HYNDMAN, HENRY MAYERS founder of British Socialism, was born in London on March 7, the son of a wealthy man. He was educated at Trinity college, Cambridge and travelled extensively. He was deeply influenced by the Paris Commune and in 1881 joined with several extreme Radicals in forming the London Democratic Federation which advocated views which were practically Socialist. For its first conference (June 1881) he wrote England for All, the first Socialist book published in England since the collapse of Owenism. In this he expounded the views of Karl Marx, which he now finally adopted. But as he omitted to make what Marx felt was the necessary acknowledgment of his indebtedness, Marx was offended and Engels who disliked Hyndman deliberately widened the breach. The chief, and indeed only exponent of Marxism in the country where Marx lived was thus not on speaking terms with his leader. This, however, did not stop the spread of Marxist Socialism. The Democratic Federation in 1884 became the Social Democratic Federation and nearly all the prominent Socialists of the new generation, except J. Keir Hardie, were moulded by Hyndman. William Morris, John Burns, Tom Mann, H. H. Champion, George Lansbury and Harry Quelch were among his colleagues and pupils. But it was significant of Hyndman's failings that of these named above only one succeeded in working with him for any long space of time. Hyndman remained always an aristocrat among the Socialists. He was proud and dominant in his manners, intellec tually intolerant, and resentful of criticism or disagreement. Even when distributing leaflets announcing meetings he always wore a top hat and frock-coat, and he frequently in Trafalgar square or elsewhere, taunted his ragged audiences with being such fools as to provide the money on which such as he could dress so well. But the qualities of his defects were also present—his indom itable energy which enabled him to create a Socialist movement almost from the void, his self sacrifice and patience, and his up rightness and hatred of compromise and of loose thinking. In the late '8os the Socialist and unemployed movement blew suddenly up to an enormous size ; the riots in Trafalgar square were suc ceeded by the famous dock strike (1889) ; and for a short while public opinion, hostile or friendly, magnified the importance of the S.D.F. and its leader, whom it credited with the control and inspiration of these occurrences.
With the return of better trade in the '9os the explosive period of Hyndman's career ended, though he incurred plenty of hostility by his denunciation of the Boer War. He was severely critical of the policy of both the Independent Labour Party and the Labour Party, and till 1914 was the acknowledged chief of a small, but hard working and influential party of doctrinaire revolutionaries. But on the outbreak of the World War, to the surprise of his followers, he became a strong nationalist, and later on equally vehement anti-Bolshevik. For the first time he was unable to carry his party with him : in 1915 the British Socialist Party (as it had become) ousted him and his sympathizers from control. They formed a small group known as the "National Socialist Party." He expounded his new views in The Evolution of Revolu tion (192o). He died on November 22, 1921.
See his own Record of an Adventurous Life (1911) and Further Reminiscences (1912) ; Mrs. R. T. Hyndman, The Last Years of H. M. Hyndman (1923) ; and F. J. Gould, Hyndman, Prophet of Socialism (1928).