Edward McHugh (trade unionist)

Born in rural County Tyrone to a smallholding family, before emigrating through economic necessity to the overcrowded industrial landscape of Greenock, and then Glasgow, Edward McHugh shared with his friend, Michael Davitt, experience of both sides of the land question.

It is not surprising that, having witnessed rural and urban poverty at an early age, McHugh would become firmly committed to the ideals of Henry George, and convinced that land, and its inequitable distribution, should lie at the root of all social ills.

After moving to Glasgow as a teenager to find work as a compositor, McHugh found himself in a city with various possibilities for developing his education as a social reformer.

As a member of the Glasgow Home Rule Association, and then the secretary of the Glasgow branch of the Irish Land League, McHugh was singled out as a speaker and organiser of ability, and was chosen to lead a Land League mission to the Scottish Highlands in order to direct the nascent crofters' agitation along radical lines.

The fact that McHugh was with Henry George at the time of the latter's death in 1897 gave the Ulsterman a great caché in Single Tax circles for the rest of his life, and on returning to Birkenhead he settled down and spent the rest of his life striving for social reform through the propagation of the George's theories.