Joseph King (politician)

Joseph King (31 March 1860 – 25 August 1943), was a British Liberal Party politician who later joined the Labour Party.

Background
He was the eldest son of Joseph King of Liverpool and his wife Phoebe (née Powell). He was educated at Uppingham School, Trinity College, Oxford, (where he was awarded a BA in 1883 and an MA in 1886) Airedale College, Bradford, University of Giessen and University, Berlin. He married, in 1887, Maude Egerton. They had one daughter. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1889. Maude died in 1927. He married for a second time in 1928, to Helena G. Martins.

Political career
King was Liberal candidate for the New Forest Division of Hampshire at the 1892 General Election, coming second.

He did not contest the 1895 and 1900 General Elections. In 1904 he contested the 1904 Isle of Thanet by-election as a Liberal Party candidate, coming second. At the 1906 General Election he was Liberal candidate again at Thanet, coming second.

At the January 1910 General Election, King was elected Liberal MP for North Somerset, holding a seat for the party that was gained from the Conservatives in 1906. He was re-elected in December 1910.

Following the outbreak of World War I, King joined the Union of Democratic Control, a group of Liberal and Labour politicians who were critical of the secret diplomacy that they blamed for the conflict. He argued that Britain was obliged to protest at the German invasion of Belgium but not to go to Belgium's aid. He was a pacifist and opposed military conscription. His constituency was abolished as part of the 1918 boundary changes.

Support for the Soviet Union
He was sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, raising the matter of Trotsky's 1917 detention in a debate in 1918:

"Mr. KING asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that after the Russian revolution Mr. Trotsky was arrested by British authorities and placed in a camp with German prisoners at Halifax; that he was charged with being a German agent; and whether, in order to remove any ground for suspicion or he will now instruct our Ambassador or Chargé d'Affaires in Petrograd to convey to Mr. Trotsky the British Government's regret for this incident?

"Mr. BALFOUR: Mr. Trotsky was detained at Halifax on suspicion of being a German agent. The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative."

In 1919 he published a pamphlet called Three Bloody Men, in which he blamed the Whites for starting the violence and condemned the British government for encouraging them. Denounced the Whites for having removed the lawful Provisional Government and alienated many anti-Bolsheviks.

In 1920 he contested the 1920 Ilford by-election as a Labour Party candidate.

At the 1923 General Election King was Labour candidate at York, coming second.

In 1933 he published The German revolution, its meaning and menace, warning about Hitler.

Arts
King played a key role in the Peasant Arts movement in Haslemere, Surrey. A number of the items produced are in the Victoria and Albert Museum.