Last one for the night: if you think it's frustrating not getting to read more about the background, imagine what it's like not getting to write it!
This one may have gotten out of hand; let me know if any trimming is necessary.
Keith Holyoake – King of Clubs
National (1973-76)
How to Build a House of Cards, in Nineteen Simple Years
Losing the 1954 election and then the Party leadership, Holyoake was almost incensed enough to quit National altogether. But he was nothing if not determined, and when Brian Talboys delivered the news of Muldoon’s defeat legend has it he sat back in his chair, slowly lit a cigarette, and said “Well. Time to get to work then, Brian.” While this may be apocryphal, the manner in which he set about getting back into the saddle of leadership is a truth worthy of fiction.
Although he went to Muldoon offering his condolences and advice for handling the Labour landslide, Holyoake set to work undermining the man who had stolen the leadership from him and driven National out of power for six years (to paraphrase his autobiography: his disdain for Muldoon remained strong throughout the years). Realising early on that Watt was far too popular for him to hope to defeat even if he took back the leadership in time for the 1970 election, Holyoake gave Muldoon his support for the duration, all the while sounding out support for the bid he hoped to make after the defeat he had forecast for Muldoon. Banking on the arrogance he had seen in Muldoon, Holyoake offered to help Muldoon however possible in return for a portfolio in the shadow cabinet. Muldoon, himself seeking to gain all the backing he could to strengthen the bid he would make once the voters realised their folly in electing Watt, accepted Holyoake’s offer and advice as one of National’s elder statesmen in return for the deputy leadership.
The 1970 election going worse than even Holyoake had predicted, he was placed better than he had been at any other time since the waterfront strike to take the leadership and ride into another election. Likewise, the leadership election immediately following it came out in Holyoake’s favour, as Muldoon was exiled in disgrace or, in the words of Talboys, “sent further into the wilderness than Hillary in Antarctica.” With the Erebus Disaster coming as a surprise to all (and despite what a few conspiracy theorists have claimed since, there is no way on Earth Holyoake could have arranged for the navigational failure, tenuous connections to Air New Zealand or no), Holyoake was now one winnable election from the Premiership. His election drive was run more vigorously than his 1954 attempt, and represented National’s most vigorous campaign since Handsome Jack – who, incidentally, ran once more for his Mount Victoria seat, giving a number of speeches which hinted that the zealer would be doing better if Holyoake, agent of his most successful financial policies, were Prime Minister. The strike of ’72 having shattered Labour’ cohesion, Holyoake galloped to victory, giving an impassioned speech which called for “a return to common-sense” and “removing the power from disunited unions and returning it to the mum and dad consumer. As it was, and as it should be.”
The first year of Holyoake’s rule was thus spent adjusting economic policy to cope with the perceived overreach of the Third Labour Government. Benefits were slashed for the unemployed and the unions were crippled by the Employment Relations Act 1973, which removed the union representation quota on export regulation boards and did away with compulsory unionism. Although this move only strengthened Labour in the long run, in the immediate term it gave the National Government immense political capital with an electorate tired of being held to ransom by an increasingly hostile and incoherent TUC. With this stable base built, Holyoake had to try and get the economy back on its feet, and his assumption of the Finance portfolio himself reflected his desire to take the economy back to where it had been during the first half of the Marshall years.
As the months lengthened into a year, Holyoake’s steady if sometimes heavy hand on the tiller appeared to work, as his careful work constructing a shadow cabinet of Marshallite old guard and Muldoonian Young Turks returned handsome dividends in the form of a Cabinet which followed him loyally. Tariffs were raised and devaluation of the zealer saw export revenue increase to 1969 levels – not fantastic, but an improvement. Unfortunately for Holyoake and New Zealand, the stagflation which persisted in the West throughout the early 1970s reached its nadir in early 1974, as the Iranian Intervention failed to protect the Shah’s government from falling and resulted in a raise in oil prices amongst OPEC members to capitalise on the reduced supply. A sudden doubling of the oil price to $6 a barrel (Ƶ7.90) thus hit the country in the gut at a crucial stage in its fragile recovery and inflation took off again, forcing Holyoake to implement a wage freeze.
