Keir Hardie (1856–1915): The Miner Who Founded the Labour Party

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Hardie became a Labour saint almost as soon as he died, and much of what is repeated about him comes from admiring biographies and party tradition. This card relies on the parliamentary record, election results and modern biographies, and reports the uncomfortable parts of his record alongside the heroic ones.

A child of the coalfield

established Hardie was born on 15 August 1856 at Newhouse in Lanarkshire. His mother, Mary Keir, was a domestic servant; his biological father, a miner named William Aitken, played no part in his life. His mother later married David Hardie, a ship's carpenter, whose name he took. The family was poor, and at seven Hardie was working as a message boy for the Anchor Line in Glasgow. He later recalled losing a job for being late twice, and the story of a family left without his wages became a part of his politics.

established At ten he went down the pit as a trapper, sitting alone in the dark for ten hours a day opening and closing the wooden doors that controlled ventilation. He later worked as a hewer at the coal face. He had no formal schooling; his parents taught him to read in the evenings, and he taught himself shorthand. Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus was one of the books that shaped him.

established Religion and temperance gave him a platform. He was a lay preacher in the Evangelical Union Church in Hamilton and an active temperance campaigner, and both trained him as a public speaker.

What Hardie read

Formative books. established The historian Jonathan Rose, in The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2001), following Kenneth O. Morgan, names Burns, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and Ruskin's Unto This Last as the formative influences on Hardie. In his early years he read almost nothing specifically on economics or politics, and nothing by Marx or other socialists. Like Ramsay MacDonald, the miners' leader Robert Smillie and many other working men, he used John Cassell's Popular Educator, a cheap self-study course issued in penny parts in the 1850s, to teach himself.

Carlyle. established Hardie remembered finding Sartor Resartus at about sixteen or seventeen as a "real turning point" in his life. He read it three times before he understood it, and said he "felt I was in the presence of some great power" (as quoted by Rose). Later he was more aware of Carlyle's flaws, but he still drew a pacifist lesson from Carlyle's fable of French and English soldiers who kill one another over a trivial dispute. Rose argues that Carlyle's hero-worship, which repelled many readers, gave Hardie a model of the working man as hero. shared

Other favourites. established One of Hardie's favourite books was W. M. Thayer's From Log Cabin to White House (1881), a popular life of the American president James Garfield, which had gone through forty British editions by 1893. The singer Harry Lauder, another former Lanarkshire miner, loved it too.

A wider pattern. established Hardie was typical of the first Labour MPs. When the Review of Reviews asked them in 1906 which authors had most influenced them, the 45 who replied named Ruskin 17 times, Dickens 16, the Bible 14, Carlyle 13 and Henry George 12, with Walter Scott on 11 and Burns on 8. Rose argues that the early Labour Party had no single doctrine of its own and drew instead on the whole canon of classic literature. shared Not every Labour man admired the results: Emanuel Shinwell, himself an autodidact, later faulted Hardie's "somewhat prosy, economic jargon" (as quoted by Rose).

Organiser and journalist

established By 1879 Hardie was speaking for the Lanarkshire miners, and the owners responded by blacklisting him and his brothers from local pits. He led strikes in Lanarkshire in 1880 and Ayrshire in 1881. The Ayrshire strike failed, though wages later rose. Needing a living, he turned to journalism, writing for the Cumnock News, founding The Miner in 1887 and editing the Labour Leader from 1888 to 1904. From 1886 he was organising secretary of the Ayrshire Miners' Union at £75 a year.

From Liberal to Labour

established Hardie began as a Liberal and a follower of the land reformer Henry George. Experience convinced him that the Liberals would never represent working men properly. In 1888 he stood as an independent Labour candidate in the Mid Lanark by-election and finished last, but in August that year he helped found the Scottish Labour Party and became its first secretary.

established In 1892 he won West Ham South, in east London, by 5,268 votes to 4,036. He arrived at Westminster not in the frock coat and silk hat expected of members but in a tweed suit, a red tie and a deerstalker, and the newspapers made a great deal of it.

shared Popular memory has turned the deerstalker into a cloth cap, and the cloth cap became a symbol of Hardie and of the Labour movement. The contemporary record supports the deerstalker. The cap is a later image, though no less powerful for that.

established In 1893 Hardie helped found the Independent Labour Party at Bradford and chaired it from 1894 to 1900. In 1894, after 290 miners died in the Albion Colliery disaster in Wales, he attacked the House for sending congratulations on a royal birth while ignoring the dead. The speech was widely condemned and is often blamed for the loss of his seat in 1895.

