Arthur Henderson

Arthur Henderson ( * September 13, 1863 in Glasgow, † October 20, 1935 in London) was a British politician. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Peace Prize for his work as chairman of the Geneva Disarmament Conference.

Life and work

Arthur Henderson was the son of a cotton spinner and came in 1863 in Glasgow, Scotland to the world. After attending school in Newcastle -upon- Tyne, he was cast iron industry. In his career he has already joined the union early on and was also regionally politically active - first in the Liberal Party. In 1892 he was elected delegates of the union for Northumberland, Durham, Lancashire and City Council in Newcastle. He was secretary and from 1908 Chairman of the Conciliation Committee on the northern coast districts. Henderson was Methodist and a member of the founded in 1875 social and interdenominational Brotherhood movement and its president from 1914 to 1915.

Political development

In 1900 he was present at the founding of the Labour Representation Committee, the predecessor of the British Labour Party founded in 1906, attended and participated actively in the sequence on the structure of the new party. In 1903 he was elected treasurer of the Alliance and in the same year in a special election a Member of the House of Commons. The lower house he was with several interruptions until 1935. During this time he had in 1914, from 1921 to 1923 and from 1925 to 1927 held the position of Chief Whip of Parliament. From 1908 to 1911, and twice later from 1914 to 1922 and from 1931 to 1934 he was chairman of the party, from 1908 to 1910 and from 1914 to 1917 and Chairman of the Group. The Office of the Secretary, he had continuously from 1912 to 1934 held.

Henderson was - in contrast to his predecessor, Ramsay MacDonald, who resigned because of it - not fundamentally opposed to the British entry into the First World War. From May 1915 to August 1917 he was a member of the Cabinets of Herbert Henry Asquith and David Lloyd George as Minister of Education and consultant in labor questions. In 1917 he traveled to revolutionary Russia and came back after that trip out of the Parliament, as the peace conference in Stockholm was not supported by the British government.

In 1918, Henderson and Sidney Webb tried to make the previously existing as a merger of various labor organizations Labour Party to a tight organizational oriented party with a socialist profile. He made ​​the majority of party members, the London International, which later became the Socialist International. Henderson was chairman of this group from 1923 to 1924, and from 1925 until 1929. A collaboration with the Communist International and the Communist Party of Great Britain, he refused.

In 1924, the Labour Party under Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald the first time the government acted as Minister of Interior in Henderson on January 23, 1924 to November 4, 1924. In this capacity he participated in the Geneva Protocol on disarmament issues. In the second cabinet MacDonald he was on June 8, 1929 to August 24, 1931 Secretary of State. In this role he was involved among other things to the Hague Conferences establishing new rules on reparation of the German Empire and at the Naval Conference of 1930. 1929 Great Britain took under his aegis the first time diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. In 1931, Henderson was again Leader of the Labour Party, having previously voted as a single against the expulsion from the party of the group to its predecessor MacDonald and Philip Snowden, which without the backing of the party along with the Conservatives to form a " national government " in MacDonalds leadership had decided.

1932-1933 took Henderson as President of the Geneva Conference on Disarmament in part, in which he also played a central role in content. Especially for this, he was honored the following year in 1934 with the Nobel Peace Prize.

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