Arthur Henderson

Arthur Henderson was the Glasgow-born iron-worker who helped to build the Labour Party and, near the end of his life, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against a coming war. He led the party three times, in three separate decades, and served as both Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary.

From Anderston to the foundry

Henderson was born in the Anderston district of Glasgow on 13 September 1863, the son of a textile worker who died when Arthur was ten. The family moved to the north-east of England, and at twelve the boy was apprenticed as an iron moulder. He rose through the trade union movement to become a full-time organiser, part of the wider history of trade unionism that runs through industrial Britain.

Building the Labour Party

Henderson was one of the founders of the Labour Party, a delegate at the 1900 meeting that created the Labour Representation Committee, and for some twenty-five years the party’s secretary, the patient organiser who built its machinery from the ground up. Known throughout the movement as ‘Uncle Arthur’, he entered Parliament in 1903 and, uniquely, served three separate terms as leader of the party. His life belongs to the story of Glasgow and Scottish politics.

In government

He was the first Labour man ever to sit in a British Cabinet, in 1915. He resigned two years later over his support for a negotiated peace, then did more than anyone to rewrite the party’s constitution in 1918. He served as Home Secretary in the first Labour government of 1924 and as Foreign Secretary in the second, from 1929 to 1931.

The apostle of peace

As the shadow of another war lengthened over Europe, Henderson threw himself into the cause of disarmament, chairing the World Disarmament Conference at Geneva. In 1934 his efforts were recognised with the Nobel Peace Prize. He died the following year, one of two Glasgow-born Nobel laureates whose lives are told on these pages.