At the same time, two more events were lurking in the wings of New Zealand society, relatively minor but important at the time. First, the Commonwealth Games debacle, where it became known that Holyoake intended to continue sporting contacts with South Africa, raised hackles across black Africa and eyebrows across the white Commonwealth capitals. Although admittedly a minor point given the small amount of trade with Africa, it was a diplomatic blunder and signalled a dramatic reversal from Kirkist morality, while dividing the country on whether or not the government had any business intervening in sport of all things. Secondly, the death of Norman Kirk from heart failure represented a juncture for both Labour and National. Although Rob Muldoon came out of the woodwork, surfacing from the backbenches to give his sincere and emotional condolences for his fallen adversary, Holyoake’s cool, clipped speech which gave scarcely two minutes to cover two years of Kirk’s leadership (little of it entirely complimentary) came off as sour grapes from a man who’d been pipped at the post by Labour three times over. As Holyoake’s grip on power tightened with the cooling mood in the country, it would take a miracle to save his government.
When the Second Korean War erupted following Park Chung-hee’s assassination by North Korean commandos during the June 1975 Manila Pact meeting in Pyongyang, a bare twenty miles from the Ceasefire Line demarcating the two Koreas, Holyoake must have thought his Christmases had all come at once. Although small, North Korea had developed into an Orwellian nightmare under its founder Kim Il-Sung, and with his death in 1968 his son Kim Jong-Il had determined to consolidate his rule by striking while the Americans, under a dying President Kennedy, had little will to retaliate. But retaliate they did, with K Force reassembled, although conscription was not reintroduced (Holyoake recalling the lessons of Holland). Instead, he trusted that another protracted war, while unfortunate indeed for the Koreans, could mean millions if similar supply contracts could be reached.
But then, once more, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory as the Soviets, seeking to broaden international ties under Kosygin, supported the UNO resolution condemning North Korea’s actions and renewing the points outlined in 1950's Resolution 83. An impossible coalition of Warsaw Pact and Manila Pact forces therefore launched a counteroffensive against North Korea on July 30th, with Wonsan and Chongjin falling to joint operations before September ended. As the Cold War entered a bizarre thaw in the wake of East-West cooperation to take down a Stalinist dictator, Holyoake’s Cold Warrior rhetoric began to ring hollow.
Heading into 1976 then, New Zealand faced a tough situation. Committing troops to the meatgrinder which was the road to Kanggye, even as the Filipino contingent unearthed concentration camps of a sort unseen for thirty years (well, a lean fifteen if one was from of a Soviet detachment), the trade situation was uncertain at best – with the possibility of trade with the Soviets tempting but entirely contingent on approval from the Americans who were playing their cards close to their chest, Holyoake’s own house of cards came tumbling down, with a collapse in wool prices causing an acute balance-of-payments issue.
Holyoake’s campaign leading up to the October election was therefore almost grimly resigned, his demeanour daring his Labour opponent, a bright young thing who drifted between Nash’s competence and Kirk’s bellicose nature, to test his patience. The Prime Minister was already 72 years old, and even if he wasn’t quite as old as Nash had been at his re-election he was even further from being as popular, even if the Second Korean War ended with victory where the First had seen bloody stalemate. For Labour, the comparison was particularly apt, with their candidate joking on election night to his new Cabinet – elected with a bare two seat majority of 45-43, not including the Social Credit’s with whom they could caucus if worst came to worst – that Korea had proven the graveyard “…of four totalitarian dictators: two Stalinists over there and two Hollanders over here!” From the results National quite agreed: a vindicated Muldoon famously predicted Holyoake would be gone by Christmas, and he was right with more than two weeks to spare.
Such was Holyoake’s legacy: a man of infinite patience who carefully laid his own road to the top (with a stable foundation of those he had knifed to get there), but upon claiming the victory he had sought for twenty years saw his joy turn to ash in his mouth. Though the appalling international situation was no fault of Holyoake’s, the desire to be vindicated in the history books only hampered his efforts to manage the many crises, and ultimately sent National stumbling dazedly back into the woods. As Johansson helpfully points out, though, they had a few men in particular who had navigated the dark path, and might yet lead them back into the broad sunlit uplands.
