Background
Keir Hardie was born on August 15, 1856, at Legbrannock, Lanarkshire, United Kingdom, the illegitimate son of Mary Keir, domestic, and William Aitken, miner. He took the name of his stepfather, David Hardie, a ship's carpenter.
(Excerpt from John Bull and His Unemployed: A Plain Statem...)
Excerpt from John Bull and His Unemployed: A Plain Statement on the Law of England as It Affects the Unemployed Before departing from the provision made. In the Poor Law for the relief of the able-bodied, I may call attention to an almost forgotten proposition relating to emigration. What it is will be best seen by the following question and answer, which Will be found in Hansard for March 2nd,1905. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0266695671/?tag=2022091-20
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1376271303/?tag=2022091-20
Keir Hardie was born on August 15, 1856, at Legbrannock, Lanarkshire, United Kingdom, the illegitimate son of Mary Keir, domestic, and William Aitken, miner. He took the name of his stepfather, David Hardie, a ship's carpenter.
Self-educated, he especially enjoyed what he read of Robert Burns, Thomas Carlyle, and Henry George.
He worked as a messenger boy when he was 8; from 1867 to 1879 he worked in or around the coal mines. After local union service he became secretary to the Scottish Miners' Federation in 1886. Hardie clashed with old-line "Lib-Lab" members of Parliament, whom he thought overly conservative about state intervention on the miners' behalf. He lost his own seat in 1895 but pressed ILP candidates to challenge Liberals at by-elections.
Returning to Parliament from Merthyr Tydfil in 1900, he denounced the Boer War constantly. Despite his feud with Liberals, Hardie approved the negotiation which reduced Liberal-Labour rivalry and produced 29 Labour members in 1906, who chose Hardie to lead them in Parliament.
When war came, it crushed his spirit. He was howled down by his own constituents before he died of pneumonia on Sept. 26, 1915.
(Excerpt from John Bull and His Unemployed: A Plain Statem...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
A convinced socialist at 21, he was converted to Christianity at 23, to the astonishment of his firmly atheistic mother.
Despite his early support of the Liberal Party, Hardie became disillusioned by William Ewart Gladstone's economic policies and began to feel that the Liberals would not advocate the interests of the working classes. Hardie concluded that the Liberal Party wanted the worker's votes without in return the radical reform he believed to be crucial — he stood for Parliament.
In 1893, Hardie and others formed the Independent Labour Party.
Hardie's agitation for an 8-hour day brought cooperation from R. B. Cunninghame-Graham, a member of Parliament and a cofounder of the Scottish Labour party in 1888. Hardie's election to Parliament for South West Ham in 1892 as an Independent Labour candidate won attention; publicity increased with his appearance at Westminster in a cloth cap, his maiden speech on the misery of the unemployed, and his dissent from congratulations on the birth (1894) of the future Edward VIII. Hardie presided at the Bradford conference which inaugurated the Independent Labour party (ILP), pledged to socialism and intended as a weapon against unconverted Gladstonian Liberals.
In 1907 Hardie toured the world, expressing his sympathy with Egyptian independence, Indian home rule, and fairer treatment of native Africans in South Africa.
He was often a difficult colleague within the Labour party before the war. He detested militarism and preached a general strike among workers internationally to prevent war.
He never forsook his soft hat for a bowler. Bearded, pipesmoking, with a mournful Celtic visage, his single-minded devotion to the workers' cause made him seem fanatical to some contemporaries but enhanced his reputation with later generations of the Labour party.
Quotes from others about the person
Biographer Kenneth O. Morgan has sketched Hardie's personality:
I found him a man who was not only an idealistic crusader, but a pragmatist, anxious to work with radical Liberals whose ideology he largely shared, subtle in building up the Labour alliance with the trade unions and the other socialist bodies, and supremely flexible in his political philosophy, a very generalised socialism based on a secularised Christianity rather than Marxism.
He married Lillias Balfour Wilson. He had 4 children.