Richard McGhee

Richard McGhee (1851 –7 April 1930) was an Irish Protestant Nationalist home rule politician. A Georgist Land League and trade union activist, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for more than 20 years.

McGhee was born in Lurgan, County Armagh in January or early February 1851, the son of a tenant farmer who later became a shopkeeper. McGhee was educated at the local school in Lurgan and then went to Glasgow to become an engineering apprentice. In 1880 he married Mary Campbell, who lived until 1949. They had five sons and a daughter. One of his sons was Henry McGhee who became the Labour MP for Penistone from 1935 to 1959.

McGhee was a merchant with connections to industry in County Antrim. He specialised in cutlery and stationery. In the 1880s he became involved in labour and trade union causes. He belonged to the American Knights of Labor which had set up some branches in Britain and by 1887 was one of their organisers in Cradley Heath in the Black Country of the West Midlands. The Knights then sent McGhee to Glasgow to recruit new members. McGhee stepped up his labour activism and developed an interest in radical causes, particularly Irish Home Rule even though he was a Protestant, a member of the Church of Ireland. He was a committed follower of the American political economist Henry George and George's policies around land reform and was prominent in the Irish Land League. In 1889 McGhee was a co-founder of the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL) and was for a time its President. In 1893 McGhee resigned from the NUDL but continued to be active in related trade unionism becoming an executive council member of the International Federation of Ship, Dock and River Workers, later the International Transport Workers' Federation and he worked with the National Union of Seamen on various campaigns to improve working conditions.

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