believe that, but that leads to...

What would his Vietnam policy be?
You've got it backwards -- Holt was strongly hawkish. He was the one who came up with the line "All the way with LBJ."

(Also, usually it's the Chinese who conspiracy theorists blame for Holt's disappearance. The CIA gets the blame for Whitlam's sacking.)

[RogueBeaver]

I guess Whitlam still gets three kicks at the can, it seems to be par for ALP course in those years. How long does Whitlam remain in office if he wins in '75? Does Fraser still win the Liberal leadership after Holt's retirement?

[Lord Brisbane]

An ALP victory in 1975 would then be almost inevitable because the Liberals would have been in power for 26 years, an entire generation and an appallingly long time for one party to be in power. Added to which the country would have been suffering from the economic troubles of the mid 1970s – so whoever was in government would likely be turfed.
Would Gough still have been leader by 1975 rolls around? Or would he have been replaced by someone else, being viewed as someone who lost in '69 and '72 and seen as 'yesterdays man' by the party? Would for example Jim Cairns, become leader?

[RogueBeaver]

Would Gough still have been leader by 1975 rolls around? Or would he have been replaced by someone else, being viewed as someone who lost in '69 and '72 and seen as 'yesterdays man' by the party? Would for example Jim Cairns, become leader?

Unless Bob Hawke gets into Parliament earlier, there's no one better from what little I know of Aussie politics. Plus Whitlam's two predecessors were given three kicks at the can apiece, and so long as he keeps gaining seats he can probably hang on.

[Lord Brisbane]

Yeah more than likely your quite right.

[Cook]

Would Gough still have been leader by 1975 rolls around? Or would he have been replaced by someone else...
Uncertain but if he was rolled the next incumbent could literally be the drover’s dog and bring them home.

Interestingly enough this highlights one of the enduring myths of Australian Television advertising and the 1972 election: The ‘It’s Time’ television advertisement. Whitlam and the ALP were campaigning against a government that was suffering infighting, had already been in office far too long and who were led by a man with a face for radio and a voice for silent movies who’s charisma transplant had rejected him. Now with all those disadvantages to the government and with an extremely eloquent leader in Gough they should have been expected to do better than a 2.5% swing. So far from being the resounding success that ‘It’s Time’ is always said to be, it really should be seen as a failure that had no positive effect on their campaign at all.
What would his Vietnam policy be?
Unlikely to have changed; Australian involvement would have started to downsize in ’69 in line with the Vietnamisation of the war.

[Magniac]

Does the Coalition continue on its steady decline?

Yes and no.

Holt was a pretty unifying figure compared to his two immediate successors as Liberal PM (not to mention the first Liberal Opposition leader after '72--it took for Fraser to rise to the top for the Coalition to get the kind of leader it craves) but the decline of post-Menzian Liberalism wasn't that obvious during the late sixties, that's really a feature of revionism beginning in the seventies.

I think his biographer Tom Frame gets it about right in his assessment of Holt. The man was both a moderniser and a gentleman, but he was a very weak leader for federal conservative politics, that side needs an autocrat at the helm to succeed. Niceness is secondary when it comes to leading the Coalition at Canberra.

Holt was already starting to die politically from a thousand cuts before his disappearance. Events that were otherwise minor parliamentary missteps and unnattributed Cabinet leaks were starting to turn the narrative against him, he was already considered to be a PM headed into crisis. The fact that he had achieved a number of policy breakthroughs (the Aboriginal citizenship referenda victory, the beginning of the phasing out of White Australia) not to mention the smashing federal election victory of '66, these things were beginning to count for little. It seems as if people were already laying the groundwork for leadership plots involving both treasurer Billy McMahon and senate leader John Gorton.

That said, the Coalition was still in a tactically strong position with regards to it's lead over the Labor Opposition. Whitlam was building his brand, but that leadership model couldn't be put into full effect until he had tamed the ALP machine, and he was nowhere near getting his way over the party in that term. He almost lost his leadership in 1968, and Vietnam was a major policy crisis for him and his modernising allies, while at that the war just happened to reinforce the electoral position of the government and its DLP allies (funny that.)

