Constituency : North West Norfolk 1885-6, 1892-1900
Joseph won the new seat of North West Norfolk. His campaigning helped the Liberals secure some vital wins in rural constituencies to offset losses in the boroughs. The National Liberal Club held a banquet in his honour in January 1886 with Chamberlain presiding. Joseph personally disapproved of canvassing. He was fiercely attacked by the Tories. One called him "a heavy lump of a farmer, very thick-witted I thought & dull but they say he is a good speaker on his own subjects.... dresses in coloured clothes and wears a bill-cock hat - no pretence of being a gentleman or a clever man". Another said "He has been among Hodges and hedge-cutters all his life. He has got into a rhetorical groove- a low and simple one - which he cannot get out of". On the other hand Joseph had support from the local gentry who lent him their carriages for the transport of voters.
Joseph was a cottager's son from Warwickshire who became an agricultural labourer. He was also a Prmitive Methodist preacher and developed a reputation as a radical orator. He was self-educated from newspapers and became an ardent Liberal. He began agitating for a living wage for agricultural workers in the 1870s. In 1872 the National Agricultural Labourer's Union was formed with Joseph as President and had 100,000 members two years later. In 1873 he was invited to Canada by the government there to assess the country's suitability for emigration by agricultural workers. Joseph helped over 40,000 families to settle there and Australia. He supported Gladstone's Bulgarian agitation and attended a Workmen's peace Association conference in Paris in 1875. He stood for Wilton in 1880 . He then agitated for his workers to be enfranchised by the Third Reform Act.
Having secured that , Joseph himself got elected in 1885. He is not always included in the list of Lib-Lab MPs having little in common with those from the industrial boroughs. He himself was very suspicious of urban unionists coming onto his patch . Joseph was the victim of a derogatory cartoon in Punch which portrayed him as a bovine, badly-dressed oaf in a bowler hat. His maiden speech in 1886 was in support of Jesse Collings's "three acres and a cow " amendment to the Queen's Speech which ushered in Gladstone's third ministry. He rejected the Cottagers Allotment Gardens Bill as "derisory, as flimsy, worthless... an insult and mockery to us ".
Joseph was defeated in 1886 but elected to Warwickshire County Council in 1889 and re-elected to Parliament in 1892. He is generally regarded as a political failure, disappointing his supporters an making little contribution to Parliament . He was a member of the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor in 1893. His authoritarian style at the NALU was increasingly criticised. In 1896 the union folded leaving Joseph in financial difficulty. His friends in the party , including Rosebery, bought him an annuity.
In 1898 Joseph published an aggressive autobiography lambasting his adversaries including his successors at the Union who allowed it to decline.
Joseph was a fierce defender of Free Trade. He also backed the Vigilance Association for the Defence of Personal Rights.
Joseph retired before the 1900 election.
He died in 1919 aged 92.
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