by Carolyn Jacob
‘The condition of the miners is desperate. Over 100,000 are starving, or on the verge of it; a whole province lies waste, so far as productive labour and the means of life are concerned.’
Keir Hardie came to South Wales early in his career and attended a meeting of Aberdare miners in 1887. In the winter of 1896 he first visited the town of Merthyr Tydfil. Later he remembered that the evening was bitterly cold. Although the meeting was not large or enthusiastic, he knew that these were very early days. In 1898 Keir Hardie responded to the request to help the Welsh miners during the Great Welsh Coal Strike and he walked around the Valleys giving public talks and speaking to the men. He referred to this time as his ‘best ever holiday’. During the Cambrian Collieries dispute, Keir Hardie used parliament to denounce army and police thuggery. He embarrassed the Home Secretary, Churchill, by giving all the details about government-sponsored violence against miners and their families.
After soldiers shot strikers at Llanelli during the Railway Strike in 1911, he wrote a pamphlet, Killing No Murder, to expose the government even more. Keir Hardie was equally prepared to align himself with any worker in struggle.
He campaigned passionately against poverty and was proud to be called the ‘member for the unemployed’, campaigning for the minimum wage and an end to child poverty. He pioneered social welfare, advocating a national health service financed from taxation.
‘His love of justice is quite genuine and you will find that he is respected by men who are attached to that attribute’.
Hiliare Belloc, letter to Wilfred Blunt, 18th April, 1911
‘I have said, both in writing and from the platform many times, that the impetus which drove me first into the Labour movement, and the inspiration which has carried me on in it, has been derived more from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth than from all other sources combined .
James Keir Hardie explaining the influence of Christianity on his beliefs, 1910.
In his address in Cyfarthfa Park in July 1909, he spoke on the text ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ and concluded that, ‘Christ was not only thinking of bread, but of all the requirements of a healthy, human life. There were thousands of homes within the Merthyr constituency, which he had the honour to represent, where the bread-winner toiled from morning till night, and yet poverty was always hunting the home. He believed that there would never be true Christianity until they had Socialism. Was it Christianity for the rich to oppress the poor; for the Government to spend millions in building up war machines for the destruction of human life and grudge hundreds for the relief of poverty? Was it Christian for the Liberal Prime Minister to refuse to see a deputation of women asking for the vote, and then to have a hundred sent to prison because of that refusal? The present system was anti- Christian and, in many respects, anti-human as well’.
Keir Hardie enthusiastically congratulated the new Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council for purchasing Cyfarthfa Castle and Park. It was wonderful that working people now owned the home of a wealthy ironmaster, ‘This is all yours now’ .
‘When he was the only member of the Labour Party in the House of Commons, he did not mind that. To him it had never mattered whether he stood alone or as one of ten thousand, so long as he knew his principles to be right. Whether it be in public or in private life, that which distinguished a man in the truest sense of the word was that he should have a mind of his own, and not simply be one driven thither and thither by every wind, and swayed by every gust that blew’.
Speech by Keir Hardie in Cyfarthfa Park, July 1909
To be continued…..