WARD SAT OUT the 1922 election. He watched his lacklustre successor, Thomas Wilford, trying his hand at leading the Liberal Party. Wilford was fourteen years Ward’s junior and had grown up in the purple. Educated at Christ’s College, he married the daughter of Sir George McLean, former chairman of the Colonial Bank, and settled into a comfortable legal practice in Wellington, where he was mayor in 1910–12. After nearly two decades in Parliament he was briefly a minister (1917–19). There had always been a maverick streak in him, and his political skills were ephemeral. A contemporary said of Wilford that he could ‘entrance for five minutes and bore for the rest of the hour’.1 At no point in his leadership did he command total support from the Liberal caucus. J. A. Hanan never regarded Wilford as the leader of his Liberal Party, and two of the Christchurch members, George Witty and Leonard Isitt, gave Wilford a wide berth.
Wilford’s position with his caucus weakened his hand in negotiations with Harry Holland during the run up to the elections on 7 December 1922. Massey’s budget cuts, especially to the civil service, were unpopular in the cities; the rural recession was hurting Reform in the countryside. If the separate Liberal and Labour parties could make some kind of agreement they had every chance of defeating Reform. Holland, however, regarded the Liberals as a dying force and was reluctant to resurrect a Liberal Labour pact. Wilford too was lukewarm. When he refused to give guarantees on an early implementation of proportional representation discussions collapsed.2 The fact that Labour failed to stand candidates in some rural areas did, however, allow the Liberals to run as the alternative party in the countryside. The Liberals picked up several seats there, while their former strength in towns and cities ebbed away to Labour. On election day the electoral revolving door spun several Reform seats to the Liberals (including, ironically, Awarua) and a couple directly to Labour. In the three biggest cities and in Napier and Westland, the whirligig flicked Liberal seats to Labour, producing what seemed to be a hung Parliament. Reform had 39 seats, the Liberals 19, Labour 17 and there were 5 Independents. A total of nine seats were held with majorities of fewer than 100 votes and several others were just above that margin.3 There was soon talk of court challenges over several results. It was almost an action replay of 1911 and 1914.
What made the situation different in 1922 was the near equality of Liberal and Labour, and the fact that Wilford was no Ward, let alone a Seddon. Wilford had little standing in Labour’s eyes. The Herald treated him with contempt too: ‘If he cannot lead a party how can he lead a country?’4 Muttering about the desirability of fusion between Reform and Liberal, Massey tried to put off meeting Parliament but was drawn eventually to the painful conclusion that he could not avoid it.5 When the House did meet on 7 February 1923 Ward appeared in the gallery to witness the official opening. It was becoming clear that a by-election was imminent in Tauranga: Sir William Herries, one of Massey’s stalwarts, was known to be dying. This piece of news aroused Ward. If he could only get back into the House, perhaps he could lead the Liberals into some form of pact with Labour that would remove Massey from the Treasury benches. Tauranga was not a Liberal seat, having been held by Herries ever since 1896, usually with a reasonably safe margin. But Ward’s resolution grew as the days ticked by. Wilford revealed his total inability to work effectively with the Labour Party, the Liberals voting on several occasions with Ward’s mortal enemies, the Reform Government. When Herries died on 22 February, a few days after Massey had managed to win a confidence motion by 39–36 with the help of Isitt and Witty, Ward was ready for the fray. By the 27th O’Regan had heard the rumours that he would stand at the by-election. At first O’Regan was not impressed: ‘No matter how he may persuade himself to the contrary, Ward’s health is not good, and he would be well-advised to leave public life alone, more especially as, no matter what the press may say to the contrary, he has “done his dash” as a public man. Pleasing as his manner is I cannot for the life of me see where his superiority comes in.’6 Ward, however, had already made up his mind: he would make one last attempt to dispose of the Protestant Premier.
Ward played the nomination game like an old professional. As Lawrence Barber has shown, he let rumours circulate, but delayed making an announcement until a boomlet had developed. First the Reform Party picked their candidate, and then another claiming to represent the newly created Country Party emerged. The prospect that Ward would eventually declare grew more likely every day. On 5 March the Country Party candidate withdrew, throwing his support to Ward, should he decide to run.7 Meantime the Labour Party had also decided not to contest the by-election. If he stood, Ward was assured of a straight fight against the Reform candidate, Charlie Macmillan. Tauranga might be turned into a plebiscite: elect Ward, and it might well be the end of Massey. Certainly in Ward’s mind it would be the end of persistent conservative speculation about fusion between Reform and Liberal.