Frame doesn't speculate about how the '69 election would have gone with Harold Holt as leader, but Gerard Henderson does in his history of the Liberal Party--he's inclined to say that a Holt-lead Coalition loses to Whitlam Labor. The caveat there IMO is that Henderson doesn't like worker unionisation, and Holt was a very Deakinesque minister for labour/national supply during the fifties, probably the last centre-Right grandee to be popular with Labor men until Gorton violently pulled the pin on his own Liberal career in the seventies.

I think a Whitlam victory in '69 would be perilously close, a one seat margin affair.

[Arachnid]

I think a Whitlam victory in '69 would be perilously close, a one seat margin affair.

Got to disagree with you there, after the 1966 election the House of Reps was 82 Coalition to 41 ALP. That isn't a hill to climb that's Everest. After '66 the ALP needed two elections under anyone this side of Jesus to get elected.

[Magniac]

A significant problem with Holt was that he was unwilling to enforce party discipline and loyal to a fault to ministers who should have been sacked for misdeeds. In other words he was a nice guy, not a great leader. But Australian’s liked him and while at times bumbling and nowhere near as eloquent as Gough Whitlam he was a far better performer in Parliament than John Gorton was so it is reasonable to expect a better result for the Coalition in the 1969 election where they historically lost 16 seats in a swing of 7%...

If Holt had decided to restrict his swimming to safer waters and remained in power, doubtless he’d have won the Khaki election of ’69. Labor would have picked up seats but nowhere near as many as they did against Gorton.

The CW was that Holt was losing his battles to Whitlam in the Reps during his last year, he was seriously soiling his reputation with his party, something he couldn't afford to do. I've never read anything about Gorton being a better parliamentary performer than Whitlam [LATE EDIT: More pertinently, I've never read about Holt being a better Reps performer than Gorton, and I'm certain Gorton utilised TV better and more often than Holt], all the reportage and history focusses on how he just ignored that aspect and focussed on his direct media appeal to voters, and that's pretty important as not only was he more down-to-earth than even Holt was, he was also faster on his feet than the ostensibly more experienced Melbourne politician (Oxford chap, you know.)

Holt in '69 is just not going to be as dynamic as Gorton was, his health isn't going to hold up for him to campaign with the vigour that Gorton did (he may have had a heart attack when he collapsed in parliament in '67, though the medical truth of that is lost to history). Holt would've been PM for almost twice as long as Gorton was. He'll be worn out in a way that Gorton wasn't.

I disagree that '69 is a true Khaki Election (unlike '66) but it's Khaki-enough in the electoral stats that matter, the ability of the DLP to deliver almost all of its preferences to Coalition candidates. I think that alone gives Holt a good shot at retaining power.

When Labor finally defeated the liberals in 1972 it was with a swing of only 2.5% and a change of 8 seats. And that was after the Machiavellian infighting in the Liberal Party and the elevation to the top job of the truly mediocre Billy McMahon.

No way is Harold Holt lasting six years as leader of the federal parliamentary Liberal party. He's the least Machiavellian PM of this country since the Edwardian era, he lacked the mongrol instinct needed to protect himself from challengers that long.

Now, McMahon was not a good leader, and in retrospect it seems crazy that he was ever considered leadership material, but he was considered a good cabinet minister, and he was very good at appealing to the malcontents on the Liberal backbench. He's a primo whiteanter, he's a Sydneysider, and come 1971 he's in a government which is bereft of the leading anti-McMahonist (McEwen) yet also increasingly under the spell of the new young turk, Malcolm Fraser.

The odds are against Holt either staying, or even wanting to stay, to fight a third election. And if he does stay I think he's either going to be divorced or physically broken, neither of which is going to help him in a fight against a Murdoch-backed Whitlam 'It's Time' campaign.

Now with all those disadvantages to the government and with an extremely eloquent leader in Gough they should have been expected to do better than a 2.5% swing. So far from being the resounding success that ‘It’s Time’ is always said to be, it really should be seen as a failure that had no positive effect on their campaign at all.

DLP, DLP, DLP.

The size of the swing to Gough in that one election has to be judged as a success considering it was the second election in a row where the ALP's vote had gone up in the face of the DLP still winning over 5% nationally/8% in Victoria--hell, in the face of the DLP even still existing.

