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Second Fiddle Keir

No, not Sir Keir Starmer . . .  

Wales abounds in myths, and none are so pervasive as those related to the Labour party, of which Keir Hardie is just one instance. Hardie was elected as MP for Merthyr Boroughs in 1900 (after trying his luck at being elected elsewhere) But a few important points about the constituency at this time need to need to be borne in mind.   

Firstly, Merthyr Boroughs was, by virtue of the various Reform Acts a very large constituency in terms of its electorate, and by the early 1870s, it had a much higher proportion of inhabitants entitled to vote than neighbouring parliamentary seats. And this led to the constituency returning two members to Parliament, a notion that may seem strange to the modern ear.

Secondly, the constituency had a very long radical tradition dating back at least as far as  the 1831 uprising and which which persisted into the twentieth century. This radical tradition appears to have worked with, rather than against the Liberals, right up to 1922. It should be noted that the Liberal and radical tradition was exemplified as much by the Liberal MP David Alfred (D.A.) Thomas, as by Labour’s Keir Hardie. Indeed, judging by electoral success, Thomas and the Liberal party had the edge over Hardie, who only ever managed to come in at second place in the two-seat borough constituency.

Hardie was an unlikely representative for a constituency like Merthyr. True, it had its radical tradition, but Hardie was a Scotsman and Merthyr was a Welsh constituency that valued its Welshness. Its leading political figure since 1888 was D.A. Thomas, a coal owner but a man with radical and Welsh politics. Hardie was also no political virgin when he stood for Merthyr, having been MP for West Ham South between 1892 and 1895. Moreover, in the 1900 election, Merthyr Boroughs was not his first choice. This again may seem strange to modern readers but in 1900 general elections were not held on the same day throughout the country. They were staggered with different areas voting on different days, and Hardie tried his hand in Preston before defeat to the Conservatives forced him to look elsewhere. Whatever Merthyr may have come to mean for him, it was clearly not his first love.

The 1900 election was a “Khaki election”, fought against the background of the Boer War and jingoism, with an overwhelming majority for the Conservative government over the Liberal opposition.  It resulted in the election of just two Labour MPs, Hardie and one another, Richard Bell of Derby. And Hardie’s election owed more to one of the Liberal incumbents in Merthyr than to the forward march of labour.

The reasons for this lie in the relationship of D.A. Thomas with his fellow Liberal, Pritchard Morgan. Both men were elected in by-elections in 1888. Pritchard Morgan had originally put himself forward as a non-Liberal candidate, but events conspired to lead the Liberals to take Morgan on board. However, his relationship with D.A. Thomas was always prickly. The immediate consequence of the Liberal action in inviting Morgan to join the party was for Thomas, a man of means, to set up his own network of supporters and activists, so that eventually the party and the persona of D.A. Thomas were indistinguishable. Pritchard Morgan tried to set up a Liberal and Labour association (along the lines of the one William Abraham had established in the Rhondda) but the idea that Morgan was representative of an alliance between Liberals and Labour for mutual benefit was not taken seriously. The unions even considered putting up their own candidate in 1892 and this resulted in the two Liberals being re-elected in the 1892 general election (which saw the party return to government under Gladstone’s fourth ministry).

However, the two men had serious differences of outlook and policy. In contrast to Morgan’s attempt to tap into class-based politics, Thomas was a keen advocate for Welsh Home Rule and Disestablishment of the Church of England. And while Thomas, a coal owner with  interests focused on Wales, Morgan had extensive interests in the Far East, causing him to be labelled “The Member for China.” After the collapse of the Liberal government in 1895 Thomas refused to associate himself further with the Member for China and put forward a third (unofficial) Liberal candidate, Allen Upward, but Upward polled dismally in the general election of that year because many Liberals feared that a split vote would let in a Conservative.

Morgan had been abroad during much of 1898 (when there was a coal strike) and was absent for the whole of the 1899 session.[1] Morgan nevertheless dared to criticise Thomas’s conduct in Parliament, something that infuriated the latter. By the time of the 1900 election, both Liberal members were at odds on the main issue of the day, the South African war, with Thomas, like the majority of Liberals, being firmly opposed.

Pritchard Morgan was somewhat lethargic in his approach to the 1900 election, a combination of illness and a belief, until a week before polling, that he would be returned unopposed. Thomas by contrast had been working tirelessly and, at a meeting in Troedyrhiw on 27 September, told his audience that it was the ninth such meeting he had addressed that day.[2] The wildcard for the Member for China was the sudden appearance (after his failure in Preston) of Keir Hardie who, on his own admission, campaigned for no more than eleven hours. Only a few meetings were held in the constituency to support both Liberal candidates,[3] but Hardie and Thomas were able to appear on the same platform together, ostensibly as anti-war speakers. Hardie had a small team of enthusiastic supporters delivering leaflets and canvassing, but Kenneth Morgan argues that it was the private machine of D.A. Thomas that secured the seat for Hardie.[4]

      Merthyr Boroughs Election Result 1900[5]

D.A Thomas     (Liberal)     8,595

Keir Hardie       (Labour)    5,745

W. P. Morgan  (Liberal)     4,004

 

Analysis of the votes show that those who cast single votes – “plumpers” – voted thus: 

