On Wednesday 8th July 1896, a large group of people met in the Democratic Hall, Stonefield in Blantyre.
The occasion? To listen to miners champion, Keir Hardie who was visiting Blantyre that evening. The organisation was the Lanarkshire County Union of the Independent Labour Party (a few years before the formation of Scottish Labour Party, a different party to the one of the same name in 1994)
Mr Andra McAnulty presided. The meeting was supposed to be held outdoors in the show ground, but was changed to indoors at the last moment, due to inclement weather.
It was a difficult night for Mr Hardie, there to speak about miners rights, for on that very evening, an arrest warrant was put out for him for speeches he had made earlier in Manchester. This seemed to be put to one side, as he focused on addressing the crowd, who were rather unmoved and quiet at the start but roused into agreement the further the meeting went on.
Miners were compelled to fight a wages battle, for better pay and conditions, and to be able to choose to work an 8 hour working day. He concluded the first task was to send Socialists to parliament and therefore they needed to be elected.
This was the start of sweeping change in politics in Britain. Keir Hardie is pictured that year in 1896. He died in 1915 and a new street in Blantyre , populated by miners was named after him shortly after in 1923.