Santa's little helpers complicated things incredibly, there was no magic bullet for the ALP reformers to retain there gains of '69 and add to them in '72. They just had to persevere, they weren't running some state parliamentary election campaign like Dunstan or Wran where they could expect everything to be under control. The diplomacy with the bishops over state aid is a good example of Whitlam having to reinvent the electoral wheel for federal Labor, there being no one alive in federal caucus who'd ever had to go straight to the top of the Catholic hierarchy to win over votes that way.

Fact: Whitlam '72 is 49.6% of the primary vote, compared to Chifley '46 winning 49.7% and Hawke '83 winning 49.5%. Those other Labor PMs didn't face a unified thrid party grouping dedicated to keeping the Australian Labor Party out of office, with candidates in every marginal seat the ALP was standing in.

Unlikely to have changed; Australian involvement would have started to downsize in ’69 in line with the Vietnamisation of the war.

I think Whitlam actually getting in in '69 and implementing his plans to order the Australian taskforce to stop it's operations and return to barracks at Nui Dat and Vung Tau is a policy nightmare, he either has to drop them or otherwise implement a full 'cut and run' of conventional Oz troops from the RVN. It doesn't matter that he was calling for the kind of thing that a number of Republican & Dixiecrat senators wanted done with US forces in Vietnam, he's got no room for error with a RSL/Coalition/DLP opposition to his right and the assorted loonies to his Left (after all, there was a great benefit to beating the hard Left before he finally won in 1972.)

[Magniac]

Got to disagree with you there, after the 1966 election the House of Reps was 82 Coalition to 41 ALP. That isn't a hill to climb that's Everest. After '66 the ALP needed two elections under anyone this side of Jesus to get elected.

Whitlam in 1969 was one recession/credit squeeze/monetary crisis away from winning that election IMO. Luckily for the Coalition they were smack bang in the middle of the last Golden Age virtuous economic cycle, thanks to all those Keynesian economists who were about to have their empire swept away.

Conversely I believe Labor in 1961 was one Whitlam-generation leader away from defeating the Menzies government, but unfortunately for them the leader they were stuck with was a gruff old North Melbourne townhall politician straight out of Power Without Glory, not a suburbanite with a young family.

[Arachnid]

Whitlam in 1969 was one recession/credit squeeze/monetary crisis away from winning that election IMO. Luckily for the Coalition they were smack bang in the middle of the last Golden Age virtuous economic cycle, thanks to all those Keynesian economists who were about to have their empire swept away.


Even today and especially in that era the election isn't a single national event but 150 different one's that happening simultaneously. With such a big Coalition majority the advantages of so many incumbent MPs, the need for the ALP to spit there money, volunteers and effort between so many seats, the Coalitions ability to focus just on defending their strongholds means that under any circumstances a majority on that scale requires a really incompetent government or a messiah of an opposition leader to sweep away.

As for 1969 in particular as long as the Vietnam War is ongoing thanks to Jim Cairns and others the Coalition is going to be able to paint the ALP as a bunch of Commie's sympathisers who want the Viet Cong to win.
Remember the Australian people were increasingly opposed to war (though it was more popular than in the US.) but that didn't mean they liked the most recent and most radical manifestation of the anti-war movement. As long as middle-class suburbanites who decided elections can see Jim Cairns speaking to a crowd that was waving the Viet Cong flag the ALP isn't going to win government.

[Magniac]

Even today and especially in that era the election isn't a single national event but 150 different one's that happening simultaneously.

I see merit in every other point you make, but if for some reason the economic policy makers had tightened the monetary reigns in 1969 (let's say the Poseidon mineral bubble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poseidon_bubble) is a year-and-a-bit earlier and a lot more unhinged) resulting in, gasp, almost 4% unemployment in the latter half of the election year... That qualifies as a single national event, as is normal for federal elections fought during economic downturns.

Then I think that an election fought in those circumstances sees Labor get over the line against John Gorton, aka the most chaotic and disorganised Liberal head of government the country has ever seen. The great irony being that a Whitlam elected in this ATL who was as chaotic and disorganised as OT's Whitlam is not necessarily a great improvement over Gorton, but the voters of this scenario don't know that in October/December 1969.

[Cook]

<snip>
You’re arguing that their going from a popular, unchallenged leader to two leaders, the first of whom was marginal in quality and the second mediocre, actually helped the Liberal govt. It’s nonsensical.

