This book provoked the anger of Karl Marx as it probably plagiarises The Communist Manifesto as well as misrepresenting its ideas. He fell out with Henry over it, although he did acknowledge the book helped popularise communist ideas in Britain.

Amongst the initial members of the SDF were William Morris (the poet), George Lansbury (eventual Labour Party leader), and Eleanor Marx, a socialist activist, literary translator, and daughter of Karl Marx. She would later take her own life in a tragic story involving another SDF member, Edward Aveling.

There was also a newspaper associated with the party called Justice: the organ of the Social Democracy”

From the LSE Library newspaper store

The letter from the angry clergymen at the beginning of this post was addressed to Charles Fitzgerald, the first editor of Justice (Henry was the second editor), and the “gossip” they were referring to was probably the difference of opinion between the controversial Henry and certain members of the SDF. They felt that Henry had too much control over Justice, and had concerns over his tendency to expel members he disagreed with. The SDF executive voted by a majority of two that it had no confidence in Henry.

Henry refused to resign.

Around Christmas time in 1884, a group of members handed in their resignation in protest and went on to form the Socialist League. Here’s Justice reporting the event:

Henry sounds like he was quite a charismatic and controversial figure, both being a member of a socialist party whilst also referring to the working classes as “idiots”. He followed the opposite trajectory to a lot of people in that he started off as a Tory and then became a socialist (he talks about this in his biography The Record of an Adventurous Life, which even his own wife refers to as being remarkably impersonal, which I believe is a polite way to say quite boring)

Here is his leaflet standing as a socialist candidate in the 1910 General Election for Burnley: