Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Keir Hardie set a standard we should aspire to
Keir Hardie showed that left-wing politicians are not there to mediate struggles with the bosses in the hope of moderate improvements, but to fight for, and from inside, the working class, writes BETH WINTER MP
Keir Hardie (1856-1915)

“GIVEN a strong lead, the Welsh people will place themselves in the van of the socialist movement. Kindly disposed by nature, genial in their relationships one to the other, living justice, and hating oppression, they can easily be roused up to battle.”

Today marks the anniversary of Keir Hardie’s birth which always presents an opportunity to consider his role in the development of socialist politics and working-class representation and consider any lessons that are still relevant today.

The words above were his comments, in his paper the Labour Leader, following his 10-day tour of the South Wales coalfield during the great coal strike of 1898, 125 years ago this summer.

The strike was a fight over the sliding scale payment system which caused significant hardship, and the miners demanded it be ended.

The coal strike of 1898 was a seminal moment for the industrial and political organisation of the working class in South Wales and, ultimately, for Britain as a whole. It resulted in a reappraisal and reorganisation of the miners’ trade unions. And it saw the rise of Hardie’s Independent Labour Party in South Wales, as it organised among the striking miners, at the expense of the Liberal Party.

It demonstrated that socialists who committed themselves to organising in support of a mass working-class pay campaign could win themselves the trust which could carry them through into political power.

The strike took place two years before Hardie’s election to Parliament for Merthyr Boroughs and his regular visits to the coalfield built his lasting relationship that would be rewarded in the 1900 election.

The conditions in which that leap forward for the movement took place, during the six months long all-out strike by nearly 100,000 miners, were real hardship for those miners and their family members.

The Welsh miners received donations — including from miners’ union organisations in England and Scotland — to fund strike pay, whilst a separate fund supported soup kitchens, including for miners’ children.

Hardie told readers of the Labour Leader that “the soup kitchens in some districts are in danger of being closed for lack of funds. I renew my appeal of two weeks ago to readers of The Labour Leader to exert themselves in this holy war.”

But he didn’t simply comment in his paper. Directly into that strike, Hardie arrived in July 1898, when he undertook a 10-day tour of local mining communities, to demonstrate his support for the miners — and to agitate discussion around the issues of future industrial and political organisation.

His tour was a roll-call of the coalfield, visiting Pentre, Porth and Ferndale, Pontypridd, Aberdare and Mountain Ash, Merthyr, Troedyrhiwand Treharris, and Abertillery — reportedly addressing as many as 15 mass meetings. There were reports of 1,000 at the Aberdare meeting and 5,000 at Troedyrhiw.

But alongside the material help, Hardie urged the miners to organise themselves better. They went into the strike in seven or eight localised mining unions. At Merthyr, he said, “the weakness of the labour movement was division.” At Porth, he said, “the sooner they were nationally united the better for them all.”

Writing in the Labour Leader in September, when the strike was lost, he urged the formation of a South Wales-wide miners’ union federation which should then affiliate to the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. The first step on this path was the establishment of a South Wales Miners’ Association at a meeting in Cardiff, on October 24 that year.

At the mass meetings and in his articles, he condemned the Liberal Party for failing to fight for the miners, including Rhondda’s Liberal MP William Abraham (known as Mabon), for being praised in the London press as “moderate.”

Commenting, Hardie said: “Have the actions of the employers been ‘moderate’? While the gaunt spectres of starvation, death and ruin stand at the door of every miner’s hovel, how dare their representative be what is termed moderate.”  

His attack on the failure of Liberal MPs to stand up for the miners was down to their own financial interests, when he said: “Another reason why Welsh members should be so milk and watery, was that if Parliament were to legislate in the interests of the working classes it would be at the expense of the men who were in Parliament.”

And just two years before his election to Parliament, he said the workers of Merthyr should ensure one of their MPs stood up for the working class.

“At present, the Merthyr boroughs sent two members to Parliament... One of these members should be selected from the working classes to represent the working classes, and that was what the Labour Party would endeavour to help them to do at the next election.”

The ILP had sent a full-time organiser into South Wales as the dispute started and reported in the party paper that, “At the beginning of the strike there were but five or six branches, now there are 31, some of them with a membership of 300.”

They met at a conference in Pontypridd in September to cement their organisation and build the movement to give political representation to the unions.

In the months and years that followed his election, Labour candidates would begin to secure places on local urban district councils, ultimately cementing Labour’s dominance in Welsh politics.

Today we face a different economic situation, but there are still valuable lessons from Hardie. Coal mining has largely gone but the cost-of-living crisis is real, enforced for those in the public sector by a Conservative government that has enforced a long-term decline in the value of public-sector pay. And as many resorted to soup kitchens 125 years ago, today many have to use foodbanks.

So what they need today, as the people of Wales did in 1898, is — yes, practical support — donations, fundraising, community organising, but more than anything they need fighting trade unions and socialists who will organise for them, and, where elected, speak up for them.

Just as then, the role of Labour MPs is not to stand aside as Westminster demands, and act in moderation while people suffer. The role of Labour MPs today is to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those seeking a better standard of living when others withhold it, to win their trust — and their votes — and deliver the transformation of our society that people so urgently need.

As Hardie wrote in September that year: “Socialism offers the only hope for the Welsh miners, and whilst he is organising trade unions for protection against the existing industrial system, he should at the same time be organising his political power for the overthrow of the system which makes trade unions necessary.”

Beth Winter is Labour MP for Cynon Valley. Twitter —
@BethWinterMP.

 
The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
STANDING FIRM: Beth Winter (right) and Labour MP Kim Johnson
Features / 4 November 2024
4 November 2024
In a heartfelt resignation statement, the former Cynon Valley MP explains why, as a socialist, she cannot remain part of the Labour Party
Members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) on
Features / 9 October 2023
9 October 2023
We need to be clear that any Labour government will bring public-sector pay back to pre-austerity levels and in line with inflation, writes BETH WINTER MP
PROGRESSIVE MENU: First Minister Mark Drakeford during a vis
WELSH LABOUR CONFERENCE 2023 / 10 March 2023
10 March 2023
BETH WINTER MP on the priorities for Welsh Labour conference this weekend
Features / 5 October 2022
5 October 2022
Cynon Valley MP BETH WINTER says working-class people have had enough – and resistance to the Conservatives is growing
Similar stories
IN FOR THE LONG HAUL: Leanne Wood takes part in a march calling for Welsh independence in the centre of Cardiff, Wales in October 2022
Features / 5 July 2025
5 July 2025

The historic heartland of anti-fascist resistance and mining militancy now faces a new battle — stopping Nigel Farage. ANDREW MURRAY meets ex-Labour MP Beth Winter and former Plaid leader Leanne Wood, the two socialists leading the resistance

Leaders of the Labour Representation Committee in 1906. From
Features / 4 March 2025
4 March 2025
The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT
Picketers decorate a Christmas tree outside Rossington Colli
Features / 23 December 2024
23 December 2024
With solidarity coming in from across Britain and the world, PETER LAZENBY speaks to the people who made Christmas 1984 a celebration of working-class resistance in Britain’s striking coalmining communities
The National Eisteddfod attracts up to 170,000 visitors ever
Features / 3 August 2024
3 August 2024
From cultural celebrations to political discussions, the paper’s Welsh supplement and fringe events showcase its commitment to Wales — offering perspectives on independence, workers’ rights and more, writes DAVID NICHOLSON