Keir Hardie

Keir Hardie has very strong links to Ayrshire. He was a founder of the Labour Party and became its first parliamentary leader. At the turn of the nineteenth century he was Labour's most famous face. Hardie was  voted Labour's 'Greatest Hero' at the 2008 Labour Party Conference, but recently  his  story and ideology seems to have become somewhat forgotten, even within the party he helped to establish. Born illegitimate just outside Glasgow in 1856, he didn't have an easy start to life. Before the age of 10, he was the sole wage earner in his family. He never went to school but was self-taught, avidly reading books lent him by a kind young clergyman.
Come along to our meeting on Tuesday 3 March at 7.30pm in the Kilmarnock campus of Ayrshire College and hear Hardie's biographer Bob Holman's talk on this important socialist figure.

 

Keir Hardie