Robert Smillie
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Robert Smillie (17 March 1857 – 16 February 1940) was a trade unionist and Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom.
Born in Belfast, Smillie moved to Glasgow in his teens to work in a shipyard at Govan, and by seventeen was a miner at Larkhall colliery in Lanarkshire.
He was a founder of the Lanarkshire Miners' Association, and supported Keir Hardie's view that working class people needed their own political party, rather than supporting the Liberal Party. In 1888 he supported Hardie's unsuccessful campaign as an Independent Labour candidate in the by-election in the Mid Lanarkshire constituency. At the 1892 general election, Hardie was elected as an Independent Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for West Ham South in London, and in 1889 Hardie and Smillie were amongst the founders of the Independent Labour Party.
Smillie had been elected in 1890 as a paid organizer for miners in the Larkhall district, and under his leadership the Lanarkshire Miners' Union soon reached a membership of 30,000. In 1894 he was elected president of the Scottish Miners' Federation, and in 1896 he played an important role in the formation of the Scottish Trade Union Congress (TUC). At its first conference he was elected chairman, a post he was to hold until 1899, and president of the parliamentary committee.
In 1894 he became permanent president of the Scottish Miners Federation, and in 1912 he was elected as president of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB). The MFGB had supported the Liberal Party, and Smillie 's influence persuaded it to affiliate to the Labour Party in 1909. He also helped to establish the Triple Industrial Alliance, an agreement for mutual support between the miners, dockers and railwaymen, which were then the most powerful trade unions.
In World War I, he advocated a negotiated peace and opposed conscription.
Smillie's successes as a union organiser were not matched in the electoral arena. He was an unsuccessful candidate at by-elections in Glasgow in 1895 and North East Lanarkshire in 1901. He was also defeated at Paisley in the 1906 general election and at Glasgow in the 1910 general election. He finally entered the House of Commons at a by-election in June 1923, when he was elected as MP for Morpeth in Northumberland. He declined a post in Ramsay MacDonald's 1924 Labour Government, and at the 1929 election he stood down due to ill-health.
He retired to Dumfries, where he died in 1940, aged 82. His grandson, also called Bob Smillie, fought in the Spanish Civil War in the ILP Contingent.
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- Schoolnet: Robert Smillie]
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by John Cairns |
Member of Parliament for Morpeth 1923–1929 |
Succeeded by Ebenezer Edwards |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by Sam Woods |
Vice-President of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain 1909–1912 |
Succeeded by ? |
| Preceded by Enoch Edwards |
President of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain 1912–1922 |
Succeeded by Herbert Smith |
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