George Henderson was a farmer and politician in Northern Ireland.
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer might own the farmed land or might work as a laborer on land owned by others, but in advanced economies, a farmer is usually a farm owner, while employees of the farm are known as farm workers, or farmhands. However, in the not so distant past, a farmer was a person who promotes or improves the growth of by labor and attention, land or crops or raises animals.
A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking office in government. Politicians propose, support and create laws or policies that govern the land and, by extension, its people. Broadly speaking, a "politician" can be anyone who seeks to achieve political power in any bureaucratic institution.
Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares a border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. In 2011, its population was 1,810,863, constituting about 30% of the island's total population and about 3% of the UK's population. Established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998 as part of the Good Friday Agreement, the Northern Ireland Assembly holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, while other areas are reserved for the British government. Northern Ireland co-operates with the Republic of Ireland in several areas, and the Agreement granted the Republic the ability to "put forward views and proposals" with "determined efforts to resolve disagreements between the two governments".
Henderson worked as a farmer in County Antrim. Around the time of his retirement, he was appointed Chairman of the Unbought Tenants' Association. [1] Standing as a representative of that group, he won a seat in Antrim at the Northern Ireland general election, 1925. The seat was abolished at the 1929 general election, and Henderson instead contested Bannside on behalf of the Ulster Liberal Party. He took second place, and was not elected. He also contested the Westminster seat of Antrim as a Liberal at the 1929 general election, but was not close to being elected. [2]
County Antrim is one of six counties that form Northern Ireland. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of 3,046 square kilometres (1,176 sq mi) and has a population of about 618,000. County Antrim has a population density of 203 people per square kilometre or 526 people per square mile. It is also one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland, as well as part of the historic province of Ulster.
Unbought Tenants' Association and Unpurchased Tenants' Association were labels for agrarian pressure groups in Ireland in the 1910s and 1920s. Under the Irish Land Acts, most farmers in the preceding decades had bought the freehold to their farms; the Association represented the interests of remaining tenant farmers.
Antrim was a county constituency of the Parliament of Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1929. It returned seven MPs, using proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote.
