Happy Birthday to Republican and Socialist James Keir Hardie (15/8/1856 - 26/9/15)

 

Happy Birthday to Scottish Republican. Trade Unionist and Socialist James Keir Hardie who was born illegitimate today on 15 August 1856, near Newhouse in Lanarkshire, the son of Mary Keir, a domestic servant, and William Aitken, a miner who wanted nothing to do with him

Soon Mary Keir married David Hardie, a ship’s carpenter, and James Keir took his stepfather’s name and became James Keir Hardie. the  family had to move from place to place as his stepfather failed to find regular employment and their poverty forced young Hardie out to work at the age of eight – first as a message boy, then at a bakery, then heating rivets in a shipyard where the boy next to him fell off a scaffold and was killed. In desperation, his father returned to work at sea. His mother moved back to Lanarkshire and at the age of 10,

Although raised as an atheist, Hardie was converted to Christianity in 1897. A lay preacher for the Evangelical Union Church, Hardie was also active in the Temperance Society. Hardie considered himself to be a Christian Socialist: "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." 

Hardie remained friends with atheists such as Eleanor Marx and Frederich Engels, the dominant influence on his political ideas were his religious beliefs but Keir, was to become a giant in the socialist movement, rising from coalminer to become the first Labour Party Leader, and to become one of the greatest evangelists for the ideas of socialism.
He would derive from his mother  many of his good qualities. She was a woman of marked individuality and strength of character, nothing could daunt her, or dampen her convictions. At the age of ten, he went to work in a local mine,where he worked as a “trapper”, operating the ventilation doors deep underground. “I am of the unfortunate class who never knew what it was to be a child,” Hardie wrote. “For several years as a child I rarely saw daylight during the winter months. Down the pit by six in the morning and not leaving it again until half past five meant not seeing the sun.”

Through  self-education he would learn the lessons of solidarity and comradeship. This would help him as he used his voice to speak of a world where woman and man were born equal. Denouncing the rich, the politicians and the establishment, all exploiters, and would see him calling for the destruction of the capitalist system. He was one of the greatest agitators of his day. 

He  was to help found the Independent Labour Party in 1893, and was one of the first two Labour M.P's elected to the UK Parliament. He was to mark himself out as a radical both by his dress- he wore a tweed suit and cloth cap, whilst most other members of Parliament wore more formal dress- and the subjects that he advocated - the nationalisation of the coalmines, for the unemployed, womens rights, republicanism and free education. Stuff that still echoes strongly today.

His first constituency was in West Ham, London (1892) and later Merthyr Tydfil here in Wales.
In 1894 251 miners were killed after an explosion at a mine in Pontypridd and after his request for a message of condolence to be sent to the families of the bereaved was refused by parliament and a message of congratulation to Buckingham Palace on the birth of the future Edward VIII agreed, Hardie delivered a vitriolic attack on the monarchy, which resulted in him losing his seat at the next election in 1895.

In 1886, Hardie was elected secretary for the newly formed Ayreshire Miners’ Union, and largely because of his fellow miners’ confidence in him, he advanced quickly through the ranks to become secretary of the Scottish Miners’ Association within the year. In 1887, Hardie began publishing his own newspaper,The Miner  in which he attempted to educate the Scottish working classes, particularly his fellow miners, from a decidedly socialist perspective. 

It is important to note that Hardie’s early political career as a union leader spanned a time when British labor laws hardly existed. Conditions in the Scottish coal mines were miserable and dangerous, while relations between workers and management were often violent and sometimes deadly. Hardie’s local struggles for the rights of coal miners in Lanarkshire emphasized the need for a larger, united front working in opposition to the political and economic status quo—an empowered political party representing the needs of the working classes, on a national level, against the interests of their politically-entrenched capitalist employers.

 The education Hardie gained from these early struggles against the large iron corporations convinced the young labor leader of the importance of working class unity. With this slowly but steadily growing awareness, Hardie would expand his political consciousness beyond the concerns of the local Lanarkshire miners to include all British working classes and eventually all workers everywhere, regardless of occupation or nationality.

Despite losing every seat in the 1895 election, the Independent Labour Party was growing in popularity. During this period Hardie travelled across the world to learn from other labour movements, and visited the South Wales coalfields on numerous occasions, especially during the 1898 strike. As a result he was invited to stand in the Merthyr Tydfil constituency and won the seat on 10 October 1898. With only two Members of Parliament, it was not easy for the Independent Labour Party in Westminster, but success came in the January 1906 elections as a result of an entente with the Liberals. The Independent Labour Party won 29 seats and Keir Hardie kept his seat in Merthyr Tydfil.

Hardie passionately believed in, publicly defending calls for general strikes, syndicalism and militancy and  was also one of the first to call for equality between the races in South Africa, and  because he was a lifelong committed pacifist and humanist, this led him to  believe that the interests of the working classes were inseperable from peace, and when the First Wold War broke out in 1914, he was  to oppose it, and was to address anti-war demonstrations  up and down  the country and to support conscientious objectors.

For  years he tirelessly addressed meeting after meeting, nearly every day and night, travelling long distances to be known for his powerful oratory, often negating meals and continuing to spread ideas with comrades long into the night. Never to forget his working class roots, these people who he completely understood, he realised their plight, never deserting them, with his untarnished devotion and faith in their cause.
Sadly his dreams of peace were not to be, and after a series of strokes he died in Glasgow on the 26th September, 1915 at the tragically young age of 59. He is buried in Cunnock, Ayrshire.

A magnificent bronze bust of James Keir Hardie,now  stands on a pink granite plinth outside Cumnock Town Hall.  Since James Keir Hardie lived for the majority of his life in Cumnock, The National Keir Hardie Memorial Committee commissioned the sculptor Benno Schotz RSA, to create the bronze bust.  The memorial bust was presented by William Stewart and appropriately accepted by provost Nan Hardie Hughes, Keir Hardie's daughter, in August 1939, on the eve of World War 2.
Today I remember him,because 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. After entering Parliament he  never deserted them, never turned his back on a single principle, and retained his unbroken affection and respect for the working class, his untarnished loyalty to them, his championship of them, his enduring faith in their cause.

We owe an awful lot to his example and the legacy which he left. Today as the country faces new crises. Hardie's vision of a powerful labour movement. fighting for change is as vital as ever. Hardie's vision couldn't be further away from his namesake  Keir Starmer. Hardie pushed for socialism, democracy and fair rents, Starmer removes socialists, boycotts picket-lines and scrapped rent control pledges.

Successors have abandoned the cause, but Hardies  message remains clear.  "Socialism will abolish the landlord class, the capitalist class, and the working-class. That is revolution; that the working class by its action will one day abolish class distinctions." Let Socialists today continue Keir Hardie's struggle for a better and more equal world.