On 5 March Ward met what was described as ‘a very representative meeting’ of supporters of the Liberal Party in Te Aroha. They pressed him to contest the seat. Ward told the ‘enthusiastic’ meeting that he was ‘much improved in health, and could stand a stiff campaign’.8 On 7 March he formally declared his candidacy, telling the Herald that he had been receiving messages of support and congratulations at the rate of forty per hour over the last day.9 He then let more excitement build up before returning to the electorate. By 13 March he was drawing big crowds and promising to recruit the ‘best brains’ in the country into a new ministry. Presumably, in his mind, a ministry made up of Liberals, Labour and Independents would be a peacetime equivalent of the National Government. Theresa soon joined him, and on the 19th O’Regan noticed that Eileen was on the northern train, also on her way to Tauranga. ‘Evidently the methods of the Primrose League are not peculiar to dear old England!’ he told his diary. For several weeks leading Liberal parliamentarians were noticeable by their absence. Wilford and his colleagues had little cause to wish Ward back in their midst. To the old campaigner this was yet another challenge. He would try to win Tauranga—and the country—on his own.10
Although Tauranga had always been a Reform seat, Massey was uneasy. He and Coates were soon in the electorate, also drawing big crowds. The tide turned as Massey warned the rural voters against any government in league with Labour. Worse was to come for Ward. In the last week of the campaign a bevy of Liberals, including Wilford, finally turned up. Their lukewarm support for the Liberal standard-bearer pricked Ward’s deflating balloon, and Ward’s devotees were to talk for years to come about Liberal ‘treachery’.11 On 23 March one of Ward’s campaign cars caught fire when it stuck in the mud on a steep road on the Kaimai ranges, but the voters were noticeably cooler. Crowds dwindled. Ward’s confidence was also ebbing. ‘The time given for the campaign was deliberately made too short for the proper working of the electorate’, he told O’Regan, ‘but nevertheless I am going right through with three, four and five meetings a day. It will be a great win if I succeed.’12
It was not to be. On 28 March Ward was defeated by 1106 votes, having reduced Herries’s majority at the general election by only 350 votes. He won no more than a handful of polling booths, and was trounced in the well-developed rural areas. Barber concludes: ‘The press had warned the Tauranga electors that they voted as proxies for the nation. Macmillan’s defeat … might have brought down the Reform Government, and Tauranga’s electors preferred the devil they knew.’13 In reality the seat had not been won by the Liberals in their heyday, and was an unlikely gain in the party’s currently enfeebled state. Ward greatly overrated his magnetism.
Ward knew the seat was a long shot but he was still crushed by the result. From the balcony of the Commercial Hotel in Tauranga he told the crowd that the campaign had done his health good, and that he accepted the result ‘as a philosopher and sportsman should do’.14 The Liberal Party was rather shocked by the outcome: some referred to it as the ‘Tauranga debacle’.15 ‘The country feels that it has had enough of him. Poor Ward …. This will doubtless be the end of [his] career as a public man’, wrote O’Regan.16 The conservative press crowed over Reform’s victory. It certainly threw the cloak of legitimacy over Massey’s narrow parliamentary victory of February, and the Prime Minister was quick to assure everyone that there was now no need for another general election.17 Ward’s talk of a speaking tour around the country came to nothing as he limped to Auckland for Easter and then back to Heretaunga, tired and bruised. He played no part in the Oamaru by-election of 1 May, despite some early conjecture, quickly dismissed by party officials, that the Liberal candidate might step aside in Ward’s favour.
Massey was secure for another term even if, as he subsequently conceded to Downie Stewart, keeping a majority was ‘hell all the time’.18 Making life a little easier for Massey than it might otherwise have been was the fact that Wilford, with the support of a majority of his caucus, kept edging the Liberal rump nearer to the Reform Government. By April 1925 Harry Holland asserted that ‘the line of demarcation between the Liberal and Reform parties was so fine as to be invisible’.19 There was constant talk that Wilford could be about to resign the leadership.20 In the middle of 1925 his health broke down, and he took leave from Parliament, soon resigned the leadership and set off to London for treatment. The Liberal Party elected George Forbes, its third leader since Ward’s defeat in 1919. With another election coming up they changed their name as well; much to Ward’s annoyance they dropped the name ‘Liberal’ and became ‘National’ instead.
