Joseph King (politician)

He was the eldest son of Joseph King of Liverpool and his wife Phoebe (née Powell).

[4] King was Liberal candidate for the New Forest Division of Hampshire at the 1892 General Election, coming second.

Following the outbreak of World War I, King joined the Union of Democratic Control, a group of Liberal and Labour politicians who were critical of the secret diplomacy that they blamed for the conflict.

He was sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, raising the matter of Trotsky's 1917 detention in a debate in 1918: "Mr. KING asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that after the Russian revolution Mr. Trotsky was arrested by British authorities and placed in a camp with German prisoners at Halifax; that he was charged with being a German agent; and whether, in order to remove any ground for suspicion or he will now instruct our Ambassador or Chargé d'Affaires in Petrograd to convey to Mr. Trotsky the British Government's regret for this incident?

"[8] In 1919 he published a pamphlet called Three Bloody Men, in which he blamed the Whites for starting the violence and condemned the British government for encouraging them.

King played a key role in the Peasant Arts movement in Haslemere, Surrey.