Liberal Party (New Zealand)

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The Liberal Party was New Zealand's first political party .

Its founding date is often given as 1890, the year in which John Ballance won the election to the House of Representatives with an alliance of more or less liberal-minded people and was elected Prime Minister of New Zealand on January 24, 1891 a year later . In this election campaign, the members of the opposition, led by Ballance, showed the combative spirit that later became part of the character of the Liberal Party. But there was still a long way to go before a party was actually founded at the national level.

history

Before the Liberal Party began to take shape, the New Zealand Parliament was a structure of loose factions built on the one hand on personal connections and / or on provincial or local interests. The candidates were largely independent, but from around 1880 they were increasingly required to explain where they stood politically and what they wanted to be elected for.

Sometimes it can be read that the governor George Edward Gray was the father of liberal ideas in New Zealand. The spread of this myth is attributed to the historian , journalist and politician William Pember Reeves , who called Ballance the heir to the liberal idea. But the liberal movement did not emerge until 1887 at the earliest and had its first climax in the election of 1890, in which it received great support from a broad spectrum of voters, across all strata of the population and particularly strong in the newly developing provincial towns and port cities , as in Gisborne , Napier , New Plymouth , Nelson and Invercargill .

First party foundations

The first party was formed at the local level, with the National Liberal Association in Dunedin , founded in May 1890 by the liberal politician and later Prime Minister Richard John Seddon , the first of its kind. Similar foundations followed across the country, such as the Liberal Electoral League in Wellington and the Hawke's Bay Liberal Association in Napier . Almost all local parties were formed before 1893.

The need for a central political organization that also appeared outside Parliament became clear in the years following the 1896 election. The desire for political independence remained among the many liberal associations at the local level and so central liberal demands and ideas were merely formulated through the government. In addition to splinter groups, there were two large camps there: one led by Robert Stout , also later Prime Minister, and the other by Richard John Seddon .

The Liberal Party was loosely organized until 1899, especially at the national level.

Party formation at the national level

In July 1899, after pressure and dissatisfaction from the unions over the slow development of working class affairs , Seddon sent a representative across the country to promote the merger of all local associations into one centralized party. Seddon wrote a party constitution based on the Birmingham system developed by Joseph Chamberlain in the 1880s and unified all local sections into a centrally organized Liberal & Labor Federation of NZ . The year 1899 is considered to be the year the Liberal Party was actually founded, making it the first party in New Zealand by today's standards.

The Liberal Party was with John Ballance , Richard Seddon , William Hall-Jones , Joseph Ward and Thomas Mackenzie had by the year 1912 more than 21 consecutive years in the government, but then deal with an election defeat for weaknesses in the party leadership and temporary lack of leadership and the Hand over government affairs to the Reform Party under William Massey . In May 1925, under Gordon Coates , the party won the government majority for another three years. But the collapse of the party could no longer be stopped, since in 1922 some members had already stood for election as Liberal Labor and in the 1925 election some as National and others as Liberal Party.

Dissolution and merger

After the demoralizing years of the first half of the 1920s, the party split into two groups in 1925. One group followed George William Forbes and formed the nationalists and the other group remained liberal under WA Veitch until the United Party was founded in 1927 and the remaining liberals were absorbed. Led by the liberal Joseph Ward , who was Prime Minister from 1906 to 1912, the new party won the 1928 election and ruled for two years until his resignation. With the takeover of government by Forbes , the alliance experienced a shift to the right. For the 1931 election, the United Party and the Reform Party, founded in 1909, formed a coalition and, under the pressure of the growing Labor Party, grew closer and closer. They merged to form the National Political Federation for the 1935 election, and after the Labor Party under Michael Joseph Savage came to power for the first time in 1935, the New Zealand National Party was founded in 1936.

Last attempts

There were repeated attempts to form a new Liberal Party and successfully participate in the elections. The most far-reaching attempt took place in 1963 when the New Zealand Progressive Liberal Party of Auckland and the New Zealand Liberal Party of Christchurch stood for election together under the name New Zealand United Liberal Party . The result, however, was more than disappointing with 10,339 votes, which was only 0.86% of the total votes.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernard John Foster : History, Myths in New Zealand - Political Fallacies . In: Alexander Hare McLintock (Ed.): An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . Wellington 1966 ( online [accessed December 30, 2015]).
  2. ↑ a b News & Media - The Chief Electoral Officer has declared the official results for the 2008 General Election . Elections Electoral Commission , November 22, 2008, archived from the original December 30, 2015 ; accessed on September 18, 2019 (English).