HARDIE, JAMES KEIR (1856-1915), British Labour leader, was born on Aug. 15, 1856, at Legbrannock, Lanarkshire. His early life was one of great hardship ; he was employed in the mines from the age of ten. Originally a Liberal in politics, he started, with some friends, in 1887 the Miner, afterwards the Labour Leader, the first Socialist paper in western Scotland. In the same year he opened the attack, as delegate of the Ayrshire miners at the Trades Union Congress, upon the dominant Liberal members of the parliamentary committee, and continued this struggle, in which his chief allies were John Burns and Tom Mann, up to the decisive defeat of Henry Broadhurst, M.P., his chief opponent, at the Liverpool Congress in 1890. In 1888 he entered politics as an "Independent Labour" candidate for Mid Lanark, polling only 617 votes; in 1892 he was elected on the same programme for South West Ham, but did not retain the seat in 1895. In 1900 he was elected for Merthyr. He was very largely responsible for the foundation of the Scottish Labour Party in i888, and the Independent Labour Party (I.L.P.) in 1893. His first great triumph came in 1899, when the Trades Union Congress was induced to authorize the formation of labour representation committees in conjunction with the I.L.P. and other Socialist bodies. Socialist-Labour candidates were, for the first time, run systematically at the ensuing election, and at the 1906 election 29 were returned to parliament. This number was raised to over 40, but the Socialist character of the party was "diluted" by the adhesion en bloc of most of the Liberal miners' M.P.'s. Hardie was selected as first chairman, and during the years before the World War had as chief tasks firstly, the persuading of the Liberal trade union representatives to advance further on the Socialist path ; secondly, the extension of Socialism by public propaganda outside. In attempting these, he was severely criticized by the Social-Democrats as compromising and muddled in theory; for the right wing of the Labour Party he was too rugged. But there was no doubt of his success, as chief prop agandist for the I.L.P., in spreading Socialist tenets in every manufacturing and mining district, until, in 1914, there was scarcely a big industrial town in which there was not a powerful and active I.L.P. or other Socialist branch. For such pioneer work his strong personality, his unquestioned honesty and his lovable character notably fitted him.
In concert with Edouard Vaillant he had made a vain endeavour to bind the Socialist International to calling a general strike in the event of war. The complete failure of this body to act in 1914 was a great disappointment to Hardie; the progress of the war seemed to be undoing his life's work; depression and de jection hastened his death in 1915.
See W. Stewart, J. Keir Hardie (1921) ; D. Lowe, From Pit to Par liament (1923) .