Keir Hardie

Elected to parliament 100 years ago, Keir Hardie has become a mythical figure in British history as the first Labour MP. During his lifetime he was widely regarded as a failure, but since then he has been resurrected little by little as Labour's enduring ideal and socialist saint. Born in poverty in a mining village and working his way on to the national stage as the champion of the dispossessed and scourge of tame TUC leaders, Caroline Benn concentrates on Hardie the democrat and humanitarian socialist, who turned his religion into his politics and his politics into his religion. Hounded by the press and the political establishment, but loved by millions of working people, he had a parliamentary career punctuated by disagreements with colleagues on women's suffrage, class war, the role of industrial action and war-resistance. Behind him was a family whose suffering is recorded, while the problematic nature of his other relationships, including his strong personal attachment to Sylvia Pankhurst illuminates the destructive potential inherent in a life of political struggle. Caroline Benn's biography of Keir Hardie uses a cache of family letters never before published.