| Biography | Arthur Lewis Horner was a Welsh trade union leader and communist politician. During his periods of office as President of the South Wales Miners Federation (SWMF) from 1936, and as General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1946, he became one of the most prominent and influential communists in British public life.
Horner's first political affiliation was socialist and Keir Hardie, who had been elected MP for Merthyr Tydfil in 1900, was his first political hero. After he had joined the Independent Labour Party, Horner moved to the colliery village of Ynyshir, Rhondda where he became a protégé of Noah Ablett, trade union militant, executive member of the South Wales Miners Federation and also convenor of local classes in Marxist education which Horner attended.
Opposing the First World War from the standpoint of class solidarity, in 1917 he fled to Dublin to avoid arrest for ignoring his call-up papers. Horner was a supporter of demands for Irish Home Rule and became involved with the rebel factions from the 1916 Easter Rising, joining the Irish Citizen Army. On his return to Britain he was arrested by the police and handed over to the army. For disobeying orders he was sentenced to six months hard labour at Wormwood Scrubs, and was refused the amnesty made available after the war to most conscientious objectors, rearrested and sent to Carmarthen jail. The SWMF campaigned for his release, and after various tactics, secured his release in 1919.
Horner became a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1921. He was part of the nucleus of Communists who founded the National Minority Movement in 1924. Elected to the Executive Committee of the SWMF in 1926, he played a leading role in the ten-month-long countrywide lockout of coalminers in 1926, following the General Strike.
During the Second World War, from his position on the Executive of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, Horner exploited to the full the union's enhanced bargaining position, securing significant improvements in miner's wages and conditions. He played a key role in regulating relations between the wartime government, the coal owners, and the unions.
In 1946, Horner was elected General Secretary of the unified National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) into which the coalfield unions had merged. Horner was in a commanding position and directed the union's strategy on the nationalisation of the industry. A series of demands were set out in the 1946 Miners' Charter. These included: a five-day working week without loss of pay; a guaranteed weekly wage average wage not to fall below that of any other sector of British industry; two weeks paid holiday; adequate pensions at the age of fifty five; modernisation at existing pits together with the sinking of new ones; adequate training for young people; new safety laws; proper compensation payments for industrial injury and disease; the construction of new towns and villages with good housing in mining areas. By 1955 all points of the Charter had been implemented. |