HOLLAND, HENRY EDMUND (1868-1933) was born on 10 Jun 1868 at Ginninderra, near Canberra, New South Wales, and was educated in the Stone Hut (a provisional school) at Canberra and in the public school at Ginninderra. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to printing in the office of the Queanbeyan Times, where he spent five years. He took a lively interest in social matters and, reading as widely as local resources would permit, laid the foundations of a deep culture. He was much influenced by Bellamy's Looking Backward, Karl Marx's Capital and Henry George's Progress and Poverty; had an intimate knowledge of both Old and New Testament philosophy, especially in its bearing on human relationships; and became a zealous member of the Salvation Army.

At the end of his apprenticeship Holland went to Sydney, where he made acquaintance with slums, poverty and unemployment, became a loyal trades unionist and a member of the Australian Socialist League and (some years later) of the Australian Electoral League. In 1888 he married a playmate of his boyhood, Annie McLachlan. He helped to form the Sydney tailoresses' union and was its first president. When he was editing The Vedette in Grenfell the union invited him to conduct their case in court; and he cycled 300 miles to do so (without fee). He was the leader in 1901 of a strike of tailoresses which assumed state-wide proportions and ultimately produced great improvements in the wages, hours of labour and conditions of the women workers concerned. An outspoken advocate of labour rights, he thus early risked the ordeal of imprisonment for his opinions, which in later days held no terrors for him. He was in fact imprisoned in 1896, 1909 and 1913-14 as the result of his writings and speeches at Newcastle, Broken Hill and Wellington (New Zealand). Ill-health caused Holland in 1912 to come to New Zealand, where he at once became associated with the Labour movement, then in its infancy, and threw himself with quiet but determined energy into the advocacy of labour principles. He was appointed editor of the Maoriland Worker, which he conducted for nearly six years with conspicuous success. A fluent writer with an incisive, logical style, he expressed the views of his party with such force and effect that he was recognised during the struggles of 1912 and 1913 (including the Waihi strike) as a coming factor in the success of the party. He exerted every effort in support of the unity movement. In the Worker he led the fight against conscription during the war of 1914-18. His first parliamentary contest was in Wellington North in 1914 (against Herdman). Again in 1918 he stood (against Sir John Luke), but he did not gain a seat in Parliament until 1918, when the disqualification of P. C. Webb caused a vacancy for Grey. At the by-election (on 29 May 1918) Holland defeated T. E. Coates by 2,865 votes to 2,717. This electorate was abolished in the following year, when he defeated D. Q. O'Brien (by 3,545 votes to 2,542) for the Buller seat, which he held until his death. On the death of A. H. Hindmarsh (q.v.) in 1919, Holland was elected leader of the Parliamentary Labour party, which then occupied the cross benches. After the election of 1925 Labour became the second strongest party in the House, but in 1928 it again found itself the weakest party and returned to the cross benches. Holland did the party a great service in his clear and explicit statement of the aims of Labour, not only in the press and in party propaganda, but in public and parliamentary speeches. He defended with the greatest pertinacity the privileges gained for Labour in a succession of acts passed by the Ballance and Seddon Governments, and gradually brought the Labour party to occupy in the public mind the position of successors of the Liberals of the nineties. He marked the end of what might be termed the battle between ins and outs. He believed in increasing socialism rather than in reforming capitalism to make it more social. The party platform, as he saw it, should be determined only by the consideration whether it could lead or help towards complete socialism. His advocacy of the leasehold principle of land tenure was also noteworthy.

A man of high principle and deep culture, Holland was one of the finest speakers in the Parliament of his day; formidable, incisive and devastating in debate; lofty and inspiring on the public platform. He was an indefatigable writer and pamphleteer, and published about 30 party pamphlets on social and political subjects. Noteworthy amongst his smaller publications are: Armageddon and Calvary (1919), The Farmer and the Mortgagehold, Indentured Labour, Boy Conscription, and Samoa. He also wrote verse of good quality. His volume Red Roses on the Highway contains much of high poetic standard.

Holland died on 8 Oct 1933 while attending the funeral of Te Rata Mahuta at Waihi. The public tribute paid to him both by the thousands who filed past his coffin in the main entrance hall of Parliament buildings, and by the huge concourse which followed his body to its resting place in the old Sydney street cemetery, was impressive evidence of the high esteem in which he was held by the community generally. His grave is marked by a fine symbolical memorial statue erected by the Labour movement of New Zealand.

N.Z.P.D., pass. (notably 10 Oct 1933); Who's Who N.Z., 1924, 1932; Annals N.Z. Lit.; Holland, op. cit.; typescript in Alexander Turnbull Library; Janet Fraser in The Standard, 6 May 1937; The Standard (p), Grey River Argus, Evening Post, 9 Oct 1933. Portrait: Parliament House.

Reference: Volume 1, page 219

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