Noah Ablett (4 October 1883 – 31 October 1935) was a trade unionist and political theorist who is most noted for writing 'The Miners' Next Step' a Syndicalist treaty which Ablett described as 'scientific trade unionism.[1]
Ablett was born in 1883 in Porth, Rhondda to John and Jane Ablett;[2] he was the tenth child of eleven. Originally intending to join the ministry, Ablett was turned to the plight of the poor pay and working conditions of the Rhondda coal miners. A keen learner, he won a scholarship to Ruskin College, Oxford in 1907 and while there was part of the college strike and subsequent movement that saw the creation of the Marxist educational group, the Plebs' League. On returning to the valleys he set up Marxist educational classes and was part of minimum wage agitation.
In 1911, Ablett became a checkweighman at Mardy Colliery in Maerdy and later that year was one of the founders of the Unofficial Reform Committee. The following year he was the main author of 'The Miners' Next Step', a treaty demanding a minimum wage for miners and for control of the mines to be handed to the workers. Between 1921 and 1926 he was an executive member of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain.[3]
In his later life, Ablett would struggle with alcoholism and died in 1935 in Merthyr Tydfil.
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Thomas Isaac Mardy Jones |
Checkweighman at Mardy Colliery 1910–1917 |
Succeeded by Ted Williams |