Welsh Journals

LABOUR LEADERS AND LOCAL POLITICS, 1888-1902: THE EXAMPLE OF ABERDARE PARLIAMENTARY victories have always grasped the imagination of the remembrancers of the Labour movement. So too, and rightly, have the creation and success of trade unions. Local elections have seemed less glorious. The ward politics in which many a national Labour leader cut his teeth are passed over quickly. The emphasis is not unfair, but while individual victories may be worthy only of footnotes, the broad context of local politics should be fully appreciated.' Urban politics in England in the Victorian period have been well analysed, but the role of the working class, especially in Wales, largely remains a fallow field.2 The vested interests of the retailers, ministers and professional classes made local politics an unwelcome arena for miners, yet it could be an avenue towards political success and social respectability. The Local Government Act 1894 was heralded by Liberals as the dawn of a new age which would see the werin of Wales and, indeed, the whole nation advance to new heights of social and political fulfilment. The achievement of local democracy would lead to the enfranchisement of the workers and greater social equality. The public world of the miner in south Wales, beyond his place of work, was governed by several elective institutions. These were the local Board of Health, the Board of Guardians, the School Board and the Burial Board. In 1894 the first of these was replaced by the Parish and Urban District Council; the School Boards were abolished in 1903, while the function of the Burial Boards was taken over by district councils in 1902. Only the Boards of Guardians were to survive the early years of the new century and continue their Victorian duties until the late 1920s. The good government of society depended on these public bodies, and rapid population increase and fluctuating local economies naturally influenced the actions and attitudes of councils and councillors. In an age of imperial pride, civic pride, too, was important. 'The fuss attending the local government elections is not to be compared of course to the wild doings of folks during a parliamentary war. But it should not be forgotten that the Henry Pelling comments on the importance of local politics to the Labour movement in the decade up to the First World War in his essay on 'Liberalism and the rise of Labour', in Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (London 1968), p. 117. 2 See especially Derek Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England (Leicester, 1976), ch. 6, pp. 115-54. 3 'Wales and the Local Government Act 1899' in Addresses and Speeches by the late T. E. Ellis, M.P. (Wrexham, 1912), ch. 7, pp. 165-66.