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Henry Hyndman | |
|---|---|
 Hyndmanc. 1911 | |
| Leader of theNational Socialist Party | |
| In office 1916 (1916) – 22 November 1921 (1921-11-22) (his death) | |
| Preceded by | Party established |
| Leader of theBritish Socialist Party | |
| In office 1911 (1911) – 1915 (1915) | |
| Preceded by | Party established |
| Succeeded by | Dan Irving |
| Leader of theSocial Democratic Federation | |
| In office 7 June 1881 (1881-06-07) – 1911 (1911) | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Henry Mayers Hyndman (1842-03-07)7 March 1842 London, England |
| Died | 22 November 1921(1921-11-22) (aged 79) Hampstead, England |
| Party | Social Democratic Federation (after 1881) Conservative (until 1881) |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge |
Henry Mayers Hyndman (/ˈhaɪndmən/; 7 March 1842 – 22 November 1921) was an English writer, politician andsocialist.
Originally aconservative, he was converted tosocialism byKarl Marx'sCommunist Manifesto and launched Britain's first socialist political party, the Democratic Federation, later known as theSocial Democratic Federation, in 1881.
Although this body attracted radicals such asWilliam Morris andGeorge Lansbury, Hyndman was generally disliked as an authoritarian who could not unite his party. Nonetheless, Hyndman was the first author to popularise Marx's works in English.
The son of a wealthy businessman, Hyndman was born on 7 March 1842 in London. After being educated at home, he enteredTrinity College, Cambridge.[1] Hyndman later recalled:
I had the ordinary education of a well-to-do boy and young man. I read mathematics hard until I went to Cambridge, where I ought, of course, to have read them harder, and then I gave them up altogether and devoted myself to amusement and general literature. ... Trinity or, for that matter, any other college, is practically a hot-bed of reaction from the social point of view. The young men regard all who are not technically "gentlemen" as "cads," just as theAthenians counted all who were notGreeks asbarbarians.I was a thorough-going Radical and Republican in those days—theoretically ... with a great admiration forJohn Stuart Mill, and later, I remember, I regardedJohn Morley as the coming man.[2]
After his graduation in 1865, Hyndman studied law for two years before deciding to become a journalist. As afirst-class cricketer, he representedCambridge University,Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) andSussex in thirteen matches as a right-handedbatsman between 1864 and 1865.
In 1866, Hyndman reported on theItalian war with Austria forThe Pall Mall Gazette. Hyndman was horrified by the reality of war and became violently ill after visiting the front line. Hyndman met the leaders of the Italian nationalist movement and was generally sympathetic to their cause.
In 1869, Hyndman toured the world, visiting the United States, Australia and several European countries. He continued to write forThe Pall Mall Gazette, where he praised theBritish Empire and criticised those advocating forIrish Home Rule. Hyndman was also very opposed topolitics of the United States.
Hyndman married Matilda Ware (c. 1846–1913) in 1876[3] and thenRosalind Travers (c. 1875–1923) in 1914.[4]
Hyndman decided on a career in politics. Unable to find a party that he could fully support, he decided to stand as an independent for the constituency ofMarylebone in the1880 general election. Denounced as aTory byWilliam Ewart Gladstone, Hyndman gained very limited support from the electorate and withdrew from the contest, facing certain defeat.
Soon after the election, Hyndman read a novel based on the life ofFerdinand Lassalle. He became fascinated with Lassalle and decided to research thisromantic hero who had been killed in aduel in 1864. Discovering that Lassalle had been a socialist, sometimes a friend and sometimes an adversary ofKarl Marx, Hyndman readThe Communist Manifesto. Although he had doubts about some of Marx's ideas, Hyndman was greatly impressed by his analysis of capitalism.
Hyndman was also greatly influenced by the bookProgress and Poverty and the ideology ofHenry George known today asGeorgism.[5]
Hyndman decided to form Britain's first socialist political party. TheSocial Democratic Federation (SDF) had its first meeting on 7 June 1881. Many socialists were concerned that in the past Hyndman had been opposed to socialist ideas, but Hyndman persuaded many that he had genuinely changed his views and those who eventually joined the SDF includedWilliam Morris and Karl Marx's daughterEleanor Marx. However,Friedrich Engels, Marx's long-term collaborator, refused to support Hyndman's venture.
Hyndman wrote the first popularisation of the ideas of Karl Marx in the English language withEngland for All in 1881. The book was extremely successful, a fact that stoked Marx's antipathy, given the fact that he had failed to credit Marx by name in the introduction. The work was followed in 1883 bySocialism Made Plain which expounded the policies of what by then had been renamed as the SDF. They included a demand foruniversal suffrage and thenationalisation of themeans of production and distribution. The SDF also publishedJustice, edited by the journalistHenry Hyde Champion.
Many members of the SDF questioned Hyndman's leadership qualities. He was extremelyauthoritarian and tried to restrict internal debate about party policy. At an SDF meeting on 27 December 1884, the executive voted by a majority of two (10–8) that it hadno confidence in Hyndman. When he refused to resign, some members, including William Morris and Eleanor Marx, left the party, forming theSocialist League.
