‘What could Hardie do but die?’
Keir Hardie died on the 26th September 1915, worn out by hard work at only 59 years whilst he was the member of Parliament for Aberdare and Merthyr Tydfil. In his day Keir Hardie was both the best loved and the best hated man in Great Britain. He was the ‘cloth-cap M.P’, the man who refused to go into mourning for Queen Victoria, the ‘cowardly pacifist,’ the ‘member for the unemployed’, the first Independent Labour member in the House of Commons and the founder of the Labour Party.
James Keir Hardie, the illegitimate son of Mary Keir of Lanarkshire, Scotland, was born on 15th August, 1856. One story says he was born in the turnip field where his mother was working at the time. Mary later married David Hardie, who was often out of work and had a drink problem. His family was extremely poor and at the age of seven or eight Hardie became a baker’s delivery boy. He had to work for twelve and a half hours a day and became the only wage-earner in the family. In 1866 his employer sacked him and also fined him a week’s wages for being late for work. He had sat up all night with his dying brother and pregnant mother. From that time he was determined to fight against injustice.
At the age of eleven, Hardie became a coal miner. He had little or no schooling, but he educated himself. Many lies were told about Keir Hardie but his enemies and friends both agreed he rose from extreme poverty to become the Father of the Labour Party and one of the most important figures of the British labour movement. His life is proof that faith, courage and belief can ‘move mountains’.
Keir Hardie was the first advocate of Socialism in the House of Commons and the first leader of an independent Labour group in that assembly. He wanted to eradicate poverty from the lives of the people and to make it possible for all men, women and children to have lives of worth and dignity. He campaigned for all to have good houses, good education and for such extreme and radical issues as old age pensions, votes for women, the nationalism of basic industries and the abolition of the House of Lords.
As a pacifist Keir Hardie disagreed with the Labour Party over the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. He tried to organize a national strike against Britain’s participation in the war and was saddened recruiting in Merthyr showed patriotic zeal. He was concerned about the threat to civil liberties and to the living standards of the working class. Although seriously ill, Hardie took part in several anti-war demonstrations and some of his former supporters denounced him as a traitor.
In December, 1914, Hardie had a stroke but returned to the House of Commons in 1915 before he had made a full recovery. Numerous meetings in various parts of the country and staying in people’s homes took their toll. His London home was an attic in Nevill Court and he does not appear to have taken much care of himself. Politics concerned him more than personal comfort. Once when his doctor told him to rest, he went to Belgium to meet other social democratic leaders but was arrested as he was mistaken for an anarchist! Many thought Keir Hardie died of a broken heart. He had always been a pacifist and when the British Labour Party refused to support a great strike on behalf of peace, Hardie became a broken man.
The playwright George Bernard Shaw summed it up in the words:- ‘What could Hardie do but die?’
