Looking back, the British Revolution of 1923 was a great deal further from success than it seemed at the time, both to terrified conservatives and idealistic ‘risers.’ But as the smoke cleared and Austen Chamberlain’s government set about the task of rebuilding a nation rocked by retreats from Belfast and the Bosporus and a depression that had yet to weaken, cutting costs within the Empire became the order of the day. ‘Dominion Responsibility’ saw crown colonies pawned off to the nearest Dominions; thus Canada found itself ruling much of the Caribbean, the furious Rhodesians were swallowed by South Africa… and Richard Seddon’s dream came true.
SCREEMS FROM THA OLD PLANTATION
Prime Ministers of the Dominion of Oceania
Thomas Wilford, 1924-1929 (Liberal) (1)
James Allen, 1929-1933 (Reform) (2)
John A. Lee, 1933-1939 (Labour) (3)
Sidney Holland, 1939-1945 (National) (4)
Bill Barnard, 1945-1947 (Labour) (5)
Sidney Holland, 1947-1954 (National) (6)
Joh Bjelke-Petersen, 1954-1966 (National) (7)
Prime Ministers of the Republic of Oceania
Joh Bjelke-Petersen, 1966-1991, (National) (8)
Henare Ngata, 1991-1992 (National) (9)
Norman Kirk, 1992-1994 (Pacific Labour) (10)
Prime Ministers of the United Pacific Islands
Ray Peters, 1994-2003 (Pacific Labour) (11)
Ruth Richardson, 2003-2008 (United Pacific) (12)
Mahendra Chaudhry, 2008-2010 (Pacific Labour) (13)
Josaia Bainimarama, 2010-2020 (United Pacific) (14)
D. Donald Johnson, 2020-? (Pacific Opportunities Party) (15)
(1) William Massey was too sick to run a good campaign and too proud to stand down; the Liberals had a last hurrah as their great strategic dream came true. Wilford spent much of his time in office trying to keep his reactionary coalition partners content, fearing that if they tried to follow Britain's lead and ban the Labour party the Dominion would spiral into civil war. Thus, he did not pay the attention he should have when the commission to design the electorates and franchise in the pacific territories did its work, dominated as it was by landowners and financiers...
(2) Allen was a solid if uncharismatic PM. He had a keen interest in the Pacific, and his notable accomplishment was to achieve a dearly held goal of New Zealand for fifty years: buy out recession hit France's share of the New Hebrides Condominium. This turned out to be a disaster when that recession hit London, and then the Dominions, leading to a collapse in support for Oceanic conservatism.
(3) Lee led Oceania for six years. The chastened opposition was in no position to block his program of housing, work schemes and infrastructure development. However, by 1936 the Legislative Council was finding its teeth; with the overrepresentation of the 'Plantation Members' of Fiji, the Upper House was more powerful than it had ever been. They blocked the 'Social Credit' budget of 1936, and to Lee's horror his majority sharply diminished in the election that followed. In 1937 he lost the support of many of his own MPs after initiating talks with the Mau leaders in Samoa; the Pacific territories were unimportant to Labour, but treating avowed rebels as equals smacked of Bolshevism. In 1939 Chancellor Hugenberg invaded Poland, and Parliament felt that it was time for a less divisive leader. To forestall a leadership challenge, Lee called his second snap election; for the second time he lost it.
(4) Sidney Holland saw Oceania through the Second World War. Oceanians fought in the skies above Britain and in the long retreat through Spain. Holland forged an effective partnership with Robert Menzies of Australia, and was disappointed when the conservative government fell to be replaced by Ben Chifley. But Holland did not hesitate to join Chifley in withdrawing his troops when Japan struck south in 1942. Operation FS would be a turning point in the war and Oceania; a bloody failure for Japan, the loss of thousands of Oceanic soldiers at Suva and Apia nonetheless cemented the importance of the islands for many New Zealanders. Henceforth, retreat- or concessions to the locals- would increasingly be seen as a betrayal of the wartime sacrifice, never mind that the Pacific Battalion was also celebrated as one of the most famous units Oceania would field.
(5) Barnard was elected to reward Oceania for years of sacrifice. However, the Labour leader had less than a third of the seats in the Legislative Council- the left could not win any of the 'elected' seats with their strict property requirements, and many of the representatives had stubbornly refused to retire (or, it seemed, die) during Lee's term in office. After a year spent fruitlessly trying to pass a budget, Barnard asked for the dissolution of parliament. He would fight on a promise of electoral reform and disentanglement from the 'Settler Seats' of the islands.
(6) Holland's promise had been simpler: keep the system, keep the islands, spread their wealth. 'The National Fruit Baskets' were a ridiculous gimmick, but they worked- fruit shipped or sometimes flown (!) from the islands at great expense to the European planters, to be distributed to New Zealand voters as a 'taste of the Pacific.' After negotiating a whopping aid package from the United States, Holland could outbid Labour- and without any tinge of socialism. When the Labour movement, unhappy with its parliamentary weakness tried to take direct action, Holland brutally put down the strikes. Holland retired in 1954, secure in his party's dominance of the election.
(7) Bjelke-Petersen saw himself as a typical Oceanian farmer; he had spent some time overseas, and learned how to make it as a farmer in the rough heat of Queensland. He'd moved to Samoa in 1927 to grow taro and bananas, and through hard work (someone's hard work, anyway) he'd made a packet. Elected to be member for Apia in 1936 with the overwhelming support of the hundreds of voters there, he'd even acquired a reputation as a war hero for staying in the city during the Japanese assault. When Holland retired, Joh was a sensible choice as heir- too removed from New Zealand to have a power base there, he would be a transitional leader while the cabinet restructured.
That was the plan, anyway.
