Henry Hyndman

The son of a wealthy businessman, Hyndman was born on 7 March 1842 in London. After being educated at home, he entered Trinity 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 the Athenians counted all who were not Greeks as barbarians. I was a thorough-going Radical and Republican in those days — theoretically [...] with a great admiration for John Stuart Mill, and later, I remember, I regarded John Morley as the coming man.[2]

After his graduation in 1865, Hyndman studied law for two years before deciding to become a journalist. As a first-class cricketer, he represented Cambridge University, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and Sussex in thirteen matches as a right-handed batsman between 1864 and 1865.

In 1866, Hyndman reported on the Italian war with Austria for the 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 for the Pall Mall Gazette, where he praised the merits of British imperialism and criticised those advocating Home Rule for Ireland. Hyndman was also very hostile to the experiments in democracy that were taking place in the United States.

Hyndman married Matilda Ware (c. 1846–1913) in 1876[3] and then Rosalind Travers (c. 1875–1923) in 1914.

Hyndman, c. 1895

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 of Marylebone in the 1880 general election. Denounced as a Tory by William 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 of Ferdinand Lassalle. He became fascinated with Lassalle and decided to research this romantic hero who had been killed in a duel in 1864. Discovering that Lassalle had been a socialist, sometimes a friend and sometimes an adversary of Karl Marx, Hyndman read The 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 book Progress and Poverty and the ideology of Henry George known today as Georgism.[4]

Hyndman decided to form Britain's first socialist political party. The Social 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 included William Morris and Karl Marx's daughter Eleanor 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 with England 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 by Socialism Made Plain which expounded the policies of what by then had been renamed as the SDF. They included a demand for universal suffrage and the nationalisation of the means of production and distribution. The SDF also published Justice, edited by the journalist Henry Hyde Champion.

Many members of the SDF questioned Hyndman's leadership qualities. He was extremely authoritarian 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 had no confidence in Hyndman. When he refused to resign, some members, including William Morris and Eleanor Marx, left the party, forming the Socialist League.

In the 1885 general election, Hyndman and Henry Hyde Champion, without consulting their colleagues, accepted £340 from the Conservatives to run parliamentary candidates in Hampstead and Kensington, the objective being to split the Liberal 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 the Irish 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.[5][6]

Hyndman was chairman at the International Socialist Congress held in London in 1896. He was pro-Boer during the second Boer War.[7]

Hyndman continued to lead the SDF and took part in the negotiations to establish the Labour 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 the British Socialist Party (BSP) when the SDF fused with a number of branches of the Independent Labour Party.

Hyndman was an antisemite, voicing antisemitic opinions with regards to the Boer War and blaming "Jewish bankers" and "imperialist Judaism" as the cause of the conflict.[8] Hyndman charged "Beit, Barnato and their fellow-Jews" as aiming to create "an Anglo-Hebraic Empire in Africa stretching from Egypt to Cape Colony".[9]

Hyndman believed Jews were central to "a sinister 'gold international' opposed to the 'red international' of socialism".[10] Hyndman supported the antisemitic Viennese riots of 1885, arguing that they represented a blow against Jewish finance capital.[10] 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.[11] 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".[11]

Such antisemitism disillusioned erstwhile supporters. Eleanor Marx wrote privately to Wilhelm Liebknecht that "Mr Hyndman whenever he could do with impunity has endeavoured to set English workmen against foreigners".[12] Hyndman had previously attacked Eleanor Marx in antisemitic terms, noting that she had "inherited in her nose and mouth the Jewish type from Marx himself".[12]

After the war

Hyndman by Sydney Prior Hall

Hyndman upset members of the BSP by supporting the United Kingdom's involvement in World War I. The party split in two, with Hyndman forming a new National Socialist Party. Hyndman remained leader of the small party until his death from pneumonia on 20 November 1921.

• A Commune for London (1888)
• Commercial Crisis of the Nineteenth Century (1892)
• Economics of Socialism (1890)
• The Awakening of Asia (1919)
• The Evolution of Revolution (1921)

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Henry Hyndman

• Works by Henry Mayers Hyndman at Faded Page (Canada)
• Cricket Archive
• Henry Hyndman Internet Archive, Marxists Internet Archive.
• H. M. Hyndman, Commercial Crises of the Nineteenth Century (1892)