Harry Atkinson

Harry Atkinson

Sir Harry Albert Atkinson , KCMG (born November 1, 1831 in Broxton , Cheshire , England , † June 28, 1892 in Wellington ) was the tenth Prime Minister of New Zealand . He had four terms of office totaling five years and four months: the first time he ruled from September 1, 1876 to October 13, 1877, the second time from September 25, 1883 to August 16, 1884. His third term lasted just a week, from August 28 to September 3, 1884. The fourth term was the longest; it began on October 8, 1887 and ended on January 24, 1891. He was the last prime minister of the country who did not belong to any party.

Emigration and fight against the Māori

The seventh oldest of thirteen children of an architect was educated in boarding schools and also at home. At the age of 21, he left England with his brother Arthur and emigrated to New Zealand. They arrived in New Plymouth in June 1853 and purchased land in the Taranaki province . Atkinson married Amelia Jane Skinner in March 1856; the marriage produced three sons and a daughter. He worked mainly as a farmer, but also took on other tasks. So he supplied the troops in Taranaki with firewood and was responsible for the mail transport between New Plymouth and Wellington .

In January 1857 Atkinson was elected to the Taranaki provincial parliament. He called for the land owned by the Māori to be expropriated in order to settle British immigrants. Atkinson argued that the colony's further economic development would be prevented if the Māori did not cooperate. He viewed the indigenous people as savages and was convinced that war was a sensible option to get them to sell and eventually drive them away.

When armed conflict between Māori and settlers broke out in Taranaki Province in 1860, Atkinson helped organize a volunteer unit and fought in the First Taranaki War , which ended with a ceasefire in March 1861. When the conflict flared up again in 1863, he led an illegally established unit. His role in the conflict is controversial, but his actions earned him the respect of like-minded politicians. He resigned his mandate in the provincial parliament in 1864.

Politics at the national level

In 1861 Atkinson was elected to the New Zealand House of Representatives as a member of the Gray and Bell constituency. In 1864 Prime Minister Frederick Weld appointed him Secretary of Defense. After the death of his wife, Atkinson resigned from office in 1866 to look after his children. A year later he married his cousin Annie Smith, with whom he had three other children. From 1868 to 1871 he lived with his second wife in England.

In October 1872 Atkinson returned to the political scene. In a by-election, he narrowly defeated a candidate allied with William Fox , a prominent proponent of Maori land rights. Hardly back in parliament, Atkinson fought the policies of Prime Minister Julius Vogel , who also advocated the rights of the Maori, and called his approach of financing ambitious infrastructure projects with extensive loans as reckless. Vogel replied that Atkinson was being overly careful and that it would only hold back the country's economic development.

Atkinson and Vogel, on the other hand, agreed that the provinces' lending money, unlike central government, was not controllable. Both were also convinced that provincial politicians only had their own interests in mind and that more cooperation between the state and the provinces was necessary. This common ground led Vogel to accept Atkinson into his cabinet in 1874, although they could never settle their differences over central government capital loans and Maori land rights.

Terms of office as prime minister

When Vogel resigned in September 1876, Atkinson, who had previously been Minister of Immigration, assumed the office of Prime Minister for the first time. One of his first acts was the dissolution of the provinces. He was also directly responsible for financial policy and pursued a less aggressive capital market policy. His intention was that the central government should be solely responsible for the borrowings, but that the local governments should be given a free hand in the use of the funds allocated to them. As soon as the new local government was established, however, the promised funds dried up due to an incipient recession , which made Atkinson's government increasingly unpopular.

In October 1877 Atkinson had to resign. In the opposition, he continued to advocate caution on financial issues. In 1882 he proposed the formation of a state social security system , but his idea met with little enthusiasm. From September 1883 Atkinson was again Prime Minister, but lost his office in August 1884 to Robert Stout . After only twelve days, Atkinson won a vote of no confidence in Stout, but he was only able to assert himself for seven days and had to give Stout back the post of prime minister.

It was not until October 1887 that Atkinson succeeded after several attempts to overthrow Stout with a vote of no confidence. Atkinson was knighted in January 1888. During his last term in office, he was mainly concerned with spending as little money as possible. In December 1890 the parliamentary elections were won by the Liberal Party . This was the first real political party in the country and represented the ideas of William Fox, Julius Vogel and numerous other opponents of Atkinson.

Atkinson tried to stay in power by appointing anti-liberal ministers, but eventually had to hand over government responsibility to John Ballance , leader of the Liberals. Atkinson died less than a year and a half later in his parliamentary office. A new era in New Zealand politics began with his death, as Atkinson had been the last non-partisan prime minister.

Web links

• Judith Bassett : Atkinson, Harry Albert . In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography . Ministry for Culture & Heritage , July 4, 2012, accessed August 19, 2012 .