[Magniac]

You’re arguing that their going from a popular, unchallenged leader to two leaders, the first of whom was marginal in quality and the second mediocre, actually helped the Liberal govt.

No, I'm arguing that Holt's biographer acknowledges that for all Holt's decency and statesmanship he was an unusually weak leader, and the plots were already being hatched to replace him, he didn't have another full term in him as Liberal PM.

And the CW held/holds Gorton to be a stronger leader for the election of 1969, and that his prime ministership doesn't begin to collapse into farce until after that poll. This isn't something I've invented, it's what the observers and historians have written about, albeit pretty gingerly, what with this being all about comparing the honoured dead with the living.

It’s nonsensical.

Just wait there, I'm going to dig up some sources. Then we'll see what's nonsense and what isn't.

[Magniac]

As to what the popular historiography and reportage says about Holt's weaknesses, consider this:

Bishop Tom Frame in his 'The Life and Death of Harold Holt' (http://www.theage.com.au/news/reviews/the-life-and-death-of-harold-holt/2005/08/05/1123125889652.html) is all over the place when it comes to predicting what might have happened if Holt had lived.

"[At] Christmas 1966... Holt could realistically expect to remain in power until the 1972 election," p.173. "The government's fortunes [during Holt's last year alive] had to change soon or it's next term of office---assuming it was victorious in 1969---would be its last. And given the Liberal Party's tendency to dispose of its leaders after a poor performance, Holt had reason to be anxious... He had been leader for such a short time, and most expected him to lead for at least another four years," p.244/245. Or, until 1971, in other words, not long enough to face Whitlam for a second House of Reps election battle. (Elsewhere Frame implies that Holt would probably have wanted to retire during the election year of 1972 itself, yet this was contingent on his party not forcing him out first, p.302/303.) Nowhere does Holt's biographer say that Holt could have turned back the Labor tied if he'd fought the 1972 election. And this is an historian who doesn't give much credence to the idea that Holt faced any serious leadership challenges while alive. AFAICT no other writer is as kind to Holt or to his standing within his party; and yet he believes that Holt was 'complacent' and overconfident about the Coalition's electoral chances after his first victory, p.170

Gerard Henderson ('Menzies Child, The Liberal Party of Australia' (http://www.qbd.com.au/product/9780732259235-Menzies_Child_by_Gerard_Henderson.htm)) devotes almost all of the Holt portion of his chapter on the immediate post-Ming leaders, 'Very much the Second XI', to the theme that HH was on the way out, p.190/198. Alan Reid's entire book on Gorton, 'The Gorton Experiment,' (http://www.australian-politics-books.com/ccp0-prodshow/gorton-experiment-alan-reid.html) is predicated on the idea that that man's own troubles were an outgrowth of the same plotting that Holt had faced, adding that Jolly John brought his own laconic dysfunctionality to this ongoing party turmoil.

And Bridget Griffin-Foley fills in the details of Billy McMahon's efforts to become leader after his initial failure in early 1968. This second coup attempt was before the 1969 election had proven once and for all that the Coalition was at risk of losing office. It's a plot that Reid never did go in to great detail about, seeing as it was Reid's boss Sir Frank Packer who was the leading spruiker in the business/media establishment for Little Billy ('Party Games: Australian Politicians And The Media From War To Dismissal' (http://textpublishing.com.au/books-and-authors/book/party-games/), p.157.) Before anyone says this couldn't happen if Holt had lived, consider that Menzies' official biographer, Alan Martin (http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Robert_Menzies.html?id=XrNyAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y), tells us the great man was so afraid of McMahon's deviousness that he was pleading with Paul Hasluck not to leave parliament, to stay as Holt's successor, as early as November 1966, the very month of the Khaki Election victory, p.556.

But just how electorally strong was Harold Holt during his term as PM? Could he have avoided the near-cliffhanger result that almost saw Gorton thrown out by the electorate?

Sure, Holt won the great landslide election of 1966, and the Aboriginal Rights referendum of 1967. Yet even before his first general election mandate the ALP had won a strong swing to itself in the Dawson bye-election, while during his last year they picked up surprise victories in the bye-elections for Corio and Capricornia. Most importantly of all, the half senate election he fought in 1967 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Senate_election,_1967) had shown that the tide was going out on the Coalition's previous House of Reps GE victory. Even the Whitlam-hating Alan Reid is forced to declare that Holt "had done [electorally] badly as leader" in going down 8% at this election compared to the previous year's results in the other chamber, p.25.

