James Keir Hardie
James Keir Hardie was the founder of the Labour Party in
Britain. He was born into poverty in Legbrannoch, Lanarkshire and
started to earn his living at the age of seven as a delivery boy,
and by the age of ten was working in a coalmine. He had little
formal education and he taught himself to read at home. As a
young man he became quite a well known lay preacher.
In 1879 he was appointed Secretary of the Ayrshire
Miners' Association and moved to Cumnock. In 1881, appalled at
the conditions in the mines, he led a miners' protest against a cut
in wages and organised a union of the Ayrshire miners. The protest
collapsed which led to him being dismissed and black-listed by the
mine-owners, as a result of this he turned to journalism for a
living with the 'Cumnock
News' in 1882. He became actively involved within the
Cumnock community, founding a Good Templar Lodge and promoting the
temperance movement. He was invited to become the Secretary to the
new Ayrshire Miners' Union in 1886 and in 1888 helped found the
Scottish Labour Party and stood (unsuccessfully) as a Labour
candidate at the Mid-Lanark by-election.
In 1892 Hardie was one of three Labour men elected to serve in
Parliament and he made a celebrated entry into the House of
Commons, wearing not formal dress but a cloth cap and a workman's
suit. In the following year he founded the Independent Labour
Party, whose main aims were to spread socialism and influence the
trade unions. He lost his seat at West Ham in 1895 but remained
Labour Party leader and was returned as MP for Merthyr Tydfil in
1900 and remained its member until his death from a long illness in
1915. He was the first chairman of the Parliamentary Labour
Party.
Widely respected for his dignity and sincerity, Keir Hardie was a convinced pacifist who opposed both the Boer War and the First World War. He also supported the Suffragette movement and advised its members on tactics. Throughout his career as an MP, Hardie continued to live in Cumnock. He lived in 'Lochnorris', a large house which he had built for his family in 1891.
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