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He was offered a CBE in 1983, but refused it on account of the pro-nuclear policies of the Thatcher government, which he campaigned against. He lived to see the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, for which he had also campaigned, and died in Edinburgh on 8 March 2002, aged eighty-two. He was survived by his wife Kätzel (Felicitas Schmidt), whom he had married in 1959, and their two daughters. A funeral service in St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh was attended by 1500 people, the coffin preceded by a piper, with the ‘Freedom Come All-Ye’ sung at his departure. Henderson’s friendships extended into many spheres which may have seemed incompatible but were brought together in his enormous energies, voracious reading, extraordinary linguistic ability and deep commitment to socialist politics. Among other notable achievements, he translated the prison letters of Antonio Gramsci; accompanied the American folklorist Alan Lomax on the collecting tour of Scotland which proved the impetus for the folk revival; promoted the singer and storyteller Jeanie Robertson, who carried the tradition of the travelling people; locating that tradition was also Henderson’s great work; he became one of the founding members of the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh; and effectively laid foundations for the Festival Fringe. New managerialism’, the organisational arm of neoliberalism, is a mode of governance driven by a market logic of efficiency, productivity and competition where a class of ‘professional managers’ wield control. Alec Finlay, editor (1996) The Armstrong Nose: Selected letters of Hamish Henderson, Polygon, Edinburgh ISBN 978-0-74866-191-6
Like all cultural nationalists—in the best sense of the term—Hamish Henderson was also an internationalist. The two stances are indivisible. They both arise from a curiosity about and identification with the question of our humanity and our relationships with one another.But he also had to grapple with Gramsci’s view of folklore as Janus-faced. Gramsci spoke of ‘various strata’ — beside the ‘often creative and progressive ones’ he also highlighted ‘the fossilized ones which reflect conditions of past life and are therefore conservative and reactionary’. Henderson called it Gramsci’s ‘unresolved but creative clash of contradictions’. While recognising these tensions, where he perhaps parted with Gramsci was when the latter claimed that folk culture had to be ‘overcome’ and that, in Corey Gibson’s words, ‘folklore can have no place in the development of a working-class hegemony and, therefore, no place in the revolutionary future as imagined by a Gramscian Marxism’. Dividing his time between Continental Europe and Scotland, he eventually settled in Edinburgh in 1959 with his German wife, Kätzel (Felizitas Schmidt).
The Times Literary Supplement in its review in January 1949 wrote about the former soldier's poems, reflecting upon his experience. It noted:The 51st Highland Division's Farewell to Sicily by Hamish Henderson". Scottish Poetry Library (in Inglis) . Retrieved 23 Januar 2022. In my lifetime, the ascendent neoliberal agenda of globalisation has deeply transformed the material conditions of our world, and may yet bring about our ultimate destruction.
The Flyting o' Life and Daith by Hamish Henderson". Scottish Poetry Library (in Inglis) . Retrieved 23 Januar 2022.Harvie, Christopher (1998). No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Twentieth-century Scotland. p.16. ISBN 9780748609994. Many song-makers might have stopped there in righteous anger, but Henderson adds depth, tragic irony:
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