"We could settle on "socialist"."
No problem with that, though the term has been abused enough for sol long to become meaningless.
I think I've read the claim recently that, "we're all socialists now" and the also that "employers who treat their workers decently and pay them a decent wage are practicing socialism" - it really is more complicated than that.
It really isn't that important anyway; Henderson was what he wrote and did - his allegiance to Scottish Marxist, John McLean in, 'Freedom Come-All Ye, puts him where he was..
I go along with Mike's description of him to a degree - he was somewhat eccentric and unpredictable.
I can't recall what subject he was asked to speak on at MacColl's 70th symposium, but he launched into a glorious talk on erotic and bawdy songs and declared that "love was what made us all human beings" which had the audience on edge (so to speak) - nothing to do with the advertised topic.
Like all great people, he was very much his own person.
MacColl used to tell the story of a concert he sang at in Edinburgh in the fifties - one of the songs was the Scots mouth Music piece 'Tail Toddle'
When he came off stage, he found a be-kilted Hamish being questioned by a diminutive American lady with a notebook.
"Can you explain 'what Tail Toddle' means, Mr Henderson".
Towering over the her, he said ponderously, "Weel madam, a tail is a woman's pudenda, and toddlin' is the movement, in and out, in and out" - demonstrating the motion vigourously with his hips, kilt swaying as he spoke.
The lady rapidly disappeared with her notebook and wasn't seen again.
Jim Carroll