On 10 March 1925 J. A. Hanan, MP for Invercargill, announced his intention to retire from Parliament. This suddenly opened another window of opportunity for Ward. He had always disapproved of Wilford’s leadership. Talk of fusion with Reform was deeply offensive to him; name changes, worse. Although he never possessed Seddon’s flair for dealing with organised labour, Ward was convinced that salvation for the Liberals lay in an arrangement with the left rather than the right. Moreover, by the early months of 1925 it was becoming clear that the Massey era was fast drawing to a close. Towards the end of 1924 Massey’s health began to necessitate absences from Cabinet. Over the Christmas holidays he spent much time in bed,21 the official explanation for his indisposition being that he had sciatica.22 But at the end of March 1925 exploratory surgery ‘showed a bad state of things’.23 The Prime Minister had cancer. Massey’s surgeon, Carrick Robertson, visited the Governor-General and told him that Massey’s state was ‘as bad as it can be’. A few days later Massey was ‘going downhill’. He rallied late in April, slipped again, then rallied once more, before dying on the afternoon of 10 May.24
Ward had now outlived his bete noire and could not resist the feeling that there might well be an opening once more for him. His own health, however, was far from good. In April he turned sixty-nine and his heart, circulation and eyesight constantly gave trouble. His diabetic condition caused occasional blackouts in times of stress, and he was often short of breath. In the photograph of ministers and former colleagues following Massey’s casket down the steps of Parliament Buildings, Ward, top hat in hand and meticulously dressed as ever, looks thin and drawn. Nevertheless, when he heard the news about Hanan he let it be known that he welcomed the prospect of returning to the House as Member for Invercargill. His long fight to justify his policies would continue so long as there was life in him. Invercargill Liberals quickly responded to the hint that he was available, and a deputation waited on him. On 27 March the Auckland Star ran a story entitled ‘The Invercargill Seat: Calls for Sir Joseph Ward’. It was a eulogy of Ward, describing him as ‘the only great statesman alive in New Zealand today’. It referred to Ward’s ‘staunch and unwavering supporters’ (a sort of earlier version of ‘Rob’s Mob’). The article continued by saying that to the Reform Party ‘the very name of Sir Joseph had the effect of a blistering irritant. He was anathema, most to be feared, most to be hated, most to be fought against of all others.’ The message was clear: Ward’s return would reinvigorate politics.25
A family gathering at New Brighton, 1924.
It was soon clear that such a return would be no pushover. Rev. Howard Elliott let it be known even before Ward had publicly declared his hand that the PPA would oppose him in Invercargill just as strongly as they had in Awarua in 1919.26 If Ward needed any encouragement this was it. Sectarianism infuriated him. He would confront the PPA head on. On 31 March he stood in the Grand Hotel in Invercargill before a group of his old supporters who appealed to him as ‘the best possible man of proved loyalty to the province, [a] strong personality and one familiar with Parliamentary procedure’. Ward accepted their invitation with alacrity. He went on to outline a political philosophy that Invercargillites had often heard. He was against sectional government and wanted equal opportunities ‘from the bottom of the ladder to the top of the Dominion’. Government should represent every class in the community, and not be the captive of any section. He saw the present government as divisive and unfair. He would endeavour to restore the best principles of Liberalism to the land.27
The Invercargill campaign of 1925 had a certain pathos about it. Alone among his former colleagues Ward insisted on calling himself a Liberal.28 The more the others crept towards unity with Reform, the more resolutely independent he became. On 19 October he told his audience that he had been a Liberal all his life and would stay true to the name. And yet, having said as much in one breath, in the next he again spoke of the need to recruit the ‘best brains’ because the country’s problems were too complex to be dealt with simply on a party basis. With Theresa at his side fighting what was to be her last campaign, Ward gave a rambling address to a large audience in the Municipal Theatre in Invercargill. He told them the dairy industry was the farming of the future, that tariff reform was urgently needed, and that trade commissioners should be appointed around the world to explore new markets for New Zealand’s exports. There was much talk of Empire. The meeting ended with ‘scenes of enthusiasm’ which the Southland Times felt ‘went beyond the limits of political thought’.29 Ward was as good as back on his own turf.
It was not the PPA that nearly defeated Ward, nor Pat Hickey, who opposed him for the Labour Party. Ward was really up against Massey’s successor, Gordon Coates. The personable, forty-seven-year-old war hero moved round the country in presidential style, boosted by the most expensive public relations campaign in the nation’s history. Coates led Reform to its only substantial victory. It won 47 per cent of the vote and fifty-five seats. Colonel James Hargest at thirty-four was only half Ward’s age. He came within 159 votes of winning Invercargill for the Reform Party. Ward failed to appreciate the national trend in the election, and was convinced that his narrow victory was due to the PPA, who dropped leaflets around the electorate on the morning of the election. ‘My opponents conducted one of the most bigoted campaigns that there has ever been in the country’, he told Bishop Cleary who wrote to congratulate him. ‘The Rev. Howard Elliot [sic] and his deputy, Rev Mr Griffiths, resorted to all kinds of lying and misrepresentation to keep me out; they practically stopped at nothing. However, “all’s well that ends well”.’30
Ward had so seldom been in the news over the last two years that there were no current photographs of him for publication. In its display of ‘new MPs’ on 5 November the Herald used one that came from Ward’s younger, beefier days. There was soon speculation not about who would be the Government, but which party would form the official Opposition. Assuming that Ward would vote with the so-called National remnant, which had been reduced to ten seats, that would make them equal at eleven-all with Labour.31 Disputed results in Westland and Lyttelton were settled at one seat apiece, bringing the respective caucuses to twelve each, and the question of official Opposition was not decided until Labour won Eden from Reform in a by-election on 15 April 1926.
