Election As An Independent
In 1923, Henderson was elected as an Independent Unionist to Belfast City Council. He was to retain the seat until his death. At the 1925 election, he fought the Belfast North constituency and topped the poll with 10,306 first preference votes, the only candidate to have the electoral quota on the first count. From the 1929 election he was elected as member for Belfast Shankill.
Henderson distinguished himself at Stormont by becoming almost a one-man opposition to the Unionist government. He loudly spoke up on behalf of the working-class and criticised the government for defending the interests of the rich landowners. He was insistent that he was four-square behind them on the issue of the border and just as opposed to any land concessions to the Irish Free State. This did not prevent the Unionists using the fact that Henderson often voted with the Irish Nationalist members to imply that he agreed with them.
Read more about this topic: Tommy Henderson
Famous quotes containing the words election and/or independent:
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
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—Women’s Liberation Workshop, Students for a Democratic Society, Radical political/social activist organization. “Liberation of Women,” in New Left Notes (July 10, 1967)