“Uncle Arthur” Of The Labour Party In Britain

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19666, 25 June 1938, Page 7

“Uncle Arthur” Of The Labour Party In Britain

“ARTHUR Henderson,” by Mrs. Mary Agnes Hamilton, is a worthy biography of “Uncle Arthur,” organiser of the Labour Party in Britain as one knows it to-day. A man of fine integrity, an iron moulder who became Foreign Secretary and later president of the International Disarmament Commission at Geneva, he served his day and generation with distinction and disinterested zeal. Mrs. Hamilton wisely devotes considerable space to Mr. Henderson s early life, and shows how his career as a local preacher when a young man was to influence the whole of his public life. She points out:— “It was part of the Wesleyan discipline to abstain, absolutely, fiom drinking and gambling, and even from smoking, as well as from any kind of luxury or display in personal life. This, too, he accepted, and, from this time on, maintained. Thirty years later, he gave a plain account of his conversion from the normal habit of his kind:

“I Gave it up Because I Won”

“‘I worked with a gang of men, every one of whom gambled, ihcic was scarcely a race during the whole season but these men had money on, and there was scarcely any first-class race but there took place, m the foundry, the shop lottery or sweepstake, when you are asked to give your threepence or your sixpence, anc the man who goes round stands m for nothing, but stands the same chance as you have who have given youi sixpence. ‘Well I was induced to gamble, and I was fairly fortunate. It is not many men I have come across who have given up gambling because they won! Some may turn sickly against it because they lost. I was going to say I gave it up because I won! Let me go furthei. In those days, the money was shared out in a public-house. I had to join in .and in a small way, I began to drink. I ant thankful to say it never got very far. But I asked myself, one day where was this going to lead to. I determined to give it up. incd j as it were, right round about, determined to follow Christ.

After Gladstone

Mr. Henderson interested himself in politics as a young man :’ an * October 3, 1891,” his biographei states, “being unemployed, he strolled up, on a sunny Saturday morning, to the old Newcastle Town Hall. On that day, the freedom of the city was being presented to Mr. Gladstone. He listened to him With rapt attention. Nearly 40 years later, words then used by the G.O.M. lived in his memory: lie made them his own closing words, when he was himself admitted a freeman: “I can assure you that the characters in which these proceedings are to be recorded are written upon the fleshly tablets of a grateful heart. “No such vision of what might come to him floated before his mind, at the time. It was enough to be see-ing-and hearing Gladstone. For the young Radicals of Tyneside, Gladstone was not only a hero: he was the hero. On that occasion when, in 1930, he revisited the Newcastle Council Chamber to receive the freedom of the city, he related how he began his political

“ ‘lt was in seeking to enter your council that I received my baptism in electioneering,’ he said, ‘and I think I must confess that I have been immersed in electioneering ever since. I soon found that the path, even of the municipal candidate, was not easy. “ ’I was returning to the foundry one day during the campaign, and 1 met a friend. I was in my foundry garb, and, wanting to turn every opportunity to profit, I stopped and had a chat with him, and I led him gently up to the election. Then, just as I was leaving, because I had to huriy away, else I should have been locked out, I said to him: “Well, I suppose it will be all right on polling day. “Quite promptly, he said: Oh no, it will not be all right in the sense that you think I am going to vote for you. I want a gentleman to represent me on the council.” ’ “He then recalled how a prominent local doctor (present on the platform) liad, on being told by a friend that he was going to vote for Mr. Henderson, exclaimed: ‘What! Do you know him. Do you know that when he gets his pay on Saturday, he gets drunk, and goes home and beats his wife. o which the reply was promptly given: ‘Well doctor, you are wrong for once, because, ever since he' was married, he has been one of our tenants, and two Sundays ago he preached in our chapel.’ “The Most Touching Thing” “Then by way of contrast recalled. “I think the most touching thing I remember was that, when polling day came, the men in the foundry who knew me best, with whom I had served my apprenticeship, with whom I had lived, day by day, ' for years, thdse men—and, mark you, it meant a loss to them,—went to the firm and asked for a day’s holiday.’ “They did this, in order to help to get him in: and they succeeded. On November 21, 1892, he was duly elected as a town councillor.” The greater portion of the book naturally deals with Mr. Hendersons work as M.P. and organiser of the

Labour Party. Mrs. Hamilton explains his attitude when the Labour Government resigned in 19.31, and the first National Government was formed, and is very critical of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s treatment of Mr. Henderson. " ’ln 24 hours,’ said a friend, ‘Henderson had become an old man.’

He could not take it in. For the moment he was overwhelmed by the personal aspect. Of this he afterwards seldom spoke. The few who knew him well, however, and therefore knew that depth and warmth of feelings largely speechless, realised that for him, the eas yand indifferent lightness with which MacDonald broke old ties, and the careless contempt he showed for old associations and old loyalties, hurt -and went on hurting, like a rusty nail driven through a tender spot. He could not understand. There was no explanation he could find that was not painful.”