From “The Labour Leader”, Editor: Keir Hardie, Saturday August 1, 1903.

BARNARD CASTLE

A GREAT VICTORY

The result of Friday’s polling in the Barnard Castle Division of Durham was declared on Saturday as follows: –

Mr A. Henderson (Labour) -3370

Colonel Vane (Unionist)-3323

Mr H. Beaumont (Liberal) – 2809

Majority for the Lab. Candidate 17

The poll was a heavy one.  The electors numbered 11,226, and no fewer than 9,492 went to the poll, nearly a thousand more then recorded their votes at the last election.   While in 1900 Major Vane secured 3,545 votes, he this time only polled 3,323 or 222 fewer.  Sir J. Pease then had 5036.  Adding together the votes of Mr. Henderson and Mr. Beaumont, we have a total of 6,179, an increased anti-Tory vote of 1,143.  Thus while the Tories have lost 222 supporters, the Labour candidature has drawn out an increased vote of 1,143.

Mr. Henderson maintained that modesty of attitude in his triumph which has characterised his conduct all through the fight.  The unassuming yet earnest manner of the Labour candidate has impressed all who came in contact with him.

At the declaration of the poll, in proposing a vote of thanks to the Sherriff, Mr. Henderson said the position he occupied was a complete justification of the policy he had adopted from the time he was invited to be the candidate for the constituency.  It had been a workers’ fight; they had fought a great fight, and to the workers be the glory of a great and glorious victory.   Speaking at Cockfield afterwards, he said the progressive forces were united in Woolwich.  At Barnard Castle they were divided he regretted to say.   Notwithstanding that fact the cause of the workers had secured a splendid triumph.   If the Liberal party were prepared to consider the Labour party, then what was accomplished at Woolwich might again be accomplished. If, on the other hand, they dared to set aside the will of organised workers they must be taught the lesson they had been taught at Barnard Castle.

All that need be said is that though Barnard Castle was not purely an industrial constituency, and though the local Liberals insisted on running Mr Herbert Beaumont as a liberal candidate, and stuck loyally by him right through, the power of the sentiment in favour of Labour representation was so strong the Mr. Henderson scored the great triumph set out above. The moral of the election is the message it conveys to local Liberal Associations all over the country, who are much less capable of judging the strength of the movement for Labour representation than the Council in London.  As Mr. Henderson truly said in his address at Cockfield, where there is cooperation of progressive forces there is the sweeping triumph of Woolwich: but even where there is not cooperation there may be a Barnard Castle.  Mr. Henderson is to be congratulated on his stance for independence in face of powerful and sometimes unscrupulous opposition.  Barnard Castle is one more evidence that the workers are waking up to the true facts of the case in politics.

In 1900 Henderson was one of the 129 trade union and socialist delegates who passed Keir Hardie’s motion to create the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). In 1903, Henderson was elected Treasurer of the LRC and was also elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Barnard Castle at a by-election. (The constituency of Barnard Castle then had boundaries very similar to those recommended for Bishop Auckland Constituency in the recent Boundary Commission Review, 2023).

From 1903 to 1904, Henderson also served as mayor of Darlington, County Durham.  In 1906, the LRC changed its name to the Labour Party and won 29 seats at the general election. In 1908, when Hardie resigned as Leader of the Labour Party, Henderson was elected to replace him. He remained Leader until his own resignation two years later, in 1910.  In total he served 3 seperate terms in 3 seperate decades as leader of the Labour party.   He was also the first Labour party member to sit as a cabinet minister when Asquith called him to the coalition government of  1915.

In later life, he  turned his attention to building a strong constituency-based support network for the Labour Party. Previously, it had little national organisation, based largely on branches of unions and socialist societies. Working with Ramsay MacDonald and Sidney Webb, Henderson in 1918 established a national network of constituency organisations. They operated separately from trade unions and the National Executive Committee and were open to everyone sympathetic to the party’s policies. Secondly, Henderson secured the adoption of a comprehensive statement of party policies, as drafted by Sidney Webb. Entitled “Labour and the New Social Order,” it remained the basic Labour platform until 1950. It proclaimed a socialist party whose principles included a guaranteed minimum standard of living for everyone, nationalisation of industry, and heavy taxation of large incomes and of wealth.

After his parliamentary career, Henderson spent the rest of his life trying to halt the gathering storm of World War II. He worked with the World League of Peace and chaired the Geneva Disarmament Conference, and in 1934 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 

As far as we know, he is not commemorated anywhere in Barnard Castle.