It was an eerie job, all alone for ten long hours, with the underground silence only disturbed by the sighing and whistling of the air as it sought to escape through the joints of the door. Hardie, who never attended school, was completely illiterate until his mother began to teach him to read. His friend, Philip Snowden , explained why this happened: "Keir Hardie had no schooling as a boy.
He told me once what drove him to learn to write. When a youth, he went to join the Good Templers. He was unable to sign his name on the membership pledge, and he was so ashamed that he set to work to learn to write. Although Hardie worked 12 hours a day down the mine, he still found time for his studies and by the age of seventeen had learnt to write from a man who provided evening classes to miners: "The teacher was genuinely interested in his pupils and did all he could for them with his limitations of time and equipment.
There was no light provided in the school and the pupils had to bring their own candles. Learning had now a kind of fascination for the boy". Hardie began to read newspapers and discovered how some workers were attempting to improve their wages and working conditions by forming trade unions.
Hardie helped join a union at his colliery and in took part in the first ever strike of Lanarkshire miners. This led to his dismissal, and he moved to Old Cumnock. Hardie became a member of the Temperance Society. He met and married Lillie Wilson, a fellow campaigner.
As Fran Abrams has pointed out: "He Hardie enjoyed the company of women, and Lillie was not the first girl to catch his eye. The marriage was not always a source of joy to either party The day after his wedding he attended a political rally and set the pattern for the rest of his married life.
While he travelled the globe in pursuit of his causes, Lillie was left at home, struggling to bring up a growing family. He "acquired the skills of Pitman's shorthand by scratching out the characters on a blackened slate with the wire used by miners to adjust the wicks of their lamps, in the dark depths of a Lanarkshire pit".
He also began having articles published in a local newspaper. In May , Scottish mine owners combined to force a reduction of wages. Hardie was appointed Corresponding Secretary of the miners, a post which gave him opportunity to get in touch with other representatives of the mine workers throughout southern Scotland. In the summer of , the Hamilton miners defied their union and went on strike against a wage reduction.
The strike was crushed, but Hardie was appointed secretary for the recently formed Ayrshire Miners' Union.
A friend at this time claimed that although he never drank alcohol he was good company: "A Puritan he was in all matters of absolute right or wrong, and could not be made to budge from what seemed to him to be the straight path. But with that limitation he was one of the most companionable of men. He could sing a good song, and dance and be merry with great abandon. James Mavor met Keir Hardie for the first time in "When I first met him he was an alert, good-looking young man - reddish hair, ruddy complexion, honest but ecstatic eyes, average stature, very fastidious about his dress Hardie looked like an artist, and indeed in general his point of view was that of an artist Although his early education had been somewhat neglected, Hardie had the talent for letters which seems to be indigenous in Ayrshire.
He was a creature of impulse. His impulses were always genuine, no matter how mistaken might be the judgments associated with them He never fell into the habits of his fellows, but identified himself rather with the intellectual and artistic proletariat than with any faction of the middle class. This was no pose, but was the simple outcome of his nature. He was the only really cultivated man in the ranks of any of the Labour parties.
His friend Philip Snowden later argued: "Keir Hardie told me that it was Progress and Poverty which gave him his first ideas of socialism No book ever written on the social problem made so many converts.
Economic facts and theories have never been presented in such an attractive way. Although Henry George was not a socialist, his book led many of his readers to socialism. Hardie admitted that his conversion to socialism was a "protracted process" and had "no real base in economics". He described socialism as "more an affair of the heart than of the intellect" and saw it as a political system that would protect and support weaker members of the community.
He agreed with Karl Marx that capitalists were a "corrupt class" and "endorsed his vision of the historical struggle of the workers" but rejected his ideas on the need for revolution to change society. In the s working-class political representatives stood in parliamentary elections as Liberal-Labour candidates. When Broadhurst accepted the post he became the first working man to become a government minister.
Broadhurst's loyal support of the Liberal government upset some trade union leaders. When Broadhurst argued against the eight-hour day, Keir Hardie remarked that the minister was more Liberal than Labour.
