Who Was Keir Hardie?

Keir Hardie (1865-1915) was a Scotsman who became Labour's first MP (he was elected in 1892). At this point he was an Independent Labour MP, becasue there was no Labour Party. However, with another Independent Labour colleague, John Burns, he effectively founded the Labour Party, which came into being in 1900.
Keir Hardie believed passionately that the lot of the working man should be improved. In 1886, he became secretary for the Scottish Miners' Federation and first ran for Parliament as an Independent Labour candidate in 1888.
Prior to 1884, when the final Reform Act was passed, the working classes could not vote. They were in effect disenfranchised. (The middle class had only had the vote since 1832). Even in 1992, only 5 million men in Britain had the vote, so most MP's represented the upper and middle classes, so Hardie's victory in the polls was a watershed in British History and he sought to extend the right to vote to all men over the age of 18, but his record on women being granted the vote was less impressive......

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