Born in Scotland in 1907, James B. Henderson emigrated to Australia with his parents, settling in the mining communities of Blair Athol and later Collinsville in Central Queensland. Employed as a schoolteacher in Collinsville in the late 1920s, Henderson soon became an active and vocal member of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). In 1944 following the election of Fred Paterson as the CPA candidate for Bowen, a campaign in which Henderson played a significant role, Henderson was called to Brisbane by the Party to act as a fulltime functionary. In 1960 Henderson worked as a translator for Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam. In 1981 he joined the newly formed Socialist Party of Australia, continuing until his death in 1998 to be an outspoken critic of capitalism and social injustice.