1925: Death of William Massey

May 10, 2021

By AHNZ

Today in history, 10 May, 1925, New Zealand lost the last item in its stock of Prime Ministers with William Ferguson Massey. All before him were now dead and now Massey (69yo) was too. So it was for 4 days until Harry Dillon Bell (74yo) stepped in for just 16 days while a new leader and PM was chosen: Gordon Coates.

By contrast, in 2021, eight Prime Ministers, from Jacinda Ardern back to 1989’s Geoffrey Palmer, are still alive. The exception is Mike Moore.

Massey emerged as Opposition leader in 1903 during the long winter of the Liberal Party Era. It was a brave thing to do, to dare compete with Richard Seddon’s tight grip on power and influence over New Zealand. The Liberals had changed the game of politics in this country by becoming an uncle, a mother, a father. The role of government expanded. I can’t help but think any successful Opposition would have had to wait until enough disgruntled ex-Liberal staffers had become redundant, shed from their former master, so they could be re-hired and used by Massey to gain and keep power himself.

On 10 Jul 1912, Massey became Prime Minister when the Liberals, finally, lost a no-confidence vote. He was a strong Imperialist, as everyone with power was back then, for the Dominion of New Zealand. His brand was the farmer, the settler, the Conservative Protestant. This was pre-Welfare State and Massey belonged to the Oddfellows, Orange Order, and Freemasons. These voluntary organisations worked to look after people as a private charity for free and without bureaucratic overhead and without blowing their own trumpets in the same way later iterations such as Rotary, Jaycees, and Lions would in future generations. Or, as the Church did for previous generations. Labour 1.0 nationalised such efforts and buried the idea anyone but themselves had ever ‘cared’ for Kiwis in need.

Taking political power was hard work but so was establishing authority over the public. New Zealand had been through a long hard spell of Political Correctness and Social Justice Warrior r-selected hegemony during the Liberal Era (1890-1912). The mainstream didn’t want to accept the change. They down-regulated, they Chimped Out. From an evolutionary psychology point of view it was Armageddon, Ragnarok, for people whose bread was buttered by Big Brother paternalistic government. The base of their brains (which constitutes the majority of the brains they have in total) is telling them another tribe has conquered them and they are now going to either die or be taken as slaves. In the modern West this has not been literally true for a long time but the ensuing transition does involve some rowdiness.

Massey’s Boogaloo involved suppressing an uprising from the out-going mainstream. Thanks to having the political clout, the forces of K-selected Conservatism had the authority of being Special Constables. They were also known as ‘Massey’s Cossacks.’ Some death and injury did result for the losing side but mostly the revolution involved robust country lads with horses lugging resentful city proles on their noggins.

He had been ill for some time by May 1925, the nation well-prepared for their Prime Minister to die. Alongside his wife, Christina, Massey was given a public tomb at Point Halswell on the Miramar Peninsula (Wellington.) The site had previously been an 1886 gun emplacement left over from the 1885 Russian  Scare. Certainly the predecessor Premier, Richard Seddon, would have warranted a New Zealand mausoleum too but his body was lost at sea so must settle for a minor Melbourne train station. The only other man to warrant a public mausoleum, thus balancing the r vs K icon equation, is Michael Joseph Savage at Bastion Point in Auckland. The Massey Tomb is far harder to access or to see from afar, less visited, and rather neglected. When I visited a few months ago it was in sore need of some tending and cleaning. Perhaps the centenary of 2025 will be a fitting time as well as one where K-selected icons such as Massey become favored again.

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Image ref. Unaccredited portrait via Stuff. Probably hanging at Massey University campus

Image ref. Massey Memorial, Wellington; AHNZ Archive (2020)

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