Keir Hardie (1856 - 1915), one of the founding fathers of Britain's Labour party, was the illegitimate son of a Scottish housemaid and came of age desperately poor in a harsh, harsh world. He started working at the age of seven, and, by the age of ten, was working 10-hour shifts as a "trapper" in the mines, opening and closing a door to circulate air for miners. But at night his mother and stepfather taught him to read and write, and, year by year, he grew. At first, he began to represent the other miners, then in his early 20s, he became a union organizer and a journalist. Elected to a seat in Parliament in 1892 when he was 36, he spent the remainder of his life building the Labour party and advocating for policies that could ameliorate the lives of workers--a graduated income tax, free schooling, pensions, the abolition of the House of Lords, home rule for India and women's right to vote. He attended the International Socialist Congresses and traveled the world over to speak for workers.
As Europe ramped up to World War I, he was one of the few voices arguing, hopelessly, for peace. The Socialist movement was splintering and hope for change was slipping away. Keir Hardie had believed in working within the system, but the system had not changed. Other socialists believed that change would only come from an international uprising of workers, that the workers would rise up and say, "No!" to war, but that didn't happen either. It was a time when hearts were breaking.
Here's Barbara Tuchman's account of a moving episode that occurred in April, 1914, months before an assassination in Sarajevo triggered World War I and the year before Hardie's death. "In England, Keir Hardie in the midst of a speech to a conference of the ILP in April turned suddenly to face rows of children from Socialist Sunday Schools, seated behind the platform. Speaking directly to them, he pictured the loveliness of the world of nature and of the world of man as it could become. He spoke of how unnecessary were war and poverty and how he had tried to pass on to them a better world and how, although he and his associates had failed, they, the children, could yet succeed. "If these were my last words, lads and lassies, I would say them to you: Live for that better day."
Well remembered today in the British Labor party?
Posted by: neverted | February 17, 2015 at 07:16 AM