Founding the Labour Party

established In 1900 Hardie was elected for Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, which he held for the rest of his life, and helped found the Labour Representation Committee, a federation of trade unions and socialist societies that aimed to put working men in Parliament. A secret pact negotiated in 1903 by Ramsay MacDonald and the Liberal chief whip Herbert Gladstone kept Liberals from opposing Labour in thirty seats. In the 1906 election 29 LRC candidates were elected, the committee renamed itself the Labour Party, and Hardie became its first parliamentary leader. He was not a natural manager and stepped down in 1908, succeeded by Arthur Henderson.

Ahead of his time

established Hardie was one of the strongest supporters of women's suffrage in Parliament. At the party's 1907 Belfast conference he threatened to resign over a resolution on votes for women, and the dispute produced a "conscience clause" allowing MPs to vote by conviction. He worked closely with Sylvia Pankhurst, with whom he had a close personal relationship. His secretary, Margaret Travers Symons, became the first woman to speak in the Commons chamber in 1908.

established He supported self-government for India, which he visited in 1907, and opposed segregation in South Africa. In 1914 he opposed the First World War, tried to organise an international general strike against it and supported conscientious objectors, positions that made him deeply unpopular. Broken in health, he died of pneumonia in Glasgow on 26 September 1915, aged 59.

The harder parts of the record

established Hardie's views were not all progressive by today's standards. In evidence to a parliamentary committee on immigration in 1899 he described Lithuanian miners brought into Lanarkshire in prejudiced terms and supported a total ban on immigration, reflecting union fears that employers used migrant labour to undercut wages. On his 1908 visit to South Africa he said socialists did not claim all races were equal, though he later supported votes for black South Africans. An honest card shows both the pioneer and the man of his time.

Legacy

established The historian Kenneth O. Morgan called Hardie "Labour's greatest pioneer and its greatest hero", and a 2008 straw poll of Labour delegates voted him the party's greatest hero. Streets, estates and buildings across Scotland, Wales and London carry his name. It is often said that Sir Keir Starmer was named after him; Starmer said in 2015 that he did not know whether that was true.

• Hardie never went to school; his parents taught him to read at home.
• He was a trapper in the pits at ten, sitting alone in the dark for ten hours a day.
• He finished last in his first election, in 1888.
• He wore a deerstalker, not a cloth cap, when he took his seat in 1892.
• His Welsh seat, Merthyr Tydfil, kept him in Parliament for fifteen years.
• His secretary was the first woman to speak in the House of Commons chamber.
• He had to read Carlyle's Sartor Resartus three times before he understood it.
• One of his favourite books was a popular American life of President James Garfield, From Log Cabin to White House.

• Myth: Hardie wore a cloth cap to Parliament in 1892. Contemporary reports describe a tweed suit, a red tie and a deerstalker. The cloth cap became a symbol of him, and of Labour, later.
• Myth: Hardie founded the Labour Party alone. He was its central founder, but it grew from the Labour Representation Committee, a federation of trade unions and socialist societies, which became the Labour Party in 1906.
• Disputed: that Sir Keir Starmer was named after Hardie. It is often said, but Starmer said in 2015 that he did not know whether it was true.
• Myth: Hardie's socialism came from Marx. His formative reading was Burns, Carlyle and Ruskin, and in his early years he read almost nothing by Marx or other socialists.
• Myth: Hardie was ahead of his time on everything. He backed women's suffrage and Indian self-rule, but in 1899 he described Lithuanian miners in prejudiced terms and supported a total ban on immigration, and in 1908 he said socialists did not claim all races were equal.