Henry (Harry) HollandPrint Page

The sign at Ginninderra Village in Canberra commemorates labour hero Henry (Harry) Holland who made a significant contribution to both Australian and New Zealand politics. The sign was erected with the assistance of the New Zealand Government. 

Henry Edmund (Harry) Holland was born in 1868 at Ginninderra, son of a rural farm worker, and had little formal education. At age 14, he was apprenticed as a compositor on the Queanbeyan Times. Having experienced poverty and unemployment during the harsh depression of the 1890’s, Harry became active in radical politics, editing a number of socialist publications and supporting a number of major union struggles.

He helped form the Tailoresses Union in Sydney in 1901 and led them in a successful campaign for better pay and conditions. He twice ran for parliament as a socialist candidate. But it was his support for the striking miners of Broken Hill that led to his imprisonment on a charge of sedition in 1909.

In 1912, he migrated to New Zealand, arriving in the middle of the bitter Waihi miners’ dispute in which a striking miner was killed. He was prominent in the formation of the New Zealand Labour Party and in 1918, was elected to Parliament. The following year, he became leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, a position he held until his death in 1933, just two years before New Zealand’s first Labour Government was elected.

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