Allan Clyde Holding (27 April 1931 – 31 July 2011)[1] was an Australian politician who served as Leader of the Opposition in Victoria for ten years, and went on to become a federal minister in the Hawke government.

[citation needed] In 1962 Clyde Holding was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly for the seat of Richmond,[2] which had mostly been held by conservative Catholic Labor Party members, although his immediate predecessor, Bill Towers, was not.

Clive Stoneham, who had been ALP leader from 1958 onwards, was no match for the dominant Liberal Premier, Sir Henry Bolte.

[2] Although Holding was in some ways a social radical, he was opposed to the left-wing faction which had taken control of the Victorian Labor Party following the 1955 split, which had seen many right-wing members expelled.

Hamer represented such a sharp change from his staunchly conservative predecessor that he was able to brand himself as a reformist leader even though the Liberals had been in office for 17 years.

In 1973 and 1974, Holding and Hawke told officials of the United States of their plan to establish the Parliamentary Friends of Israel group.

[4] Frank Wilkes and Holding, who was an informer for the United States, later told diplomatic officials of a "renovation" or "coup" they were staging within the Victorian Young Labor organisation to remove "pro-Arab" supporters.

He resigned from state Parliament in November 1977 and a month later he was elected to the House of Representatives for the comfortably safe seat of Melbourne Ports,[3] which then included Holding's base in Richmond.

But the Labor Premier of Western Australia, Brian Burke, strongly objected to such a step, which would have upset the powerful mining and pastoral industries in his state.