The following year, Hardie began publishing a monthly newspaper called The Miner. Its first number appeared in January, , and it was published for two years, with Hardie supplying about a third of its content: "It was a very remarkable paper, and to those who are fortunate enough to possess the two volumes, it mirrors in a very realistic way the social conditions of the collier folk of that time, and also throws considerable light on the many phases and aspects of the general Labour movement in the days when it was gropingly feeling its way through many experiments and experiences towards political self-reliance and self-knowledge".
Hardie also attempted to use the newspaper to give the miners a political education. In one speech he pointed out "I reject what seems to be the crude notion of a class war, because class consciousness leads nowhere The watchword of socialism is not class consciousness but community consciousness.
During this period Hardie met Robert Cunninghame Graham. He later recorded: "Keir Hardie His hair was already becoming thin at the top of the head, and receding from the temples. His eyes were not very strong. At first sight he struck you as a remarkable man. There was an air of great benevolence about him, but his face showed the kind of appearance of one who has worked hard and suffered, possibly from inadequate nourishment in his youth.
He was active and alert and appeared to be full of energy, and as subsequent events proved, he had an enormous power of resistance against long, hard and continual work.
I should judge him to have been of a very nervous and high-strung temperament. At that time, and I believe up to the end of his life, he was an almost ceaseless smoker He was a very strict teetotaller and remained so to the end, but he was not a bigot on the subject and was tolerant of faults in the weaker brethren.
Nothing in his address or speech showed his want of education in his youth. His accent was of Ayrshire His voice was high-pitched but sonorous and very far-carrying at that time. He never used notes at that time, and I think never prepared a speech, leaving all to the inspiration of the moment.
This suited his natural, unforced method of speaking admirably. As Kenneth O. Morgan has pointed out: "By the end of Hardie's political outlook had clearly changed from orthodox Liberalism to a kind of socialism Historians have differed on the precise significance of this conversion. Some regard him as an ideological socialist from then on.
Most, however, see his socialism as an undoctrinaire outgrowth of advanced Liberalism, and as ethical rather than economic in its basis. He was never a Marxist. But from he was clearly an apostle of the gospel of socialism and the political independence of labour. Hardie was also getting very disillusioned with the Liberal Party.
One notable amendment of the Bill, secured very largely through pressure by people like Hardie was the prohibition of the employment of boys under twelve. Hardie wrote: "What a difference from the time when children were taken into the pit almost as soon as they were out of the cradle.
Keir Hardie came to the conclusion that the working-class needed its own political party. With the support of Robert Smillie , the leader of the Lanarkshire miners, Hardie began advocating socialism and in stood as the Independent Labour candidate for the constituency of Mid-Lanark.
Hardie first attempt to enter the House of Commons ended in failure. However, as his friend, Tom Johnson , made clear, this marked a turning point in history: "He had set the idea of political independence before the workers, and although maligned, traduced, and slandered in the Liberal Press with almost savage ferocity, he polled votes.
He wanted a party which would attract radicals, dissatisfied liberals, trade unionists and social reformers concerned about the plight of children. He attended the inaugural Second International meetings in Paris in July, , where he joined up again with Tom Mann , the leader of the Eight Hour League, that was influential in convincing the trade union movement to adopt the statutory eight-hour day as one of its core policies.
Mann commented in his autobiography that "our relations were always harmonious". They joined forces in persuading the conference to allow anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin to address delegates.
Hardie also met up with Richard Pankhurst and his wife, Emmeline Pankhurst. Sylvia, who was only seven years old at the time, later recalled: "Kneeling on the stairs to watch him, I felt that I could have rushed into his arms; indeed it was not long before the children in the houses where he stayed had climbed to his knees. He had at once the appearance of great age and vigorous youth. It was a area much affected by the "new unionism" among unskilled workers.
He moved to London in , and resigned as secretary of the Ayrshire Miners. In the General Election the Liberal Party did not put up a candidate and it was a straight fight with the Conservative candidate. Hardie won by 5, votes to 4, Hardie, the country's first socialist member of the House of Commons , took his seat on 3rd August, The tradition at that time was for MPs to wear long black coats, a silk top hat and starched wing collar.
Hardie created a sensation by entering Parliament in a tweed suit, a red tie, and a workman's peaked cap. John Burns claimed that the check cloth was so broad that "you could have played draughts on it". He said that previously trade union men in the House of Commons had "demonstrated that working men could come like gentlemen". He added that Hardie had outraged the sentiment of Labour and that he did serious injury to his own reputation by going to the House of Commons dressed in the manner he did In the House of Commons Hardie began advocating policies that had first been put forward by Tom Paine in his book Rights of Man in Hardie believed this extra revenue should be used to provide old age pensions and free schooling for the working class.