In the1885 general election, Hyndman and Henry Hyde Champion, without consulting their colleagues, accepted £340 from theConservatives to run parliamentary candidates inHampstead andKensington, the objective being to split theLiberal vote and therefore enable the Conservative candidate to win. This ploy failed and the two SDF's candidates won only a total of 59 votes. The story leaked out and the political reputation of both men suffered because they had accepted "Tory gold".
During the 1880s, Hyndman was a prominent member of theIrish National Land League and the Land League of Great Britain. He took part in the unemployed demonstrations of 1887 and was put on trial for his share in the West End Riots of 1886, but he was acquitted.[6][7]
Hyndman was chairman at theInternational Socialist Congress held in London in 1896. He was pro-Boer during thesecond Boer War.[8]
Hyndman continued to lead the SDF and took part in the negotiations to establish theLabour Representation Committee (LRC) in 1900. However, the SDF left the LRC when it became clear that it was deviating from the objectives he had set out. In 1911, he set up theBritish Socialist Party (BSP) when the SDF fused with a number of branches of theIndependent Labour Party.
Hyndman's thought was influenced byJohn Stuart Mill and his protégéJohn Morley as well asCharles Dilke,Henry Fawcett andGiuseppe Mazzini,Karl Marx "erstwhile adversary" at the time of theFirst International. According to Hyndman, "Mazzini's greatness ... was obscured for younger socialists by his 'opposition to Marx in the early days of the 'International,' and his vigorous condemnation a little later of theParis Commune", insisting that "'Mazzini's conception of the conduct of human life' had been 'a high and noble one'", praising the "No duties without rights" mention in the "General Rules" that Marx composed and passed as "a concession Marx made to Mazzini's followers within the organisation".Friedrich Engels, Marx's collaborator, "censured Hyndman's Mazzinian moralism" and also accused Hyndman of "jingo aspiration". Seamus Flaherty argues that "Hyndman's views on the beneficence of the 'great democracies of the English speaking peoples'" were inspired not byBenjamin Disraeli as historians such asMark Bevir have argued, but rather by Dilke and Mill, whom Hyndman combined their ideas "on the unique character of 'the Angloe-Saxon race' with Mazzini's cosmopolitan patriotism, thus constructing a nationalism fully compatible with 'a good internationalism'.[9]
In his two volume autobiography, Hyndman spoke at length about Mazzini, even comparing him to Marx. ForVladimir Lenin, "that Hyndman should do so was preposterous; more astonishing still was that Hyndman shouldadmire Mazzini". However, Flaherty writes that "when situated within its proper context, Hyndman's 'intellectual republicanism', so far from being unintelligible, is predictable, insofar as it was characteristic of mid-Victorian liberalism. Lenin's view was anachronistic. Similarly anachronistic was Lenin's complaint that Hyndman 'very poorly understood in 1880 ... the difference between bourgeois democratic and a socialist'. For the difference was, often, not clear-cut; many socialists, including Marx, accepted the representative state. The 'association between Marx and a 'Marxist' language of revolution' was, in the main, a twentieth-century invention, which Lenin in no small part helped to create. And Marx himself, moreover, allayed Hyndman's fears about the necessity of revolution in England, stating that he considered 'an English revolution notnecessary, but according to historic precedents—possible'".[10]
Hyndman was anantisemite, voicing antisemitic opinions with regard to theSecond Boer War and blaming "Jewish bankers" and "imperialist Judaism" as the cause of the conflict.[11] Hyndman charged "Beit,Barnato and their fellow-Jews" as aiming to create "an Anglo-Hebraic Empire in Africastretching from Egypt to Cape Colony".[12]
Hyndman believed Jews were central to "a sinister 'gold international' opposed to the 'red international' of socialism".[13] Hyndman supported the antisemitic Viennese riots of 1885, arguing that they represented a blow against Jewish finance capital.[13] Hyndman repeatedly denounced what he saw as the overwhelming power of "capitalist Jews on the London Press", believing that the "Semitic lords of the press" had created war in South Africa.[14] Hyndman remained committed to conspiracies concerning Jews, remarking that "unless you said that they [Jews] were the most capable and brilliant people of the earth, you had the whole of their international agencies against you".[14]
Such antisemitism disillusioned erstwhile supporters.Eleanor Marx wrote privately toWilhelm Liebknecht that "Mr Hyndman whenever he could do with impunity has endeavoured to set English workmen against foreigners".[15] Hyndman had previously attacked Eleanor Marx in antisemitic terms, noting that she had "inherited in her nose and mouth the Jewish type fromMarx himself".[15]
Hyndman upset members of the BSP by supporting the United Kingdom's involvement inWorld War I. The party split in two, with Hyndman forming a newNational Socialist Party. Hyndman remained leader of the small party until his death from pneumonia at his home inWell Walk, Hampstead, on 22 November 1921.[16]
Mr. H. M. Hyndman, the father of Social Democracy in this country, graduate of Cambridge, and Sussex County cricketer, died to-day at the age of 79, at his residence in Well Walk, at Hampstead.
| Media offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Editor ofJustice 1884–1886 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Editor ofJustice 1889–1891 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by E. H. Jarvis | President of theSocial Democratic Party 1910 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by New position | President of theBritish Socialist Party 1911–1915 | Succeeded by |
