A life on the front line, from Cassino to Washington DC
Harry Holden was our man in London and Washington DC. Appointed senior trade commissioner at the high commission in London in 1965, he had his work cut out trying to negotiate trade agreements with the United Kingdom and the European Economic Community.
A second appointment in 1972 took him and his family to the embassy in Washington. The United States in the early 1970s was in a period of change. The Holdens arrived just before Richard Nixon’s re-election, the Vietnam protests were in full throttle, and Watergate was just starting to enter the public consciousness.
At the time, there were a lot of trade barriers with the US, and Holden was tasked with eroding those barriers as best he could. But he was up against it.
He remembered one meeting he and prime minister Norman Kirk attended with Holden’s American trade counterpart. Part-way through, the meeting was interrupted by Nixon himself, who warned his men not to give any concessions to the Kiwis.
They were heady days rubbing shoulders with the big guns – Ted Kennedy, Henry Kissinger. Nelson Rockefeller, soon to become vicepresident, was a neighbour.
On his return from Washington, Holden became involved in trade negotiations and was at the forefront of new initiatives, including negotiating trade agreements with China.
Harry Holden was the fourth of five sons brought up in Port Chalmers, near Dunedin. He and his younger brother were late babies, born when his mother was 47 and 49 respectively.
He excelled academically and won a number of scholarships to continue his studies, but the family were poor and needed him to bring in a wage. He left school at 15 to work with his father, fishing for flounder. A year later he secured a job as a cadet in the government offices in Dunedin, beginning his long career in the public service.
He was drafted into the army at 19 and shipped out to Europe to fight in World War II. He was sent to Egypt and was later part of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force at Cassino, in Italy.
As a young man away from home for the first time, Holden was excited. He would later quote Winston Churchill: ‘‘There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.’’
But as friends and fellow soldiers were killed and the horror of war became apparent, disillusionment and fear set in.
While raised a Catholic, he turned away from his religion after seeing the contrast between the wealth of the church and the poverty of the people in Italy, calling it immoral.
Fifty years after Cassino, his name was drawn out of a ballot of former soldiers to return for the anniversary celebrations.
While talking with his former army mates in Cassino, a man approached, saying the Germans they had fought all those years ago were also there – still in a strategic point at a hilltop hotel – and asking if they might come and meet them.
He remembered not hesitating to accept. The Germans, too, were just young boys forced to fight in a war they didn’t want.
He would later recall an incident while stationed in the Italian city of Trieste. He and two other Kiwis had been invited to dinner across the border in what was then Yugoslavia. A local came to the door and said three German soldiers hiding in the hills and close to starvation wanted to surrender to the New Zealanders.
Holden and his men fetched them, fed them and took them back across the border, where they knew they would be treated decently.
Back in New Zealand after the war, he worked for the Ministry of Works in Hamilton. It was there that he met Anne, who had a summer job in the same office.
Within days of their meeting he announced he wanted to marry her. Marriage did not follow as quickly as he might have hoped, however. Anne was going to the UK on a working holiday, so Holden decided to tag along. They finally married four years later.
The couple had four children and, while they were young, Holden studied part-time at Victoria University, gaining an MA Honours in economics. Anne became a successful novelist.
Holden’s early work on public transport and housing was ahead of its time. He wrote the first history of public transport in New Zealand and later an educational journal on urban housing.
He moved to the Department of Industries and Commerce and later to Trade and Industry, before being appointed senior trade commissioner in London.
Retiring at 60, as was the norm in the early 1980s, Holden expanded his interests. He tried learning the piano and writing a novel, but in the end focused on business matters, sport and politics.
He was on the board of NZ Steel and a trustee of the Crown Forest Rental Trust. He volunteered for 27 years as a budget adviser for the Citizens Advice Bureau. He became more actively involved in politics, joining the Labour Party and becoming an active letter-writer and campaigner. He was delighted to see Jacinda Ardern become prime minister last year.
Holden had always considered himself to be a feminist. He once said he first recognised feminist issues when one of his cousins said she wished she was a boy as they could do so much more than girls could – a situation he immediately recognised as grossly unfair.
He supported many causes in the 1980s, including homosexual law reform and the anti-apartheid movement. He joined the protest on the Wellington Motorway against the 1981 Springbok tour and was triumphant when the Waikato game was cancelled. He loved rugby; he just knew some things were more important.
A keen sportsman, he rowed and played cricket, tennis, football and rugby, and was a member of the Miramar Golf Club. And despite his egalitarian nature, he was fiercely competitive, always playing to win.