REEVES, WILLIAM PEMBER (1857-1932) was born at Lyttelton on 10 Feb 1857, just over six years after the first Canterbury settlers arrived at that port, and before Christchurch had ousted Lyttelton as the chief centre of the settlement. He was the son of the Hon William Reeves (q.v.). During his boyhood English, provincial and colonial politics were familiar topics of conversation, and political discussion was carried on at a high level in the infant colony. In England Gladstonian Liberalism was coming into its full strength; there was much talk of democratic equality, of the second reform bill, of the rights of trade unionism and of educational reform. The colonists in New Zealand followed these controversies with the keenest interest, though with a long time lag. It was the period of letter-writing, of lengthy discussions in pamphlets and in the quarterlies. The first great scientific agnostics were challenging religious articles of faith. Though the material environment in New Zealand was at a crude pioneer stage, intellectual activity ran high. Christ's College grammar school, established soon after the settlers arrived (1850-51), was giving sound classical instruction on English public school lines by the time that Reeves was ready to attend it (1867). The home in which Reeves grew up was a centre of political and literary discussion. His father represented local constituencies in the House of Representatives (1867-68 and 1871-75). In 1869-72 he was in the Fox cabinet, and in 1871-72 was resident minister for the Middle Island. Both his father and mother were typical pioneer colonists, drawn from west-country upper middle-class families. From this stimulating environment Reeves emerged a sensitive, cultivated young man. He had a normal love of games and represented his province both at cricket and at Rugby football. He was senior Somes scholar (1873) and New Zealand University scholar (1874). Having matriculated in 1874, Reeves left Christ's College and went to England with the intention of taking a degree at Oxford, but he became ill and returned to New Zealand. He was admitted as a barrister and solicitor and acted as reporter to the Canterbury Law Society, but was soon attracted to journalism and joined the literary staff of the Lyttelton Times. To this paper he contributed articles which later became his first published work: An Introduction to the History of Communism and Socialism. These were brief descriptions of Utopias and are significant only as showing the way in which his political ideas were tending. He was for a while editor of the Canterbury Times, and in 1889 was appointed to the editorial chair of the Lyttelton Times. His main interests were, however, political, and in 1887 he was elected to Parliament as liberal member for St Albans.

Though the rest of his life was to be dominated by political activity, he retained a keen interest in literature. Before leaving New Zealand he published, in collaboration with G. P. Williams, two volumes of verse, Colonial Couplets (1889) and In Double Harness (1891). Much of this was light political or social satire, and some was rather of the undergraduate level; but in his best verse Reeves attained fair descriptive quality. In 1898 he published in London New Zealand and Other Poems, containing the hymn to New Zealand, which, with "The Passing of the Forest," is perhaps the best of his work. In the hymn there is abundant evidence of the humane temper that made him a pioneer of political and social reforms. His prose, however, is better than his poetry, much of the writing in The Long White Cloud reaching a very high level. He is best known by his writings descriptive of the social experiments in which he took so large a share. Indeed, he once said to the present writer that his success as an author had prevented him gaining recognition as a statesman. The best-known and most readable of his books, perhaps the best book ever written on New Zealand, is The Long White Cloud. He had an exciting and dramatic story to tell of the early days of white settlement. Later scholars, working meticulously over the historical records that were not available to Reeves, have corrected many of his statements; but none has approached him in the dramatic quality of his writing and the clarity of his prose. He took a little too easily the point of view of the colonists in their struggle with the Colonial Office. We know now that the permanent officials in London were neither stupid nor obstructive in their protection of Maori interests against the clamour of colonists eager for land. The later story of the social experiments in which he himself played a prominent part also needs supplementing. Written soon after the heat of the battle, it states a strong case against the land-owning "squattocracy." He was indeed regarded in many quarters as a renegade from his class. Something of the political struggle gets into the first edition of The Long White Cloud, but it was pruned out later. The third and last edition, published in 1924, is noteworthy for the care he took to draw pen-portraits of his political contemporaries. These he himself regarded as one of his most important contributions to New Zealand history. The new matter in this edition, written by a collaborator, does not reveal either Reeves's political penetration or the qualities of his style.

