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John Gravener Henson (1785 – 15 November 1852) was a workers' leader from Nottingham, England, and a historian of the framework knitters. E. P. Thompson saw him as one of three outstanding figures in the early English working-class movement.E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), p. 851; the other two being Doherty and Gast.
He was first noticed on 8 October 1808, in the Nottingham Quarter Sessions Records, when as John Gravenor sic Henson, he was the subject of a bastardy order for a female child born to Elizabeth Bradwell. Records of the Borough of Nottingham, vol viii, 1800–1835 (Nottingham, 1952), pp. 75–76.
Henson married Martha Farnsworth at St Mary's Church, Nottingham, on 23 December 1813.St. Mary's, Nottingham marriage transcripts, 23 December 1813. They are not known to have had any children and she predeceased him in 1850. Nottingham Review and General Advertiser for the Midland Counties, 26 July 1850, p. 4. A contemporary described him as "thick set with a short neck, keen small eyes, and a head very broad at the base, rising angularly to an unusual height".W. Felkin, A History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures (1867), p. xvii.
Rising fear of revolutionary movements was creating conditions unfavourable to understanding between the burgeoning urban working class and employers, on whom a growing number depended for their employment.R. A. Church, Economic and Social Change in a Midland Town: Victorian Nottingham, 1815–1900 (1966), p. 319. In 1811 Henson tried unsuccessfully to prosecute four hosiery employers under the Combination Acts, which were intended to cover employers as well as workers, and in 1812, as "Deputy" of The United Committee of Framework Knitters, he made the first of several attempts to obtain parliamentary regulation of the hosiery and lace trades and the organization and cooperation of their workers throughout the country.M. I. Thomis, "Gravener Henson: the Man and the Myth", in: Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 75 (1971), pp. 91–97; M. Chase, Early Trade Unionism (2000), p. 94. Because of (or in spite of) these activities, he began to be suspected of being connected in some way with the or even being Ned Ludd himself. As a result, when the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in England in 1817, he was arrested on a warrant signed by the Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth and imprisoned in April for seven months in Coldbath Fields house of correction. Nottingham Review..., 19 November 1852, p. 4. The London Courier noted, "This man Henson has long been an object of dread to the well-disposed inhabitants of Nottingham and its neighbourhood, both on account of the leading influence he was thought to have with the Luddites, and his supposed political principles."Quoted in Nottingham Journal, 19 April 1817. Even Francis Place, "the radical tailor of Charing Cross", accepted the popular view that Henson was in fact "King Ludd".Place MSS, British Library Add MS 27809 (1876). This confinement in jail, however, gave Henson an alibi for the Pentrich rising on 9 June 1817 and for the weeks preceding the uprising, and he was released in November of that year.
Henson later maintained he had urged the Luddites to form "clubs and combinations" as "an alternative means of securing their ends", and he claimed that his own life had been threatened repeatedly by some of the more desperate Luddites "for counteracting their designs, and for the freedom of language I have used at various times against their practices." Report of the Select Committee on the Emigration of Artisans and the Export of Machinery (1824), VII, evidence of Henson, p. 282; Henson to Lord Sidmouth, H.O.42/166, quoted by J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Skilled Labourer (1919), p. 235. Henson later pulled the leg of Francis Place by suggesting to him that Luddism was a put-up job by the government of the day, to give it an excuse for grinding the people under the heel of military despotism. Francis Place solemnly recorded this conspiracy theory as a piece of serious comment.British Museum Additional MSS 27809, Place's account of the years 1815 onwards, p. 18: quoted in M. I. Thomis, The Luddites: Machine Breaking in Regency England (1970), p. 43.
E. P. Thompson thought that because Gravener Henson was involved in all the workers' activities of the time, he was most likely involved with Luddism, and that the roles of machine-breaker and Parliamentary petitioner were not incompatible.E. P. Thompson, Postscript to new edition of the Making of the English Working Class (1968), pp. 924–934. R. A. Church and S. D. Chapman, however, felt that the two roles could not have coexisted, and that Henson stood for the more sophisticated approach of the urban radicals, contrasting it with the cruder behaviour of their rural cousins, and that Nottingham, unlike the countryside around it, was a political environment in which he could identify with the radical leadership of the town, and so had no need to resort to machine-breaking.R. A. Church and S. D. Chapman, "Gravener Henson and the making of the English working class", passim.
In 1823 Henson embarked on a campaign to secure parliamentary regulation of the hosiery and lace trades. Together with George White, a Clerk of Committees of the House of Commons, a bill was introduced by Peter Moore, M. P. for Coventry, which Henson hoped would repeal the Combination Acts, and replace them with a virtual charter of workers' rights. This far-sighted scheme had little chance of success, but Henson was able at least to present evidence to the Committee on Artisans and Machinery, which may well have helped to secure their repeal in 1824.S. and B. Webb, The History of Trade Unionism (1894, new ed. 1920), p. 100; Digest of Evidence before the Committee on Artisans and Machinery by George White, 1824.
In 1833, lace-machine holders, owners and manufacturers joined together to support Henson (and William Felkin) in an attempt to prohibit the export of lace-making machinery. A committee was formed to prevent the smuggling of machines from England to France. (English producers were particularly anxious about French rivals.) Although the Board of Trade had always refused to grant licences for the export of lace machinery, the government had failed to prosecute breaches of the law. On Henson's authority, the committee took possession of machinery which was being dispatched abroad by a London merchant, who promptly instituted action against Henson for illegal seizure. The funds of the committee were soon exhausted by the ensuing court case, and the campaign to prevent exports of machinery was quickly abandoned.R. A. Church, Economic and Social Change in a Midland Town: Victorian Nottingham 1815–1900, pp. 98–100.
It was a failure for Henson, against what he saw as the cruel system of free trade, and which he believed would work to the disadvantage of Britain's workers, if competitors were able to secure access to British technology.R. A. Church, Economic and Social Change in a Midland Town: Victorian Nottingham 1815–1900, pp. 98–100.
In later life Henson seems to have distrusted the Chartism, having a poor opinion of their motives and abilities. He thought in 1842 that they were "disinterested lecturers and spouters". Nottingham Journal, 2 September 1842. He continued to back the framework knitters' attempts in 1843 to obtain a government inquiry into their conditions. Nottingham Journal, 5 May 1843.
A lifetime of endeavour in the interests of the working classes, however, produced only a series of disappointments.R. A. Church and S. D. Chapman, "Gravener Henson and the making...", p. 156. William Cobbett's remark that Henson was one of those men "whose offensive conceit, coupled with vulgar ignorance, are sure to do injury to any cause with which they meddle...".W. Cobbett, Political Register, Vol 76 (1832), p. 496. perhaps... helps to explain the failure of some of his causes and his isolation in later years..R. A. Church and S. D. Chapman, "Gravener Henson and the making...", p. 156.
E. P. Thompson suggested, in The Making of the English Working Class, presumably on the basis of Henson's early militancy, that in the history of working-class movements between 1780 and 1832, he was one of three, with John Doherty and John Gast, who were outstanding leaders.E. P. Thompson, The Making..., p. 851. Professor M. I. Thomas thought, in Old Nottingham (1968), that Henson was one of the most important working-class leaders of the first half of the 19th century, and possibly (about 1813–1814) the first full-time paid union official.M. I. Thomas, Old Nottingham (Newton Abbott, 1968), pp. 180–181.
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