Michael Bassett with Michael King: Tomorrow Comes The Song

Penguin

$49.95

Review: Tom Brooking*

Peter Fraser (1885-1950), the tough Scottish carpenter from Easter Ross, holds the record as Labour's longest-serving Prime Minister (1940-49).

As creator of the Labour Party, architect and builder of the cradle-to the-grave welfare state, educational reformer, wartime Prime Minister and champion of human rights in general and the rights of small nations in particular, he undoubtedly remains Labour's most important leader.

Arguably he was also New Zealand's most able Prime Minister. Yet, his biography is the last about the leaders of the First Labour Government of 1935-1949 to appear, long after those of the more colourful but less important Walter Nash, Michael Joseph Savage and John A. Lee.

This publication by two of New Zealand's most prominent historians is, therefore, especially welcome.

The book will be of interest not only to academics and university students but also to thousands of New Zealand families like mine who grew up with the memory of the man. My Presbyterian schoolteacher mother, a Fraser on her mother's side, who lost both her parents when she was 17 at the height of the Great Depression, worshipped Labour and lauded Fraser as by far the best New Zealand Prime Minister, greater even than her family's hero - Richard John Seddon.

My schoolteacher father, an archetypal floating voter who met Fraser several times on Post Primary Teacher Association delegations, disliked Fraser's strong union connections, but always maintained that the tenacious Scot was easily our best Minister of Education, partly because he held far more power within his party than anyone else who has served in the education portfolio.

Even my more conservative bookseller grandfather, who formerly supported William Massey, admired Fraser's ability to get things done and deliver tangible improvement to people's lives through the welfare state. It came as a shock when National Party friends scoffed at Fraser's odd-looking glasses, stooped posture and poor clothes sense caught so accurately by the New Zealand Herald's cartoonist Gordon Minhinnick.

Fraser's awful voice, which mangled the worst of the Scottish and New Zealand dialects, was also an easy target for derisory comment.

The fact, though, that he loomed so large in the lives of families on the opposite side of the political fence only underscores the man's prominence. Some of their descendants will also be interested to read more about the man whom the likes of Sid Holland and Keith Holyoake grudgingly admired.

It is hard to imagine two writers better qualified to do the job than our most eminent biographer and our most accomplished political historian.

Michael Bassett has written the bulk of the book and his own experience at the sharp end of parliamentary politics provides insights which might escape a more ivory tower kind of biographer. Who better to empathise with Fraser's gargantuan struggles with the medical profession than a later Minister of Health intent on further reform?

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the book is tightly organised and written in Bassett's typically brisk style, creating a strong narrative drive which soon hooks the reader.

The work also marks a real advance over Bassett's earlier biography of Joe Ward, in that each chapter has a snappy title which immediately alerts the reader to key themes, while the title of the book is most appealing and apposite.

King gets proceedings off to a flying start with excellent background chapters on Fraser's life in Scotland, and Bassett picks up the story without losing momentum. He manages to keep things moving despite the complexities of the Labour Party's troubled evolution and the enormous range of Fraser's activities in government. This is a major achievement in itself as it would have been all too easy to have become bogged in detail.

Bassett also provides us with the best account yet of political life in New Zealand during and immediately after the Second World War, and the chapters on Fraser's key role in protecting the rights of small nations within the United Nations are easily the clearest account available. The final chapter confirms that Fraser's loss of enthusiasm for the grind of domestic politics proved critical in his defeat at the 1949 election. In this respect Fraser fell behind his two greatest rivals for the title of New Zealand's greatest Prime Minster - Seddon and Massey.

As one would expect, the research is impeccable, the photographs are well chosen and Fraser is presented in the round.

In most respects, then, this is an exemplary example of political biography in the best Auckland tradition as established by the late Keith Sinclair: comprehensive, thorough and a good read. Unfortunately, like models of even the most prestigious cars, it has some minor faults and needs a little streamlining.

First, if Bassett had done more teaching rather than working 16-hour days in politics and maintaining the same work rate as our most industrious historian, he would know that the great majority of his readers will have only a vague understanding of New Zealand political history.

Most readers will also find the labyrinthine world of leftwing politics disconcertingly unfamiliar and incomprehensible. In other words, he assumes too much knowledge on the part of his readers and needed to spend more time painting in the context in which Fraser lived and operated.

Occasionally, Bassett loses the detachment required of the biographer and lapses into making jibes befitting the adversarial politician. So the flawed but talented Bob Semple and John A. Lee are dismissed respectively as a windbag and silver-tongued. More serious, this judgmental and censorious tone is applied too often to Fraser's beliefs and policies, even though Bassett confirms Fraser's reputation as the number one Labour leader. Surely it is the historian's job to understand rather than to condemn?

One is left with the sneaking suspicion that Bassett, whether consciously or unconsciously, is engaged in defending the excessive zeal of his own Government's attempts to correct Fraser's mistakes, especially those of overt centralisation, regulation and bureaucratisation.

Once again Bassett refuses to acknowledge that ideas have had any impact on our politicians. Admittedly Fraser was pragmatic but he was also idealistic. Certainly much of that idealism came from his Presbyterian upbringing and tough life experience, but it would nice to learn more about his omnivorous reading habits. It would also be interesting to know what kind of socialist Fraser imagined himself to be.

Finally, it would have been useful if Bassett had spent more time comparing his version of Fraser with that presented by other commentators, biographers of Fraser's colleagues, and historians of education and the welfare state. Then we would have a stronger sense of how Bassett's Fraser differed from the others and a clearer idea of what Bassett has added. As it stands, the somewhat perfunctory epilogue suggests that despite his prodigious industry Bassett has not added much that is new apart from biographical details of Fraser's personal life.

On the other had, it is great to have all this material in one, highly organised place and Bassett must be congratulated for his acknowledgment of Fraser's long-suffering wife Janet. (The hard-working politician literally ran on tea and toast and was rarely ever home - not because he played the town but because he was married first and foremost to the Labour Party and the ideal of closing the gaps.)

Despite my gripes, which emerge from unrealistic expectations that Bassett might have been able to provide more fresh insights, this highly readable and well-rounded book will remain the standard, classic account of Fraser's life for many years to come. No doubt it will also prompt vigorous debate within those families who add this important and worthy work to their bookshelves, even if my mother would not have approved of its core critical aspects.

* Tom Brooking teaches history at the University of Otago.