by Carolyn Jacob
‘The life of one Welsh miner is of greater commercial and moral value to the British nation than the whole Royal crowd put together.’
Keir Hardie June 1894
‘One day in June, 1894, in the Commons, an address of congratulations was moved on the birth of a son to the Duchess of York. Hardie moved an amendment to this address, crying out that over two hundred and fifty men and boys had been killed on the same day in a mining disaster, and claiming that this great tragedy needed the attention of the House of Commons far more than the birth of any baby. He had been a miner himself; he knew. The House rose at him like a pack of wild dogs. His voice was drowned in a din of insults and the drumming of feet on the floor. But he stood there, white-faced, blazing-eyed, his lips moving, though the words were swept away and he was dismissed for spoiling the joy of a Royal occasion’.
R. Clynes, Memoirs, 1937
Attacking the Royal Family was hugely unpopular but Hardie was grief-stricken for colliers’ families and bitter that others did not seem to even care. He later criticised the visit by the Russian Czar because Russia had recently treated trade unionists savagely, shooting demonstrators. In reply Keir Hardie and two others were removed from the list of Members invited to Court functions. In the Merthyr Express Keir Hardie seemed amused not to be invited to the Royal Garden Party, an invitation he would not have accepted, as he could not return the compliment by inviting the Court to tea in his small terraced house in Lanarkshire.
‘I thought the days of my pioneering were over but of late I have felt, with increasing intensity, the injustice inflicted on women by our present laws’.
Keir Hardie, speech at the Labour Party Conference, 1907
‘That there is difference of opinion concerning the tactics of the militant Suffragettes goes without saying, but surely there call be no two opinions concerning the horrible brutality of these proceedings? Women, worn and weak by hunger, are seized upon, held down by brute force, gagged, a tube inserted down their throats and food poured or pumped into the stomach’.
Keir Hardie, letter to Votes for Women, 1 October, 1909
The Pankhursts converted Hardie to the cause of women’s suffrage, although not all of his fellow socialists shared this commitment. In 1907 when Miss Arscott of Merthyr Tydfil, daughter of the Brecon Road grocer, was imprisoned in London for taking part in a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament Keir Hardie visited her in prison to offer his support and encouragement. He had many female supporters in Merthyr Tydfil, including the daughter of the Liberal MP, D.A. Thomas.
‘Keir Hardie has been the greatest human being of our time. Asked to write a motto, he would choose Votes for Women and Socialism for All.’
The Women’s Dreadnought, 2 October, 1915
‘His extraordinary sympathy with the women’s movement, his complete understanding of what it stands for, were what first made me understand the finest side of his character. In the days when Labour men neglected and slighted the women’s cause or ridiculed it, Hardie never once failed us, never once faltered in his work for us. We women can never forget what we owe him’.
Isabella Ford, a member of the NUWSS
‘Politics is but a kind of football game between the rich Tories and the rich Liberals, and you working men are the ball which they kick vigorously and with grim delight between their goalposts’.
Keir Hardie, The Labour Leader
Keir Hardie devoted his life to the working class and, contrary to the lies of the Conservative Party, he accepted no money for himself. Hard work wore him out, in some photographs he looked like Old Father Time but he was only 59 when he died.
‘The moving impulse of Keir Hardie’s work was a profound belief in the common people. His socialism was a great human conception of the equal right of all men and women to the wealth of the world and to the enjoyment of the fullness of life. He had a touching sympathy for the helpless. I have seen his eyes fill with tears at the news of the death of a devoted dog. He carried to his end an old silver watch he had worn in the mine, which bore the marks of the teeth of a favourite pit pony, made by the futile attempt on its part to eat it’.
Philip Snowden
Keir Hardie could not understand how working-class men could fight each other for a ‘Capitalist Cause’. He was a firm opponent of all wars.
‘I knew that Keir Hardie had been failing in health since the early days of the war. The great slaughter, the rending of the bonds of international fraternity, on which he had built his hopes, had broken him’.
Sylvia Pankhurst
‘The long-threatened European war is now upon us. You have never been consulted about this war. The workers of all countries must strain every nerve to prevent their Governments from committing them to war. Hold vast demonstrations against war, in London and in every industrial centre. Down with the rule of brute force! Down with war! Up with the peaceful rule of the people’.
Keir Hardie at the Merthyr Olympia Skating Rink, 30 October 1914
Keir Hardie disagreed with the Labour Party over the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, as a pacifist, he tried to organize a national strike against Britain’s participation in the war and was saddened that the recruiting in Merthyr showed patriotic zeal. He was concerned about the threat to civil liberties and to the living standards of the working class. Although seriously ill, Hardie took part in several anti-war demonstrations and some of his former supporters denounced him as a traitor.
In December, 1914, Hardie had a stroke and he returned to the House of Commons in 1915 before he had made a full-recovery. Numerous meetings in various parts of the country and staying in people’s homes took their toll. His London home, was an attic in Nevill Court and he does not appear to have taken much care of himself. Politics concerned him more than personal comfort. Once when his doctor told him to rest, he went to Belgium to meet other social democratic leaders but was arrested as he was mistaken for an anarchist!
‘Hardie died of a broken heart. He had always been a pacifist; when British Labour refused to inaugurate a great strike on behalf of peace, Hardie became a broken man’.
R. Clynes, Memoirs
‘What could Hardie do but die?’
George Bernard Shaw