No doubt Ward hoped that his return to Parliament, even as the sole Liberal, would be welcomed by his former colleagues. There were now so few of them, however,32 and they counted for little. Moreover, Ward was in no state to provide them with much leadership. In April 1926 he turned seventy. His eyesight was so bad that he needed a special typewriter with big print.33 Theresa, ten years younger than her husband, was terminally ill with heart failure. A photograph of her on Brighton beach with all the family shows her, for the first time in her life, looking her age. By the middle of 1926 she was seldom able to leave her bed. Ward alternated between her bedside and business and political commitments. In June 1926 he was briefly in Sydney where he spoke to an organisation called The Millions Club. With Coates about to go to the Imperial Conference which would result in the famous Balfour Declaration defining the autonomy of the Dominions, Ward sang his old song about the need for an Imperial Parliament, but also noted the vital importance of closer trade relations between Australia and New Zealand.34 His earlier global imperial talk had a regional edge to it these days.
When Parliament opened on 17 June 1926 Ward, who looked in ‘the best of health’, was seated in the most junior of the Opposition front benches next to Harry Atmore. His arrival in the chamber caused a stir, as members rose to shake his hand. After he had been sworn in, Coates wandered across to converse with him for some time. Ward decided to make a virtue of his independence. Seconding the motion to reappoint Statham as Speaker, he had the House laughing when he told them that he was a complete party in himself and did not require a caucus to determine his movements or his policy. His benchmate quipped, perhaps prophetically: ‘You are not alone, you know’.
Ward enjoyed being back in Parliament again. He was given a large room which he described as the headquarters of the Liberal Party.35 He had never had fewer political responsibilities since his first term, 1887–90. The House was full of new faces, many of them to be one-term members who had come in on Coates’s coat-tails. John A. Lee later described them as ‘elderly men of Victorian sentiment … washed out of their armchairs into the House, where they … busied themselves in trying to turn the clock back’.36 Ward was one of the four oldest MPs, two of the other three also being veteran Liberals. Now in his thirty-third year in the House he had had several more terms in Parliament than anyone else. Yet he set down more questions than the others, and his speeches seemed designed to educate the younger MPs. He told them about the Speakers he had sat under, about the operation of sinking funds, and about his concept of the state. There were frequent trips down Memory Lane, and encounters with politicians as far back as Sir Harry Atkinson. Sometimes his speeches would lose their thread and wander aimlessly around dreadnoughts, wartime loans, advances to settlers, the royal family, the murder of the Tsar or an encounter he had had with Ramsay MacDonald—any memory that chanced into his head. The world of politics had moved on; Ward was living in the past. Yet, as Coates’s Government revealed a degree of ineptitude, and proved unable to slay the swelling beast of unemployment, this was not necessarily a fault. Ward encapsulated in his person and subject matter a nostalgia for more prosperous days gone by, a simpler world of nicer people. His courtesy came effortlessly once more, while his uncertain state of health placed him above the sectional strife that was such an enervating component of modern party politics.
While Ward enjoyed his first year back in the House, his world soon caved in on him. Theresa took a serious turn for the worse in October 1926, and died on 7 February 1927. She was not yet sixty-one. This was a terrible blow to Ward. She had been with him through thick and thin, a supportive wife and help-mate, his hostess during the twelve years at Awarua House and his constant admirer throughout their forty-four years of marriage. So loyal had Theresa been to him that none of the children had any inkling that she was not a Catholic, and were surprised at her request for an Anglican funeral service. Coates generously placed a ministerial railway car at Ward’s disposal for the long South Island cortege to Bluff. All Ward’s children were in the country. They, along with a large number of friends and colleagues from throughout the South Island, made it the biggest funeral Bluff had ever seen. The list of those sending wreaths read like a Who’s Who of the old New Zealand Liberal Party.37
Heretaunga was lonely without Theresa. Vincent had married the year before and only Pat was at home. Ward had never really got to know his youngest son. Pat spoke with a cultured English accent and occasionally played tricks on his father, who sometimes could appear stuffy, even prudish, to a lad who was forty-five years his junior.38 Eileen, Ward’s favourite, now came to his rescue. Her life, too, had experienced its share of tragedy. Two of her boys died of influenza in 1925 while she was away briefly on holiday, and her marriage was beset by financial difficulties. After Theresa’s death Eileen decided to move north from Christchurch and she settled near her father in Heretaunga. She would become his hostess and keep a careful eye on the man she had supported throughout her life.
Ward, meantime, went back and forth to Invercargill to meet his constituents. He always stayed in the Grand Hotel and took care to see that the local papers noted his arrival. At the end of May he paid another visit to Australia where the warmer climate always improved his circulation. He missed the opening of Parliament in 1927 and the obituaries for his former colleagues Carroll and Myers. No sooner did he return to New Zealand than he fell ill again and was unable to take his seat until early August. Then at the end of August, his sister Mina died. Nothing seemed very promising about his life, least of all the political scene. The National caucus, all eleven of them, had re-elected Forbes as leader soon after the election but by the middle of 1927 the maverick former Labourite, Veitch, was leading a splinter group of Nationalists, at first calling it a revived Liberal Party.39 After further discussions with Forbes and some critics of Reform outside Parliament they took the name United.40 With Coates’s Government falling apart, wracked by internal dissension over policy differences, Veitch was hoping to capitalise on the growing appetite for some middle political way short of embracing the official Labour Opposition. The services of A. E. Davy, who had masterminded Coates’s campaign in 1925, were soon available to United after his falling out with Coates. Suitable election candidates were sought and plans developed for a United Party conference.
