List of Prime Ministers of New Zealand
1912-1915: William Massey (Reform minority)
1915: William Massey (Reform-Liberal coalition)
1914 def: Sir Joseph Ward (Liberal), Alfred Hindmarsh (Labour), Paddy Webb (Socialist)
1915-1919: William Massey (War Government: Reform-Liberal)
1919: William Massey (Reform-Liberal coalition)
1919-1922: Gen. Andrew Hamilton Russell (Reform-Progressive coalition)
1919 def: William Massey (Reform), Sir Joseph Ward (Liberal), James McCombs (Labour), Harry Holland (Socialist), Andrew Walker (Moderate)
1922-1925: Sir Joseph Ward (Liberal-Reform-Progressive coalition)
1922 def: Francis Dillon Bell (Reform), Peter Fraser (Communist), Gen. Andrew Hamilton Russell (Progressive), James McCombs (Labour)
1925-1926: Sir Joseph Ward (Liberal-Reform-Progressive-Country coalition)
1925 def: Heaton Rhodes (Reform), Peter Fraser (Communist), James McCombs (Labour), Charles Wilkinson (Progressive), Alexander Ross (Country), Ellen Melville (Women's)
1926-1928: Thomas Wilford (Liberal-Reform-Progressive-Country coalition)
1928-1930: Gordon Coates (Reform-Liberal coalition)
1928 def: Thomas Wilford (Liberal), Peter Fraser (Communist), Rex Mason (Labour), Harry Atmore (New Liberal)
1930-1934: Gordon Coates (Reform-Liberal-Labour coalition)
1931 def: Thomas Wilford (Liberal), Peter Fraser (Communist), Col. Septimus Closey (Nationalist), Rex Mason (Labour), Michael Joseph Savage (Democratic Labour)
1934: Gordon Coates (Reform-Nationalist coalition)
1934-1940: Patrick O'Regan (Popular Front: Communist-Liberal-Labour)
1934 def: Gordon Coates (Reform), Peter Fraser (Communist), Col. Septimus Closey (Nationalist), Michael Joseph Savage (Labour), Walter Nash (Labour Party of New Zealand)
1937 def: Peter Fraser (Communist), George Troup (Reform), Sidney Holland (Nationalist), Michael Joseph Savage (Labour), Alfred Ransom (National Liberal), Walter Nash (Labour Party of New Zealand)
1940-1942: George Forbes (War Government: Reform-Liberal-Labour)
1940 def: Keith Holyoake (Reform), Dan Sullivan (Labour), Peter Fraser (Communist), John Hogan (Nationalist), John A. Lee (Patriotic Socialist)
Prime Minister of the New Zealand Government-in-Exile
1942-1945: Gordon Coates (Independent)
List of Prime Ministers of New Zealand
1945-1946: Lt-Gen. Bernard Freyberg (Government of National Unity: Reform-Liberal-Labour-Communist-Patriotic Socialist)
1946-0000: Peter Fraser (Government of National Reconstruction: Communist-Labour-Radical)
1946 def: Jack Ormond (Reform), Gervan McMillan (Labour), Warren Freer (Radical), Apirana Ngata (Liberal)
When the Reform Party came to power after much parliamentary manoeuvring in 1912, it was scarcely suspected that the supposedly conservative party would achieve so much... reform in so short a time. Before the next election they made the civil service appointments procedures truly non-partisan, they introduced STV for general elections, and they even managed to defuse a couple of potentially hairy labour disputes involving watersiders and gold-miners.
The next two decades were dominated by two tendencies. Firstly, all governments tended to include both the Reform and Liberal parties (plus, often, the Progressives, a faction of Reformers who split off on account of Massey's unaccountable failure to appoint them to Cabinet) and generally continued the liberal policies that the country had become known for: they extended the provision of pensions, established a state-owned shipping corporation, and arranged for wool and dairy to be sold in export markets by state-directed marketing boards. The second tendency was for the Left Opposition parties to spend more time arguing with each other than with the Government. The Labour Party began as the stronger of the two main parties of the left, but suffered splits and lacked imagination in staying ahead of the policies of the Government; the Socialists, emboldened by the success of their negotiations with Massey in 1912-3, grew more interested in electoralism, more popular, and more ideologically united. They joined the Comintern in 1921, at the expense of losing a few moderates, such as the energetic Aucklander M. J. Savage.
By the time the Depression hit, though, both tendencies seemed to be at an end. The Reform-Liberal coalitions had run out of ideas (or at least were reluctant to go any further with Harry Atmore's experimental monetary proposals), while the Communists now towed the 'Third Period' line and held aloof from anything that might conceivably be attractive to the voters. Labour, meanwhile, were co-opted into a grand coalition by Gordon Coates, who won them over simply by reducing a proposed public sector pay cut, promising not to devalue the currency, and kickstarting a public works unemployment relief scheme. Coates' failure to devalue heightened tensions which ultimately led the business community to break with the Government and begin to support a sorry band of right-wing authoritarians led by Colonel Closey.
As the Nationalist Front was characterised by the Communists as a fascist party, their Comintern-directed response was to attempt to head it off by descending from their ivory tower and engaging in a Popular Front with progressive forces. The proposal produced tensions in both the Liberals and Labour, which were divided on the prospect, but when the centre-left faction of the Liberals gained the ascendancy and joined the Popular Front in return for the Premiership, the majority of the Labour Party could hardly stay out for long. Both parties left the Government in 1934, forcing Coates to seek an accommodation with the Nationalists - a combination which allowed him to immediately devalue. This, ironically, made it possible for the next government to oversee economic recovery.
Despite being the first time a Communist Party had shared in the governance of an Anglosphere country, New Zealanders often have to remind foreigners on Alternate History forums that it wasn't actually all that left-wing. The social security system instituted by Labour's M. J. Savage was not as generous as promised, and was overtaken by that of the UK in the late 1940s. The new land value tax was not as equitable as it first appeared. In Government, the Communist Ministers seemed to spend all their time arguing moderation in order to keep the Liberals on board, while the Liberals, in fact, were often not bothered by whatever happened to be on the table. The most unique concept of the Popular Front government, in fact, was their willingness to nationalise credit - a decision which obviated the need to seek overseas loans which would not have been forthcoming from the anti-Communist London money market anyway.
All was going fairly well, bar the odd conservative plot, until 1940, when the Communists withdrew in opposition to the Second World War (which Comintern had told them was one to stay out of) and a new War Government came to power. By the time the Communists had finally decided that Fascism was, after all, a threat (roughly around the time the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union) it was too late. The Japanese were already on the verge of landing on Muriwai Beach.
Gordon Coates re-entered the political scene at this point: the High Commissioner to London was the obvious stand-in to lead a Government in Exile, and strenuously argued for an Allied campaign to recapture New Zealand. This was not achieved until 1945, when the Americans and British launched an amphibious attack as part of the sweeping-up operation. General Freyberg of the Expeditionary Force, as the man on the spot, was put in charge of a Government including all pre-War non-Fascist parties in equal proportions. But times had changed at home: the Communist Party had been the backbone of the Resistance, and now became by far the largest party in electoral terms - they took power with Labour and with a new party of young social democrats who had had their political awakening in the Resistance. Soon, though, the salami tactics dictated by Stalin were to put paid to Peter Fraser's partners and dupes, and set in train four decades of Communist rule.