Making Britain Discover how South Asians shaped the nation, Search Search. Keir Hardie. Other names:. Date of birth:. City of birth:. Country of birth:.
Date of death:. Location of death:. He was clearly developing political ambitions and in put himself forward as a candidate at the by-election in Mid Lanark. When the Liberal Association failed to select him he stood as an independent labour candidate, on what could be seen as a radical, but still Liberal, programme: home rule, nationalisation of land, abolition of the House of Lords, direct local veto on public houses.
He got a mere votes. It was an accusation which was to follow him throughout his life, and it was not without justification in these early days, with funding via H.
Champion from the Tory Democrat, Maltman Barry. Immediately afterwards Hardie, with a group of disenchanted Liberal radicals, formed the Scottish Labour Party — the first party committed to independent labour representation and to socialism. In the next few years he began to become known nationally with speeches at the Trades Union Congress and visits to London, where he came into contact with other socialists. He attended the Marxist International Congress in Paris in and developed lasting international contacts, while rejecting the possibility of a revolutionary Marxist road to socialism in Britain.
This is when the first mythical image of Hardie emerges. He was carried to Westminster by a waggonette full of supporters, including one with a trumpet playing the Marseillaise Davies, , p. Outside, he played a major part in the formation in of the Independent Labour Party and was its chairman for the next eight years. Despite this, he and all ILP candidates went down to disastrous defeat in and it looked as if his political career was at an end. He did, however, continue to have a voice in that The Miner had been turned into the weekly Labour Leader large parts of which were written by Hardie himself, under various pen-names.
He wrote:. The unity of the working class is the one thing that matters. That can never be a thing of rapid growth. Abstract theories with them count for very little… Socialism supplies the vision and a united working class satisfies the senses as a practical method of attaining its realisation.
To attain that unity is, and must be, the first object of all who desire Socialism. Johnson, , p. To win over Nonconformist trade unionists socialism had to be presented as an ethical gospel. It was under the auspices of the LRC that Hardie was again returned to Parliament in , this time for Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, which he continued to represent until his death in In this election in the midst of the South African War, he was elected on a pro-Boer stance.
After one in he set off on a world tour causing a great furore when he made sympathetic noises in favour of Indian nationalism.
In South Africa, he caused another row by suggesting to white miners that their union be opened up to black workers. Here he was quite consistent since, almost alone in Parliament, he questioned the way in which the rights of the black population were being swept aside in order to conciliate the Boers and persuade them to accept a South African Union Morgan, , pp.
In August this proved a chimera. His death in September was often reputed to be due to despair at the failure of the international working class. He never caught the ear of that assembly and was an ineffective leader of the independent group which owed its existence in great measure to his unflagging energy. He… did not at any time gain the complete confidence of the working class. The Labour Party disappointed his hopes.
McLean, , p. Bruce Glasier wrote:. Keir Hardie was the greatest agitator of his day. He stood in many respects unprecedented as a working-class leader in our country. He was the first man from the midst of the working-class who completely understood them, completely sympathised with them, completely realised their plight, and completely championed them. He was the first working-man who fought his way to Parliament for them with no badge but that of Labour and Socialism on his shield.
He was the first working man who, having entered Parliament, never deserted them, never turned his back on a single principle, which he had proposed, never drifted away from his class in thought, in feeling or in faith.
Glasier, a, p. Various short biographical pieces appeared in the s from the ILP. The census record gives their address as Barhill Road. The census record for Old Cumnock shows that he was an employer. The household schedule shows that the couple had been married for 30 years, had four children and that three were living at the time of the census.
The enumerator has added coal mining in the column for industry or service then crossed it out. The entry in the statutory register for the district of Hillhead in Glasgow gives his usual residence as Lochnorris, Old Cumnock and the cause of death as pneumonia. His father is recorded as David Hardie and the informant was his brother George Hardie. The inventory provides the value of household furniture and other effects, shares in the Old Cumnock Co-operative Society, money held in his account at the Clydesdale Bank and in the London and South Western Bank, Fleet Street, London.
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