With Eileen (Wood), 1928. Alexander Turnbull Library.
None of this affected Ward directly except that there were always a few Liberals who hankered after his return as leader.41 In Parliament his former colleagues were all at sixes and sevens. Occasionally some voted with the Government against Labour proposals; often the bulk of them did not vote at all. Journalists assumed they were plotting in some back room and then would report, bemused, that they had taken off for early weekends.42
Ward had almost faded from the news by early 1928 and a story was getting about that he was ignoring his constituents. It gained credence when he decided to take off overseas yet again. On 2 April 1928 he announced that he was not playing any active part in the United Party. Two days later he set off on a round-the-world ocean voyage to England and then to North America. From Quebec he went to Montreal, then to New York and to several other states before heading back to Toronto, Winnipeg and then Vancouver. Once more he missed the opening of Parliament. Instead he was enjoying a warm northern summer. Back home the political tempo was speeding up. Policy drift followed by the Reform Government’s inept attempts to introduce control of the dairy industry encouraged a growing number of people to contemplate some new form of political action. The Auckland Star summed up the mood when it declared: ‘No political remark has been made more often in the past year or two than that if there were an alternative to Reform other than Labour the Government would be doomed. Numbers of Reform supporters are thoroughly disgusted with the Government’s incompetence and opportunism.’43
The United Party was a child of uncertain parentage. A few Auckland businessmen together with Davy patched together a working relationship with what remained of the old Liberal Party organisation and a number of their former candidates up and down the country. John Gaudin has written of the United Party: ‘Rather than amounting to a new creation, United could best be described as a takeover of the Liberal Party, sharing some instructive and ironical parallels with the typical commercial takeover. The Liberal Party was like an old company, possessing the valuable assets of sentimental voter loyalty and traditional candidate identification. These could be mobilised by an improvement in organisation and funds, and an updating of the party’s image, both of which Davy was well qualified to supply.’44 By July 1928 United had selected many candidates and was beginning to prepare for a national conference. Forbes, rather than Veitch, provided a rudimentary form of parliamentary leadership to the emerging political force, but Davy, a man of considerable guile, kept fuelling speculation about the ultimate leadership of the party. It seems clear that his plans as they formed in his mind were not shared with Forbes, who expressed surprise at a press report from Winnipeg that Ward had been contacted about leadership of the new party and was interested in the proposal. One United candidate, A. J. Stallworthy, summarily dismissed speculation about any Ward bid for leadership.45
There will always be an element of mystery about how Ward came to be invited to enter the ballot for leadership at the September conference of the United Party. While there was still strong residual loyalty to Ward among old-time Liberals, others like Veitch and Forbes coveted the crown and there was a general perception that Ward was too old and sick to be in serious contention. By a process of elimination, Davy seems to have concluded that only Ward possessed the mana necessary to promote a new political force. Atmore and Veitch, particularly after the latter arrived at the conclusion that he would not get the job himself, joined Davy in this belief. Atmore refused actually to join the party at this point, but he had always been a Ward supporter. It was Davy who, without any authorisation from the United Party, had a reporter track Ward down in Winnipeg with questions about his availability to lead the United Party, and it was Davy who then—without Ward’s authorisation—told the New Zealand press of his possible availability. This began the Ward boom that developed as the conference approached. Davy in particular was conscious of the new party’s need for money and convinced others that Ward was more likely to be of assistance to United than any other contenders.45 No doubt money was discussed between Davy and Ward as soon as personal contact was established, and knowing Ward’s irrepressible desire for the political limelight there seems little doubt that he would have been prepared to pay the price.