(8) After Britain's Greenwood government condemned Oceania for yet another election in which the National Party won another majority with a dozen electorates that had less than a thousand eligible voters each, 'Chief Joh' had called for the constitutional referendum of 1966. The Labour Party found itself in the uncomfortable position of campaigning for monarchism. The UK still didn't want to stop buying butter and lamb, so there wasn't yet an economic cost: congratulations President Upham. Goodbye the Legislative Council- welcome the Senate! Trouble in the islands? 'Consolidate the villages,' and lease the land to good Kiwi farmers who would develop it. Strictly on behalf of the locals of course.
Things began to run out of steam after that. Britain joined the EEC. White Australia wound up, and it was the conservative Malcolm Fraser who 'stabbed us in the back' when he condemned the racial gerrymandering in the Pacific. In 1983, Australian and New Zealand troops actually found themselves facing each other in Timor when Joh's advisors tried to help Indonesia in the long and bloody Dissolution War.
Joh got rich though. He got rich even as the Auckland police tore off their badges and baton charged Whina Cooper's land march. He got rich even as Red Rob Muldoon stood on Queen Street and gave the famous 'Sleeping Dogs Speech.' He got rich even as the All Black Tour of South Africa descended into bloody standstill and Prime Minister Buthelezi's government trembled.
It wasn't until the late eighties when the Cold War began to end, and markets began to close to Oceania in America and Europe and Asia that Joh's party saw the writing on the wall. With assurances from Prime Minister Whitlam that sanctions would ease promptly with the resignation of Joh, the cabinet made its move.
(9) The Māori seats had always been useful to to Oceania: a safety valve for indigenous discontent, and proof that the country wasn't racist, it had guaranteed non-white representation. Henare Ngata had impeccable credentials to be the face of the transition to the new democracy. The son of a war hero, a quiet but competent record in cabinet, unusual honesty for one of Joh's ministers and a lingering credibility as a leader of Māori.
After Joh was forced to step down, Henare remained leader long enough to arrange a free election, but was unable to get the opposition to agree any terms other than an amnesty for National Party leaders. That, in itself, would be controversial enough.
(10) 'Big Norm' had done his spell in Mount Eden, writing his prison letters for Red Rob to read at the rallies. He was slowing down by the time he left prison, of course, but he was a popular hero nonetheless. He did much to rehabilitate Oceania on the world stage- joining the Republic of Australia in its commitment to a 'Nuclear Free Pacific,' personally apologising to the Kingdom of Tonga for Joh's attempted coup in 1981, and above all sitting and listening at Maraes and meeting houses across Aotearoa and the Pacific while ordinary people spoke about a century of oppression. His death in his sleep rocked the country, leading to persistent conspiracy theories that he had been murdered by Americans or the Japanese or the National Party.
(11) Young, handsome and charismatic, Raymond Peters led Oceania to the new millennium. Heavily leaning into his status as a mixed-race man whose very existence was the kind of marriage between European New Zealand and the Pacific that Joh had found abhorrent, Peters was an unabashed populist. He finally abolished the Senate- 'a hand break on democracy!' and extended the welfare state to all Oceanians regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or geographic location. He did not go as far as many in his party wished, however. Giving independence to the Pacific Islands would have thrown away Labour seats and enraged the white New Zealanders whose parents and grandparents had fought against Operation KS; land reform would panic those same white New Zealanders and spook financial markets who were worried about the socialist firebrands in his party. In the end, it was Peters unwillingness to fight corruption that brought him down- after all, white New Zealand had had a taste for decades, why shouldn't the rest of Oceania? When his Taito Philip Fields was arrested for massive embezzlement at the education ministry, Peters knew his days were numbered- but he stayed on to fight the next election anyway.
(12) Ruth Richardson was not, technically, corrupt. United Pacific- not the National Party, thank you- came to power on a promise to kickstart the economy, and it did. Joh's state corporations were privatised. Public land was sold off in vast amounts. Land Reform technically happened: the favorable leases of vast chunks of Samoa and Fiji were terminated- and instead, American agribusiness was invited in. The economy grew, and unemployment rose. 'One more year of prosperity like this,' said a wag, 'and we'll all die of poverty.'
(13) A veteran of Fiji Labour, Chaudhry had a brief and unhappy term in office. Coming to power amidst the recession of 2008, he found that eight years of Ruthanasia had left him with few levers to pull. The treasury remained institutionally right-wing- Peters had never had any success getting his own civil servants there, unlike in Foreign Affairs, Health or Education. Chaudhry's only notable success was to bring in another round of electoral reform- bringing back the upper house, this time to be elected with 'List MPs', while the electorates would now be chosen by STV. He called the first election under the new system, in time for his party to split into a collection of regional Labour offshoots.
(14) Bainimarama had no trouble deposing Chaudhry. As a young man, he had been in one of Joh's racially integrated Advisory Units in Indonesia, and had done well in the nineties as a right-wing hero for Indigenous Fijians who could nevertheless keep young radicals from threatening the planter elites. He came to Wellington in 2003, and quickly became Minister for Defence for Richardson. Ten years of populism- reversing his patron's old cuts, playing the divided left wing parties against each other, always finding a symbolic way to give something back to the indigenous Pacifica without worrying Wall Street too much... he was a dangerous man. In the end, it was not the left who ended his career.
(15) The first indigenous Samoan to become Prime Minister of Oceania, Donald Johnson's undoubted charisma and personal presence made up for a slight wooliness on policy. The captain who had led the All Blacks back into the international competition and to World Cup glory in Buenos Aires in 1998, Johnson had gone on to be a successful investor and activist. Adept at social media- he could go viral with a raised eyebrow- his coalition ranges from the left to the centre right. Whether it can deliver anything that he has promised remains to be seen.