Chapter 1

It is 100 years since the Labour Party first achieved parliamentary representation in the area which is now covered by our Constituency Party.

In 1909 our current Labour Party branches were spread amongst no less than three separate Parliamentary Divisions.  Dramatically in that year and without a General Election being held, all three seats went to Labour.

It was all due to the role of the Miners’ Union. 1909 was the year in which they first affiliated to the Labour Party, following a national ballot.

Two statues can be seen outside the former Miners’ Offices on Saltergate in Chesterfield. One of these is of James Haslam who was Secretary of the Derbyshire Miners. The other is William Harvey who was their Financial and Corresponding Secretary.

The two were known as the “twin pillars” of the Derbyshire Miners’ Union and they became MPs. Haslam was first elected in 1906 and Harvey in a by-election the following year. Yet they were elected with the support of the Liberal Party and were known as Lib-Lab MPs.

It was when the Miners’ Union moved into the Labour Party that they broke their links with the Liberals and joined the Parliamentary Labour Party where they played prominent roles. They both stood successfully in the two General Elections of 1910 as Labour candidates.

James Haslam was the MP for Chesterfield, which at that time covered the area of our current branches at Clay Cross, Tupton, Grassmoor, West and Holmewood. William Harvey was the MP for a seat called North Eastern Derbyshire which included Dronfield, Eckington. Killamarsh and North Staveley.

North Wingfield was part of a further constituency called Mid-Derbyshire. It also went Labour in 1909 when a by-election was held. In the days in which MPs weren’t paid, the Derbyshire Miners could not afford to run a third candidate, so the Nottinghamshire Miners stepped in and ran their Agent as the Labour candidate.

He was George Hancock, who was the first miner in England ever to be elected as a Labour MP. For he had not emerged via the Lib-Lab avenue.  The legendary Labour leader Keir Hardie canvassed in the by-election.

Haslam, Harvey and Hancock set a tradition going, which has led to the bits and pieces which came together as NE Derbyshire all being represented by Labour for a minimum of 88 years out of the past century.

Chapter 2

The next time you get a chance; have a look at the two statues outside the former Miners' Offices at Saltergate in Chesterfield.

The one on your right is that of James Haslam. He was born in Clay Cross in 1842, the youngest of 10 children and he started work there on the pit brow when he was ten years old, working 12 hours a day. He became the Secretary of the Derbyshire Miners' Association (DMA) when it broke away from the South Yorkshire Miners' Association in 1880 and helped to build it up into a powerful organisation. He became the MP for Chesterfield in 1906 which in those days also covered the areas of our current Branches at Clay Cross, Grassmoor, Holmewood, Tupton and West. He died in 1913. During his time as MP he continued to hold his post with the DMA, for MPs were not paid until 1911 and then only modestly. 

The statue on you left is that of William Edwin Harvey, who had a similar background to Haslam. He was born in 1852 in Hasland and went to work at a pit at Grassmoor when he was ten. Both Harvey and Haslam worked closely together on trade union matters and were also both active as Primitive Methodists. Harvey became MP for what was then known as North Eastern Derbyshire at a by-election in 1907 and held the position until his death in 1914. He held various posts with the DMA such as Treasurer, Assistant Secretary and finally the joint positions of Financial and Corresponding Secretary. His seat included the areas of our current Staveley, Killamarsh, Eckington and Dronfield Branches. 

Haslam and Harvey were known as the "twin pillars" of the DMA. They were both elected initially as LIb-Labs (i.e. as labouring people who were trade unionists but obtained organisational and financial backing from the Liberal Party).  But the DMA was by that time affiliated to the Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) who in 1908 held a ballot on whether to affiliate to the recently established Labour Party. When the Miners voted to do this, Haslam and Harvey then moved over to become Labour MPs, winning their seats under that label in two subsequent General Elections that were held in 1910. 

They were also prominent figures in both the MFGB at national level and the Trade Union Congress.

If you wish to find out more about Haslam and Harvey, the best source of information is contained in a book entitled "The Derbyshire Miners" by J.E. Williams, published by George Allen and Unwin in 1962.  As it is 993 pages long, your best bet would be to borrow it from your local library. If they don't have it they can easily get hold of a copy for you. It has a full index which can be used to sort out the best references to Haslam and Harvey.  At page 320 there is a photograph of the unveiling of the two statues outside the Miners' Offices on 26 June, 1915 - although the huge crowd is easier to see in the photo than are what were then two very new white statues. 

A photo of the statues can be found here –

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30120216@N07/3198829609/

Chapter 3

For numbers of years prior to 1918, the current territory covered by the NE Derbyshire Constituency formed parts of three different Parliamentary seats.  I explained in an earlier article how these all came under Labour control in 1909. Yet by 1915 Labour had lost control of all of them.