Ward arrived back in New Zealand on 9 September, a few days before the United Party conference began in Wellington. He went straight to Wellington and made his first appearance of the session in Parliament. He parried reporters’ questions about whether he would accept the invitation to attend the conference of the United Party. ‘I am still turning it over in my mind’, he told a journalist from the Lyttelton Times on 11 September. ‘Probably I shall have come to a decision tomorrow and may make a statement regarding my intentions.’46 Ward delayed making this statement, extracting as much mileage from the continuing speculation as possible. On 14 September the conference of fifty-one United Party candidates met with Robert Masters, former Liberal MP for Stratford, in the chair. ‘Cast your minds back one year’, he exhorted the candidates. ‘The political air was heavy with suspicion and dissatisfaction. A great party, the Liberal Party, was moribund, a decadent party held sway, and only the Labour Party, intolerable to we New Zealanders, offered as Reform’s alternative. Liberalism lay in the ashes, while the spirit of Reform had fled with that of its great leader. Phoenix-like out of the ashes have we risen. The organisation grew from one individual to a tremendous and very efficient political force.’ Masters made it clear that to complete the list of candidates he wanted Ward, Atmore, C. A. Wilkinson, former MP for Egmont, and W. J. Polson of the Farmers’ Union to join them at the conference.47 The conference promptly went into committee to discuss policy and the election of a leader. For two days the delegates laboured, and the press marvelled at their ‘remarkable cohesion and discretion’ as they avoided the temptation to discuss their deliberations with the press. Someone, probably Davy again, tipped off the Lyttelton Times that Ward seemed to be the most likely person to win the leadership ballot.48 Certainly, as Gaudin shows, Davy was working hard on Ward’s behalf.49
On the morning of 17 September the conference wisely confirmed the party’s name and its policy before moving to the question of leadership: had they made the decisions in the reverse order, and selected Ward first, he would have fought them over the party name, since he regarded himself as a lifetime Liberal. Having performed these tasks the conference then moved to the ballot for leadership. Four people were nominated—Forbes, Veitch, Ransom and Ward. Veitch, then Forbes, were eliminated in the first two ballots. Accounts vary about what then happened. According to Robert Chapman, Ransom won the next ballot at which two more votes were cast than there were eligible voters.50 According to John Gaudin, Ransom tied with Ward on the third ballot. In any event, another ballot was requested and several of the candidates, under pressure from Davy, changed their votes to Ward, enabling him to win. A final ballot declared him elected unanimously.51 After nine years in the wilderness the frail seventy-two-year-old remnant of a by-gone political era was heading a party that described itself as a new political force.
Ward was ecstatic. He was given an enthusiastic reception as he tottered to the stage. There he summoned up some of his old magic, delivering what several newspapers described as ‘an impressive speech’. He told the delegates he felt proud, and thanked Forbes and others for their kind remarks about him. He then reminded the candidates that it would be a difficult election, and added that their policy must be for the good of the country as a whole, and not of any one section. This watchcry of the old Liberal era was given Ward’s personal gloss: whatever difficulties might arise they should treat their opponents fairly and honourably. He did his best to be personable, affable and honest to the end of his days.52 Pictures of a frail Ward, impeccably dressed, his moustache waxed, seated in a luridly upholstered armchair, appeared in most newspapers next day, along with those of his deputy leaders, Ransom and Forbes.53
In Parliament people said that United needed a figurehead to tide them over the election, and that Ward was the only one who could credibly fill that position. The press was somewhat disconcerted by the turn of events. The Auckland Star and the Lyttelton Times tried to be enthusiastic. The Star received the news with the comment: ‘To undertake such a task at his age is an act of courage on Sir Joseph Ward’s part that will be widely appreciated. It would be absurd to suggest Sir Joseph is as vigorous as he was, but he is still active in mind and body, and there is no one in the House whose experience of public affairs approaches his. His supporters are as staunch as ever.’ The Times also stressed experience, and noted approvingly Ward’s homily about keeping clear of sectionalism.54 This sentiment also appealed to the Herald, whose enthusiasm for Coates had cooled somewhat over the years. It added: ‘A kindly feeling for [Ward] is universally entertained. His services to the country in the past have been notable. But Sir Joseph Ward has earned the right to a position of comparative tranquillity among the elder statesmen of the country. Instead of being left to this … he has had thrust on him a task that would try a man of half his years and twice his physical powers.’55
Ward’s 1928 campaign photo.
Despite these reservations about his health, a subject that was of considerable concern to his family, who were totally against the idea that he should fight a vigorous election campaign, Ward was soon deep in preparation. He shifted into the parliamentary seat formerly occupied by Forbes and was soon speaking on a variety of issues as the session drew to a close. Candidate selection was nearly completed. Ward’s acceptance of leadership ensured that Atmore, Wilkinson (Egmont), Polson (Stratford) and J. T. Hogan (Rangitikei) would support him on a no-confidence motion should they be elected. United’s campaign was gathering momentum. Ward let it be known, however, that he would undertake only a limited speaking tour, concentrating on the main centres. Davy was in charge of campaign details, and he angled Ward’s itinerary at the media by contriving press conferences at railway stations each morning that were aimed at the evening papers. The date of the election was announced on 10 October: it would take place on 14 November. Next day came the news that Ward would open his campaign in Auckland, tacitly acknowledging that the United Party, much more than its Liberal predecessor, owed its origin to Auckland and North Island urban discontent.
Ward’s Auckland meeting has remained the subject of conjecture amongst historians for more than sixty years. Ward told a full Town Hall, with a thousand people outside listening through amplifiers, that he would borrow £70 million in one year. It would be spent on settling people on the land and completing the long-distance railway lines that had languished under the Reform Government. This was the piece which the press naturally enough seized from a confused and confusing speech, a speech that alternated between criticism of Coates for allowing the public debt to rise too rapidly and promises to add to it.56 Ward’s speech notes delivered to the press and sent by United Press to newspapers throughout the Dominion next morning had Ward promising to borrow £70 million at the rate of six to eight million yearly. This was a rate of borrowing more consistent with his expressed concern about the size of the public debt. Did he simply make a mistake in his speech? Or had he suddenly leapt back to Vogel and decided to borrow to induce better times? From time to time recently he had been expressing frustration that the inadequate money supply in New Zealand stopped ‘everything going at “full tilt’”, the inference being that he would like to see a faster rate of borrowing.57 But he had also, almost in the same breath, argued against what he seemed to regard as an unacceptably high rate of borrowing by the Coates Government.58 By this time clarity was not Ward’s strong point.
