courtesy of John Simkin
Arthur Horner was born in Merthyr Tydfil in 1894. Poverty forced Horner to leave school at the age of eleven. He worked at a barber’s, as a grocer’s delivery boy and also at the local railway office.
Horner was deeply religious and at seventeen obtained a scholarship to attend the Baptist College in Birmingham. However, he left six months later and found work at Standard Collieries in the Rhondda Valley.
Horner also joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and also became an active member of the National Union of Mineworkers. He joined forces with other left-wing radicals such as A. J. Cook.
In 1914 Horner began is campaign against Britain’s involvement in the First World War and took part in the fight against conscription. A close friend of James Connolly, in 1916 he travelled to Dublin to join the Irish Citizen Army and took part in the Easter Rising.
On his return to Wales he became a checkweighman at Maerdy Colliery. He refused to be conscripted into the British Army and in 1917 he was arrested and charged with sedition, under the Defence of the Realm Act. He was found guilty and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs.
Horner had been impressed with the achievements of the Bolsheviks following the Russian Revolution and in April 1920 he joined forces with Tom Bell, Willie Gallacher, Arthur McManus, Harry Pollitt, Helen Crawfurd, A. J. Cook, Rajani Palme Dutt, Albert Inkpin and Willie Paul to establish the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). McManus was elected as the party’s first chairman and Bell and Pollitt became the party’s first full-time workers.
After the war A. J. Cook became leader of the South Wales Miners’ Federation. Horner became his deputy. Cook left the Communist Party of Great Britain over disagreement over industrial policy and rejoined the Independent Labour Party (ILP). However, Horner remained a loyal party member. In 1924 Harry Pollitt was appointed General Secretary of the National Minority Movement, a Communist-led united front within the trade unions. Pollitt worked alongside Tom Mann and according to one document the plan was “not to organize independent revolutionary trade unions, or to split revolutionary elements away from existing organizations affiliated to the T.U.C. but to convert the revolutionary minority within each industry into a revolutionary majority.” Horner became one of the leader of the Miners’ Minority Movement.
Later that year Frank Hodges, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers was forced to resign following his appointment as Civil Lord of the Admiralty in the Labour Government. A. J. Cook went on to secure the official South Wales nomination and subsequently won the national ballot by 217,664 votes to 202,297. Fred Bramley, general secretary of the TUC, was appalled at Cook’s election. He commented to his assistant, Walter Citrine: “Have you seen who has been elected secretary of the Miners’ Federation? Cook, a raving, tearing Communist. Now the miners are in for a bad time.” However, his victory was welcomed by Horner who argued that Cook represented “a time for new ideas – an agitator, a man with a sense of adventure”.
In 1925 the mine-owners announced that they intended to reduce the miner’s wages. The General Council of the Trade Union Congress responded to this news by promising to support the miners in their dispute with their employers. The Conservative Government, decided to intervene, and supplied the necessary money to bring the miners’ wages back to their previous level. This event became known as Red Friday because it was seen as a victory for working class solidarity.
The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, stated that this subsidy to the miners’ wages would only last 9 months. In the meantime, the government set up a Royal Commission under the chairmanship of Sir Herbert Samuel, to look into the problems of the Mining Industry. The Samuel Commission published its report in March 1926. It recognised that the industry needed to be reorganised but rejected the suggestion of nationalization. The report also recommended that the Government subsidy should be withdrawn and the miners’ wages should be reduced.The month in which the report was issued also saw the mine-owners publishing new terms of employment. These new procedures included an extension of the seven-hour working day, district wage-agreements, and a reduction in the wages of all miners. Depending on a variety of factors, the wages would be cut by between 10% and 25%. The mine-owners announced that if the miners did not accept their new terms of employment then from the first day of May they would be locked out of the pits.
To be continued…..
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