First of all, James Haslam the Labour MP for Chesterfield died in 1913. The Derbyshire Miners selected Barnet Kenyon to stand in his place. He had held posts as President, Assistant Secretary and General Agent for the Derbyshire Miners’ Association. But because of his close links with the Liberal Party both the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party and the Miners‘ Federation of Great Britain refused to endorse him as a candidate. The Miners spending a whole day discussing the issue at their national conference. Kenyon was, however, elected unopposed at the bye-election. At that time Clay Cross and much of the area around it (apart from North Wingfield) formed part of the Chesterfield seat.

In 1914, William Harvey the MP for North Eastern Derbyshire (which covered Dronfield and surrounding areas) also died. Labour ran James Martin as their candidate in this bye-election. He was President of the Derbyshire Miners at the time. Yet he finished bottom of the poll in a three cornered fight. The reasons for this were (1) the Liberals split the anti-Tory vote by running a candidate for the first time since 1907, (2) the miners themselves were being offered conflicting patterns in the area  by the Liberal Kenyon and Labour’s Martin, (3) with the first world war starting in1914, patriotism was to the fore and the seat was won by the Conservative Major Bowden who had a majority of 314 over the Liberal and (4) Labour had little organisation and had previously depended upon the personality and prominence of the late William Harvey. After a defeat in which Labour obtained less then 27% of the vote, Labour quickly set up a constituency-style organisation. This was something of a pioneering move as the Labour Party nationally did not set up its general constituency structure until 1918.

The third seat which was lost was Mid-Derbyshire which covered North Wingfield.  George Hancock of the Nottinghamshire Miners was their MP. But in 1915 he defected to the Liberal Party. Although Kenyon remained as MP for Chesterfield until 1929, it was Labour who started to dominate the political scene in the area covered by our current constituency. This was helped by boundary changes in 1918. Our area came to be divided between what was to be the solid Labour seat of Clay Cross (which then included North Wingfield) and a redrawn North Eastern Derbyshire which was taken again by Labour in the 1922 General Election in dramatic circumstance.

Chapter 4

Labour burst onto the local political scene in 1909 when the Derbyshire Miners’ Association (DMA) joined the Labour Party and the three parliamentary seats which cut into the current boundaries of NE Derbyshire each acquired a Labour MP. Yet due to two deaths and a defection, Labour had lost all three seats by 1915 and it was not until 1922 that it was again successful.

New parliamentary boundaries and the first votes for women were introduced in 1918. The three seats which cut into our current Constituency Boundaries were then Chesterfield, North Eastern Derbyshire and Clay Cross.

Until 1929, the Chesterfield Constituency (which included the arrears of our current West Branch, Grassmoor and New Whittington) underwent one of its periods of Liberal control. This occurred because their MP Barnet Kenyon defected to the Liberals, although he had been a leader of the DMA.

The Clay Cross Constituency contained an area dominated by pits, including North Wingfield, Tupton, Holmewood, Pilsley, Stonebroom and Clay Cross itself. Frank Hall of the DMA stood in 1918, taking 45.9% of the vote. He lost due to the fact that the Tories united behind a Liberal Coalition candidate who supported the continuation of the Lloyd George Coalition after the war. A victorious Coalition which came to be dominated by Conservatives.

Labour, however, took the seat in 1922 and it became one of the strongest Labour seats in the country until its abolition in 1950. When Labour suffered a massive collapse in 1931 following the economic crisis and Ramsay MacDonald its leader defecting to form a National Government, Labour still held Clay Cross by 9,552. This was a considerable majority as the Labour Party nationally lost no less than 236 out of 288 seats.

In this period, North East Derbyshire incorporated Dronfield, Eckington, Killamarsh and Staveley. It also spread over into Clowne, Barlborough, Bolsover and areas which were later moved into Sheffield. In dramatic circumstances it went Labour in 1922. The Labour candidate Frank Lee was an official of the DMA. He failed narrowly to take the seat in 1918, when he stood as one of the early advocates of the nationalisation of the coal industry.

The contest of 1922 could not have been closer. Recounts took place. On the second count Labour’s majority was two. After the sixth recount, the boxes were sealed and. fresh counting clerks were employed. This still did not resolve the matter. As there was still no agreement about the result, it went before the King’s Bench Division of the Courts. Lee was belatedly declared the winner by 15 votes and entered the Commons five months after the count.

In all Frank Lee fought 7 General Elections for Labour, losing in 1918 and again in 1931. He served a total of 16 years as an MP until his death in 1942. When Chesterfield finally returned to Labour in 1929 with the election of George Benson he went on to serve as their MP for a total of no less than 31 years in spite of his defeat in 1931.

