Soldiers and Social Change: The Forces Vote in the Second World War and New Zealand’s Great Experiment in Social Citizenship

Abstract

Labour’s victory in the 1943 New Zealand general election allowed it to set the political agenda in New Zealand not only for the remainder of the Second World War, but, arguably, for forty years thereafter. The outcome of the election hinged on the votes of service personnel engaged in fighting the Second World War. This paper examines why soldiers, airmen and sailors voted overwhelmingly for Labour in 1943. Detailed returns showing the number of votes recorded for each candidate at each polling-place in the election are explored; the first social class survey of an army in the Second World War is constructed and assessed; and censorship summaries of the soldiers’ mail are interrogated. The paper shows that the forces vote was not determined by the socio-economic background of the military cohort or by the distance of the voting troops from the homeland or the length of time they were away. Instead, the paper finds that the most persuasive explanation for the pattern of voting among service personnel was their degree of participation in the war effort. The closer to combat a cohort of voters found themselves, the more they were inclined to manifest strong beliefs in fairness, social justice and ‘big Government’, key aspects of the Labour manifesto. A spirit of social cohesion had emerged from the exigencies of combat cohesion with profound implications for the future of New Zealand.