Thomas – 2,070

Morgan – 1,472

                                                                     Hardie   -     867

      The split votes were:

Hardie and Thomas –   4,437

Morgan and Thomas – 2,091

Hardie and Morgan –   441

 

 So, D.A Thomas headed the poll, with Hardie second, and Pritchard Morgan ejected from Parliament. Hardie was the least popular of the candidates, if judged in terms of “plumping,” but what pushed him into second place was the number of Thomas voters who opted to give a second vote to Labour, more than twice as many as the Thomas voters who gave a second vote to Pritchard Morgan. If anything, this lends weight to the view that it was the anti-war sentiment that caused the pro-war Morgan to lose his seat. Thousands of Liberal voters were obviously relaxed about voting for Labour, thus underlining the fact that the Labour movement was, in its origins, an outgrowth of Liberalism.

More than five years later, Hardie held on to his seat but was still well behind the leading Liberal.

Merthyr Boroughs Election Result 1906[6]

D.A. Thomas        (Liberal)    13,971

Keir Hardie          (Labour)    10,187

Henry Radcliffe   (Liberal)     7,776

After 1906 D.A. Thomas, turned down for office by new Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, became a little less enthusiastic about politics. His daughter later wrote of the reasons for his exclusion from office

 

[Campbell-Bannerman] told my father that he would not give my father office because his front bench must consist of Parliamentary debaters of the first rank, and there was, my father felt, some justice in this remark; at the same time, he did not believe it to be an entirely genuine excuse. The fact was that he had enemies and that at Westminster he had, largely through their offices but partly owing to his independence, gained the reputation of being a difficult man to work with. During his twenty-one years of parliamentary life he was never so much as made chairman of a committee.[7]

 

This led to him firstly abandoning Merthyr for a seat in Cardiff (which he briefly held after January 1910) and then his leaving politics altogether to focus on his business career as head of  the Cambrian Coal Combine.  This left room for the re-emergence of the Merthyr Liberal party as an organisational and ideological force independent of Thomas, and the expression of hostility towards Hardie. Part of the hostility may have been ideological but much of it was driven by Hardie’s own antagonistic attitude towards the Liberals. Towards the end of 1909 the Merthyr Express for example, contrasted Hardie’s critical and disdainful attitude towards the Liberals with other Labour MPs, such as William Abraham (Rhondda), William Brace (South Glamorgan) and Tom Richards (West Monmouthshire), who worked with the Liberal party. With a general election expected in January, “one hears, from even the most unexpected quarters, strong expressions of hope that there will be a second Liberal candidate for the constituency.”

 

There was a great deal of talk about a second Liberal candidate but the circumstances of the two elections in 1910 obliged the Liberals to put up only one candidate. The House of Lords had rejected the Liberal Government’s Budget with its extensive social welfare reforms promoted by Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd-George. The January election saw the new Liberal candidate Edgar Rees Jones, a lecturer, top the poll, with Hardie yet again in second place. The election produced a hung parliament, albeit one where the Liberals had a majority with support from Labour and the Irish nationalists. The political deadlock over the Budget continued however, and a second general election was called for December. Again, Jones and Hardie topped the poll, but they both had reduced majorities over the Unionist (or Conservative) candidate. The results of the second election were broadly similar to the first but Prime Minister H.H. Asquith had secured from the King in the event of an “adequate” majority for reform a promise to create enough Liberal peers to outvote the Unionist majority in the House of Lords and to reform it.

 

The Liberals continued in government, but with their reforming zeal unhindered by a House of Lords able now to do no more than delay legislation. An election under the terms of the new Parliament Act would have had to be called no later than 1915 and while some thought Hardie would next time beat the Liberals, others were not so sure as a great deal of effort was put into organising the Liberal machine in Merthyr Boroughs. However, war broke out and the election was delayed. Hardie was personally devastated by this turn of events, which may well have led to the decline in his health. He suffered a minor stroke in January 1915 but refused to lessen the pace of his work. He died in September 1915[8] at the age of fifty-nine and this precipitated a by-election. Thomas, later ennobled as Lord Rhondda died a few years later but not before he made a significant contribution to the nation’s war effort. He was sent to the United States on a mission on behalf of the Ministry of Munitions, and after Lloyd George became prime minister, was first made President of the Local Government Board and later Food Controller,[9] at which post he proved to be a “remarkable success.”[10] The strain of office had exhausted him and ruined his health. He was 62 years of age when he died.

Further reading. 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 


[1] Merthyr Express, 6 October 1900

[2] Aberdare Times, 6 October 1900

[3] South Wales Daily News, 1 October 1900

[4] K.O. Morgan (1975) Keir Hardie, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p118

[5] Aberdare Times, 6 October 1900

[6] Cardiff Times, 20 January 1906

[7] Viscountess Rhondda, ‘The Chief Events of his Life,’ in Viscountess Rhondda, (Ed) (1921) D.A. Thomas, Viscount Rhondda, London, Longmans, Green & Co., p55

[8] Bob Holman (2010) Keir Hardie, Labour’s Greatest Hero? Oxford, Lion Hudson, pp177-8

[9] John Grigg (2003) Lloyd George, War Leader, 1916-1918, London, Penguin, pp394-402

[10] Ibid., p134

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