Fred Henderson

James Frederick Henderson (February 1867 – 18 July 1957) was an English socialist writer and journalist, and a Labour Party politician.

[3] He first worked as a journalist for The Star newspaper in London, where he met T. P. O'Connor, George Bernard Shaw and William Morris, and became a committed socialist.

In the following year, he was arrested on 14 January with Charles Mowbray, and sentenced to four months imprisonment for incitement to riot after groups of unemployed workers looted food shops.

[1][2][3] In August 1887, Michael McCartan put a question in the House of Commons about Henderson's July arrest by a mounted police constable, replied to by Henry Matthews.

By 1888, matters were different, when Henderson joined forces with John Lincoln Mahon to organise a "Labour Party.

It referred to the 1889 London dock strike, and Henry Cecil Raikes as Postmaster-General resisting unionisation of postal workers.

[3] He was one of six candidates supported by the Labour Representation League who were elected to the London County Council, representing Clapham.

[12] His membership of the council was to last only a year, however: on 9 March 1893 he was found guilty of stealing three shillings from a prostitute, and he was sentenced to four months imprisonment with hard labour.

[16] He was involved in the Norwich Labour Church, arguing in an address published as Politics in the Pulpit that "individual sin" was "only a knot in the vast network and entanglement of social and industrial conditions".

[32] A review in To-day: Monthly Magazine of Scientific Socialism, edited by Belfort Bax and others, found these derivative.

[49] A review in Igdrasil stated "This unpretentious little volume contains some well-written verses, directed for the most part against the conditions which hamper life in most large towns.

(Edgar Deacon Girdlestone) wrote "The staple of our poet's muse is indignation at mammon-worship, and the frank acknowledgment that there would be room for nothing but despair, if he did not wage battle against the lies and shams of our social life.

"[51] A review of the second edition noted the dedication to Frederic Charles, a Socialist League member of the Norwich branch, imprisoned in the Walsall case of 1891.

[52][53] When Alfred, Lord Tennyson died in 1892, W. E. Gladstone had a shortlist of possible replacements as Poet Laureate, which included Henderson.

[59] Edgar Hardcastle writing in the Socialist Standard in 1946 commented on the past popularity of The Case for Socialism, and contrasted its approach based on dispossession to deal with capitalism with that of Clement Attlee in The Labour Party in Perspective (1937).