Hunter Charlesd (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: No DJ. 2nd Edition. Inscribed and Signed by Author. Inscripted to Keir Hardy on pasted in piece of card dated 14th October 1914 from author. DESCRIPTION: Green cloth Language: English. Book Condition: Good: Light wear to corners, edges and spine ends. Clean cloth. Cracked front endpaper with light weakening to front hinge. Presentation plate to ffep. Toned endpapers. Lightly toned unmarked pages. DJ Condition: No DJ. Pages xi, 408. Size: 16mo 18.5cm by 12cm. PROVENANCE: INSCRIPTION: J. Keir Hardie M.P. James Keir Hardie (1856-1915) Scottish trade unionist and politician. He was a founder of the Labour Party, and served as its first parliamentary leader from 1906 to 1908. Born in Newhouse, Lanarkshire he started working at the age of seven and worked in the Lanarkshire coal mines. With a background in preaching, he became known as a talented public speaker and was chosen as a spokesman for his fellow miners. In 1879, Hardie was elected leader of a miners union in Hamilton and organised a National Conference of Miners in Dunfermline. He subsequently led miners strikes in Lanarkshire (1880) and Ayrshire (1881). He turned to journalism to make ends meet, and from 1886 was a full-time union organiser as secretary of the Ayrshire Miners Union. Hardie initially supported William Gladstones Liberal Party, but later concluded that the working class needed its own party. He first stood for parliament in 1888 as an independent, and later that year helped form the Scottish Labour Party. Hardie won the English seat of West Ham South as an independent candidate in 1892, and helped to form the Independent Labour Party (ILP) the following year. He lost his seat in 1895, but was re-elected to Parliament in 1900 for Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. In the same year he helped to form the union-based Labour Representation Committee, which was later renamed the Labour Party. After the 1906 election, Hardie was chosen as the Labour Partys first parliamentary leader. He resigned in 1908 in favour of Arthur Henderson, and spent his remaining years campaigning for causes such as womens suffrage, self-rule for India, and opposition to World War I. He died in 1915 while attempting to organise a pacifist general strike and has called him "Labours greatest pioneer and its greatest hero". Inscribed and Signed by Author.