The most credible explanation of Ward’s £70 million loan, around which the whole election campaign came to focus, is that he had simply made a mistake during his speech, and that United’s campaign officials decided after their initial shock at the promise to raise in one year what they had been expecting to hear spread over ten, decided to allow a degree of ambiguity to rest in the public mind. They quickly realised that enthusiasm for the loan among working-class voters whose support was needed, far outweighed the criticism from United’s conservative opponents. Lending credence to this view is Vincent Ward’s recollection of the Town Hall speech nearly seven years later. Vincent, who on 17 October 1928 was sitting on the stage immediately behind his father, recalled that at one point, well into his speech, Ward turned to him and asked whether the lights in the hall had failed. Vincent whispered ‘no’, but the old man kept speaking for another fourteen minutes. Davy later gave similar details about Ward’s eye problem to Robert Chapman and to R. M. Burdon.59 During that critical fourteen minutes in what was probably a state of diabetic blackout, Ward made New Zealand’s most lavish election promise to date.
The magnitude of Ward’s gaffe was immediately apparent. Davy shielded him from the press next morning and Vincent quickly returned Ward to Heretaunga and the care of no fewer than five doctors.60 United officials worked hard to produce a credible explanation for what had happened. First they maintained that Ward had corrected his promise of £70 million in the course of his speech. When this was denied by reporters present, a statement was issued by way of explanation that Ward intended to ‘make arrangements’ in his first year for raising the loan over eight to ten years, but with an immediate £10 million for railway construction.61 Cutting across these explanations was the determination by the Reform Party and their press supporters not to let Ward off the hook. Coates labelled the speech a policy of ‘borrow, boom and burst’, and the Herald ridiculed the £70 million promise. Others noted how the magnitude of the borrowing ran counter to previously expressed opinions by nearly everyone in the United Party.62 Downie Stewart, Minister of Finance, gave a new twist to the frequent suggestions that Ward was too old. On the contrary, he said: Ward was ‘too young, too dashing, too extravagant, too spendthrift, in short too much of a plunger for the careful and prudent people of New Zealand’.63 It was the Government more than United that kept Ward’s promised millions dangling before voters’ noses.
Doctors and family were unanimous that Ward should abandon the campaign. He almost succumbed to their pressure, but decided in the end that he had to keep faith with the party he had agreed to lead.64 It took time to recover his strength, however. On the 24th there was talk of him soon being able to go south to Christchurch and Invercargill, but he had a relapse and on the 25th came reports that he was receiving treatment for eye trouble. By the 29th he was better, but his scheduled meeting in Invercargill that day had to be addressed by Robert Masters who, during the constant cheering at the mention of Ward’s name, brought the house down by producing Eileen from the audience.65 On 6 November Ward himself arrived in his own electorate to a rapturous reception. Three bands and a cheering crowd of ‘wildly enthusiastic citizens’ were waiting for his train. When he stepped from the carriage he received a ‘tremendous ovation’. With difficulty he was escorted to a waiting motor car, from which he gave a fifteen-minute address.66 On the 8th Ward spoke to 2000 people in ‘a gala occasion’ at the Municipal Theatre. As if to give the lie to the charges that he was too ill, he spoke for nearly three hours. He told his audience that the country should be able to absorb another 300,000 to 400,000 immigrants over the next few years, and that an adequate supply of ‘cheap money’ would ‘enable the immigrants to have something under their feet’.67 It was the old Ward, a slice out of the prospering first decade of the century brought forward to a less certain era, an irresistible historical flashback.
The United Party made up for Ward’s lack of mobility by advertising extravagantly. Many full-page policy statements were inserted in major daily newspapers. One of them in the Lyttelton Times on 19 October read: ‘UNITED PARTY The Policy for Permanent Prosperity. Electors! The boldest, most amazing and comprehensive policy you have ever read. Sir Joseph Ward, world-famed financier, New Zealand’s only Statesman, proposes To raise £70,000,000 without one penny additional taxation, direct or indirect.’ After summarising a number of policy points the advertisement ended with the question: ‘Will you continue to flounder in the dark, following Coates, who has miserably failed you—or are you going to be led to prosperity by Sir Joseph Ward?’ Appearing as it did within hours of the explanatory statements by United’s leadership, and inserted no doubt by the egregious Davy, it indicates clearly that the party was happy to equivocate about the real status of Ward’s £70 million promise.
Receiving congratulatory telegrams with his son Vincent, November 1928. Alexander Turnbull Library.