Chapter 5

The Clay Cross Parliamentary Constituency operated from 1918 and ended with the 1950 General Election. It covered Clay Cross, Tupton and North Wingfield in our current Constituency, plus areas in an around Holmewood, Glapwell, Shirebrook and Stonebroom. Mining abounded.

Yet although the Constituency Labour Party was dominated by the miners’ vote, out of the six different Labour candidates it ran for parliament at various elections only two of these were miners. This showed an independence of mind by local miners from the pressures of the leadership of the Derbyshire Miners which was aided by the influences of Methodism and mobilised socialist views. The later coming from the local influence of bodies such as the left-wing Independent Labour Party, which only ended with its disaffiliation from Labour in 1932.

The seat also became rock-solid Labour, so it attracted the interest of leading Labour figures at national level.

Yet the first election of 1918 followed a conventional pattern for the area. Fred Hall, the Labour candidate was a leading official of the Derbyshire Miners Federation who eventually served on the Federation’s national executive committee for 29 years. He was, however, the only Labour candidate who failed to win the seat. He lost by 1,221 to a Liberal who had Conservative backing. A year after the Russian Revolution, they wanted to keep out what they saw as Bolsheviks.

When Fred Hall dropped out of standing for the seat just prior to the 1922 General Election, Charlie Duncan was selected in his place. He had helped to found the Workers’ Union who had been involved in the birth of the Labour Party and which represented unskilled workers. He had previously had a spell as the Labour MP for Barrow and had served as both Whip and Secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

He won the elections in Clay Cross in 1922, 1923, 1924, 1929 and 1931. His final success revealed how Labour had built up the seat. The 1931 election was held following the collapse of the minority Labour Government in the middle of a major financial crisis, with Ramsay MacDonald its leader defecting to run a National Government. Labour’s position at the subsequent General Election collapsed from 288 to 52 seats, yet Labour held Clay Cross by almost 10,000 votes.

When Charlie Duncan died in 1933, Clay Cross adopted Arthur Henderson as their candidate. Known as “Uncle Arthur” he is a huge figure in the early history of the Labour Party. He was leader of the Labour Party from 1908 to 1910 (with another spell at the start of the first world war). He served as Labour’s first Cabinet Minister in First World War Coalitions from 1915 to 1917. He helped shape the pre-Blairite structure of the Labour Party as General Secretary of the Labour Party, a post he held from 1912 to 1935. He was Home Secretary in the first Minority Labour Government of 1924 and Foreign Secretary from 1929-31. When MacDonald defected he took over as temporary leader until 1932, but gave up the position because he had by then lost his parliamentary seat. Clay Cross provided his avenue back into Labour’s parliamentary politics.

In the by-election one of his opponents was Harry Pollitt the General Secretary of the Communist Party who lost his deposit with 10.8% of the votes to Henderson’s 69.3%.

Whilst MP for Clay Cross, Henderson went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and was held in high regard locally as “no-one ever sought his help in vain*”. He died in 1935.

At the subsequent General election, Clay Cross ran the 35 year old Alfred Holland a local Methodist. But within 10months he was stricken with spinal meningitis and died shortly afterwards.

A by-election in 1936 led to the Clay Cross Labour Party running its fourth candidate in five years. George Ridley had been on the Executive of the Railway Clerk’s Association since 1909. He was seen as “becoming the Labour Party’s leading pamphleteer*”. In 1944 he also died whilst still an MP.

After 26 years, Clay Cross once more adopted a Derbyshire Miners’ Candidate in Harold Neal the area’s Vice President, who went on to become Secretary of the Miners’ group of MPs in parliament. There was a war-time pact amongst Churchill’s War-time Coalition Government at the time, so only two independent candidates stood against Neal. One ran as a “Workers Anti-Fascist” and the other as an “Independent Progressive”. Neal got 76.3% of the votes. When the war ended, he improved his position by taking 82.1% of the votes in opposition to a Conservative.

When the boundaries were redrawn and the Clay Cross seat was absorbed into other areas, Harold Neal became the Labour MP for Bolsover. He had a period as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fuel and Power in 1951 and retired as MP in 1970 to be replaced by Dennis Skinner who was the Chair of NE Derbyshire Labour Party in the period up to then, being a member of the Clay Cross Labour Party.

A souvenir brochure published by the Clay Cross Divisional Labour Party in 1948 pointed out Labour’s dominance in the area, stating that there were “46 Local Government Seats (exclusive of Parish Councils) within the Constituency : of these 40 are held by Labour members. In addition, there are 16 Parish Councils : in the majority of cases we have 100 per cent representation”. ( * = The two earlier quotations are also taken from this invaluable source).