In 1902 his two-volume study of State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand was published. It is a careful and documented description of the movements towards electoral reform, closer land settlement, labour regulation, old-age pensions, immigration control and liquor legislation that swept these colonies from 1881 onwards. While it does not always give the popular origins of such reforms as old-age pensions, and is apt to present them as inventions of an enlightened political leadership, it remains a mine of information concerning the actual period studied. It was reprinted by photographic process in 1923 and never revised. Most of the substantial journal articles which Reeves wrote were incorporated in this volume, which gives his considered first-hand account of the first period of legislative experiment. It is noteworthy that there is no "state socialism" to be recorded. Reeves was a Liberal, and the experiments for which he was largely responsible were humane rather than doctrinaire. These experiments attracted much attention in England, on the Continent and in the United States. The legend of New Zealand as an innovating country of radical legislation persisted long after government had passed into the hands of Conservatives. In large part it was due to the fact that foreign investigators found their chief source of information and ideas in the urbane and versatile minister who was almost the only social theorist of his party. This fact, together with the influence of his own writings, spread a view of New Zealand radicalism that survived for two or three decades after the temper of the New Zealand Parliament had completely changed. Reeves represented St Albans (1887-90) and City of Christchurch (1890-96). His career as a minister was very short. He entered Ballance's Liberal-Labour ministry in 1891 as Minister of Education and Justice. In 1892 he became the first Minister of Labour, transferring the portfolio of Justice to Cadman. He was again Minister of Labour, Education and Justice in Seddon's ministry till in 1896 he was appointed Agent-general for the Colony in London. It was a strange combination that held together the astute, domineering and comparatively unlettered Premier and his urbane Minister of Labour. Seddon was a man of the people, graduated from local to colonial politics, rugged, overbearing and herculean in his dogged strength. In debate he used bludgeons where Reeves's wit flashed like a rapier. Stout, the other outstanding intellectual of the Liberal Party, was never able to combine with Seddon, and it was perhaps with some reason that Reeves left the ministry in 1896. The three years' partnership, however, was a fruitful one. It is difficult to say how much Reeves contributed to the general body of legislation concerned with breaking up the great landholdings, though he was clearly in full sympathy with the measures of graduated taxation and compulsory powers that were taken. As Minister of Education he was liberal and enlightened; but his chief claim to political fame rests upon the conciliation and arbitration act, in which for the first time in any country not only was trade unionism given legal encouragement, but provision was made for compulsory arbitration of labour disputes. The regulation of factory conditions and the stamping-out of the sweated conditions of home labour that had been revealed by the 1890 inquiry owed much to his ingenuity and persistence; but his name is connected most with arbitration. He was himself proudest of this achievement, and extremely disappointed when the act was emasculated just before his death in 1932. He did not live to see it restored and strengthened by the Labour Government.

In London Reeves was an efficient Agent-general until 1909, and during that time was closely in touch with social reform movements in England. Some of the anonymous Fabian pamphlets were written by him, and he enjoyed a considerable reputation in Fabian circles as a man who had actually carried through social legislation. He was an attractive and witty speaker, with a gift for epigram and apt quotation, and soon became one of the most popular after-dinner speakers in London. Like many other colonial statesmen, he had ambitions to enter British political life, but these he could never realise for lack of sufficient income. He did, however, influence in some degree the trend of Liberal policies, and in still greater degree the shaping of labour policies while they were still the subject of discussion in intellectual circles outside of practical politics. In 1908 he became Director of the London School of Economics. He gave his full time to that work from 1909 till 1917, when he became chairman of directors of the National Bank of New Zealand, continuing as part-time director of the School till 1920. The School was a comparatively new venture when he took it over as the third director, and was still very much under the influence of Sidney Webb. Graham Wallas, another of the original Fabian essayists, was professor of political science, and Edwin Cannan was teaching economics there; a fact which enabled Reeves to refer on one occasion to the army class, which had come somewhat reluctantly at Haldane's behest to take economics, "seeking the bubble reputation, even in the Cannan's mouth." He was a fellow of London University. Reeves devoted much time towards the end of his life to the chairmanship of the Anglo-Hellenic League. For this work he was given an honorary degree by the University of Athens (1919) and was decorated by the King of Greece as a Knight of the Redeemer (1914). He also served as a representative of New Zealand at various international conferences, and was a member of the royal commission on shipping rings, as well as the commercial intelligence committee of the Board of Trade.

To cite references to him, his political achievements and his writings would involve mentioning most of the studies of the first period of legislative experiment in New Zealand. It is curious that this man of wide culture and literary ability, the product of intense intellectual activity in a small and remote English colony, should have as his most enduring achievement a pioneer piece of labour legislation. To those who knew him in later life he was an urbane and courtly figure, invariably generous and encouraging to youthful effort; but in fact his ambitions were political rather than literary. Perhaps he was too sensitive and of too fine a temper for the rough-and-tumble of practical politics; but the driving force of his life was the desire expressed in his own verses to contribute towards the building in a new and beautiful land of a kindlier society.

Reeves married (1885) Magdalen Stuart, daughter of W. S. Robison (Christchurch). He died on 16 May 1932. B.C.

N.Z.P.D., 1887-96 and 23 Sep 1932; Reeves, op. cit.; Condliffe; Rossignol and Stewart; Scholefield, N.Z. Evol.; Saunders; Gisborne; Christ's Coll. List.; Who's Who N.Z., 1908, 1924; Dict. Social Sciences; H. D. Lloyd, A Country Without Strikes, 1900, Newest England, 1900; Caro Lloyd, Henry Demarest Lloyd, 1912; S. and B. Webb, Industrial Democracy, 1897; Aust. Rev. of Rev., iii, 255; Otago Witness, 2 Nov 1893; N.Z. Herald, 15 Jul 1893; Christchurch Times (p), The Times (p), 17 May 1932; Evening Post, 17 May and 27 Jun 1932; N.Z. Graphic, 27 Aug 1892, (p). Portrait: Parliament House; London School of Economics.

Reference: Volume 2, page 111

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