United’s election tactics produced extraordinary results; the Auckland Star called them ‘probably the most severe and most sensational in our political history’.68 On 14 November the Reform Party slumped to twenty-eight seats, its portion of the vote falling to 34 per cent. United lifted its tally to twenty-seven seats gained from nearly 32 per cent of the vote, and the Labour Party ended with nineteen seats from 26 per cent. Of the other six members, at least four were committed to support Ward. The Parliament of eighty members contained another thirty-four new faces, twenty-one of them United members. Nothing could disguise the fact that Coates had been defeated. From the Dominion’s office in Wellington the Prime Minister announced that he would ‘do the right thing’. Cabinet met on 17 November. Coates toyed with resigning immediately but decided when the final results were declared on 23 November to meet Parliament on 4 December instead.69
Ward, meantime, expressed delight with the outcome of the election and left Invercargill for Heretaunga on 15 November. On the 22nd he met his new caucus, which passed a resolution of ‘unwavering loyalty, support and faith in our distinguished leader, Sir Joseph Ward’.70 The Labour Party remained quiet about their intentions, but few doubted they would vote with United to defeat Coates, thus assisting Ward to become Prime Minister once more. Having done that, however, real doubt was being expressed about whether Labour would be able to control a Ward Government. On 23 November the Herald carried an article from the New Zealand Worker which said: ‘Labour’s power to oust Sir Joseph Ward during the life of this Parliament should not be over-estimated. Labour can put him in, but cannot put him out—unless Mr Coates is agreeable. The realisation of this fact by the Reform Party will probably lead to a covert fusion by which it will keep Sir Joseph in power.’71 This is exactly what did happen, but the mere mention of his ever being dependent on Reform was repugnant to Ward. On the 23rd he ruled out any coalition with Reform, saying that such an event would be a ‘traitorous act’ in the eyes of electors who had supported him and his party. He would put United’s policy into effect even if he had to call a new election.72 For several days Ward toyed with the possibility of seeking another election, hoping thereby to ride the current enthusiasm for a new Government all the way to an overall majority. It was the Governor-General who finally dispelled the notion from his mind at a meeting on 8 December.73
In the days before Parliament met Ward stayed at Heretaunga which had become what one reporter called ‘a sort of political Olympus’, to which Davy, ‘the deus ex machina’, who had been appointed chairman of the United Party executive, constantly repaired. United MPs and political observers were engaged in Cabinet-making, a subject that was much on Ward’s mind too. There were six or seven names on everyone’s list. Ward, Forbes, Wilford, Ngata, Atmore, Veitch and Ransom seemed certainties. After those experienced parliamentarians, the conjecture became so heated that one reporter said it ‘may provide a real test for United’s unity’.74 Ward’s problem was that he presided over a caucus of newcomers, and however one juggled the names there would have to be several ministers drawn from them.
The transfer of power: Ward and Coates, December 1928.
Parliament opened on the afternoon of 4 December. The galleries were full. With the support of all parties Sir Charles Statham was re-elected Speaker, and next day the Governor-General gave a very brief speech. On the 6th, after a few House-cleaning details had been attended to, the Address in Reply debate began. Ward followed the first two Government speakers, both of them freshmen, by moving a no-confidence amendment. He spoke at length, mentioning King, Empire, the £70 million loan proposal and his own age. He told the House he was in his seventieth year—possibly the only deliberate untruth he ever uttered in Parliament—and ended his speech with a ringing denunciation of the press for ignoring some of his campaign.75 Several more members spoke before the want-of-confidence motion came to a vote on the afternoon of 7 December. It passed by fifty votes to twenty-eight. All the Labour and independent members present voted with Ward. The Government had fallen. This news was quickly conveyed to Government House where Sir Charles Fergusson was preparing to hold a garden party. At 6 pm he received Coates, a man for whom he had developed considerable respect. The defeated Prime Minister had shown himself to be ‘a good loser’, he noted in his diary. A message was then sent to Ward requesting him to come to Government House next morning, which he did at 10 am on 8 December 1928.
Ward agreed to form an administration but tried to get a guarantee from Fergusson that in the event of a defeat in the House he would be granted an immediate dissolution. This the Governor would not agree to, so Ward dropped the subject. ‘It was a mere “try on”,’ the Governor noted later in his diary. Ward ‘was quite pleasant afterwards and told me the names of his Cabinet. Quite a good lot, I think.’ On the evening of Monday 10 December Ward and his Cabinet were sworn into office. At the following Executive Council meeting Thomas Sidey, the veteran Liberal politician from Dunedin who had narrowly lost his seat, took office as a member and Leader of the Legislative Council, enabling him to become Attorney-General in Ward’s Government.76 On the 14th the House adjourned. Ward and his Cabinet, four of whom had never sat in Parliament before,77 seemed firmly in charge. It was nearly seventeen years since Ward had last occupied the office of prime minister, and more than nine since he had been a minister. How long could he last this time? Sir Charles Fergusson had real doubts. He confided to Amery at the Dominion Office: ‘Despite [the Prime Minister’s] mental alertness, I could not help being struck by the signs in him of impaired health and physical weakness, which are certainly noticeable and give rise to the fear that he may break down under the strain of office.’78