In conclusion, I have to say I reckon the Liberal Party leadership instability doesn't post-date Holt's death. It post-dates Menzies' retirement almost two years earlier.

Henderson is correct when he writes, "Harold Holt was not up to the job which Menzies had bestowed upon him. Nor, as it turned out, were his principal and potential rivals," p.195. I see little reason to believe that Holt continuing as PM (or attempting to continue as PM) doesn't still doom the Coalition to defeat at Whitlam Labor's hands in the early nineteen seventies. The form of that defeat would merely be caused by a series of political crises different than what we saw in OTL.

[RogueBeaver]

So the only one who can keep the lid on that pot for a few years post-Ming is Paul Hasluck? Sounds like no matter what happens, lights out by 1972.

Question: WI Holt hangs on a little longer and Whitlam is ousted by the backroom boys in '68? With a less formidable opponent, how much easier does the Coalition's job (of hanging on till '72 or '75 maximum) become?

[Constantinople]

Anyway, if he lived the "Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Pool" wouldn't be quite so darkly hilarious.

Oh that is mean....! :D


EDIT: Woah... it kind of exists. Ha! Awesome.

[Thande]

Oh that is mean....! :D


EDIT: Woah... it kind of exists. Ha! Awesome.

Australia does have a thing for black humour. I can't see the US ever having a John F. Kennedy Memorial Shooting Gallery or something.

[Magniac]

WI Holt hangs on a little longer and Whitlam is ousted by the backroom boys in '68? With a less formidable opponent, how much easier does the Coalition's job (of hanging on till '72 or '75 maximum) become?

Whitlam's opponent for the leadership in 1968, Jim Cairns, would later come to the conclusion that he himself wouldn't have lasted very long in the job as Labor leader if he'd beaten Whitlam in the party room ballot.

Handwave side effect of Harold Holt living: Okay, Cairns rolls Whitlam, but I think his old age assessment of his chances proves to be spot on. His leadership crashing and burning in 1969 has to discredit his Leftwing sponsors, even if his relationship with them was pretty fraught to begin with. The discrediting of this faction, what Alan Reid dubbed the Chamberlain Left (after Joe Chamberlain, the WA union movement leader and patron of the Victorian hard Left) is bound to be a triumph for Whitlam's modernising allies. The NSW Labor Right was set to assume a national role in the party's councils in OT thanks to Whitlam's alliance building skills. I see no reason why they can't take the lead themselves even if Gough is on the backbench in parliament--this is the mob who were training the likes of the young Paul Keating, for instance. All they need is a pliable post-Cairns leader to help them (Frank Crean?)

Of course a new party split is always possible, but considering that in OT the Left went fairly quietly into internal opposition I'm willing to bet that the fire just wasn't there in the ranks of the hardcore socialists. They liked their careers too much. Going off into the wilderness of third party politics was a sure fire way to lose everything, which is basically what happened to many of the people who left the ALP during the fifties to form the hardcore anti-communist DLP.

Whitlam being brought back from the wilderness isn't out of the question, I think.

Labor screwing-up so badly that they throw away their chances in '72 sounds plausible, they were very good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but jesus, the more I'm rereading this stuff the more I realise what broken down old men Holt, Gorton and McMahon were. The level of basic professionalism was very poor among this lot. As long as the disasters of the Whitlam government are in the future, as long as the ALP's hard Left can't maintain control of the Opposition, then the harder it is for any of these three possible Coalition PMs to squeeze yet another term out of the electorate for the government they'd first been elected to in 1949.

[Arachnid]

the more I'm rereading this stuff the more I realise what broken down old men Holt, Gorton and McMahon were. The level of basic professionalism was very poor among this lot.

I'm as big a Liberal booster as the come but I've got agree with you. All the reading I've done, everyone lecture I've sat in, every old timer I've talked to has convinced me that by the late 1960's the Liberal Party was unfit to govern. They'd been in office since '49. Every goal and priority had been achieved, without the clearing out that defeat brings barely any new blood had been brought in and all the key players had long since lost touch. Whitlam and the ALP of '72 will always be a satanic figure to me but if there was a government party in history that deserved to loose it was that Liberal Party.