Barnet Kenyon

Barnet Kenyon
Personal details
Born	1850 South Anston, Yorkshire
Died	1930 Chesterfield
Nationality	British
Political party	Liberal
Other political affiliations	Lib–Lab
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Ramsden
Children	one adopted

Barnet Kenyon (1850 – 20 February 1930) was a British colliery worker, trade union official and Lib–Lab, later Liberal, politician.

Kenyon was born at South Anston, South Yorkshire, the son of Henry Kenyon and Ann Hanson. He had no formal education, and went to work in a local stone quarry at the age of seven and a half. At 13, he walked to Conisbrough to work in the newly opened Denaby Main pit. At 16, he went to work at Darfield, where he was injured by a falling pit prop. From there, he went to Old Oaks, Barnsley, when it was reopened after the explosions which had killed 361 men. He moved frequently, working at Ashley Deep, Dukinfield; Ince Colliery, Wigan; and Kiveton Park. From 1876 to 1906 he worked at the Shireoaks Company’s Southgate Pit from 1880 as check-weighman, a representative elected by coal miners to check the findings of the mine owner's weighman where miners were paid by the weight of coal mined.

In 1878, he married Elizabeth Ramsden. They had no children but fostered the four children of his brother George, whose wife, Kezia (née Parker), had died in childbirth. He adopted a son, Ernest, and brought up three other children. In religion, Kenyon was a strict non-conformist, a Primitive Methodist and lay preacher in Chesterfield and in the nearby village of Clowne.

Kenyon was clearly a popular figure with his fellow coal miners. He helped to found the Derbyshire Miners Association in 1880, and from 1896 until 1906 he was President of the Derbyshire Miners' Federation. He was afterwards assistant secretary, a paid position, and by January 1912 he had become the Federation's secretary. During unrest in the coal field during that month, he called publicly for any industrial action the miners might take to be directed towards the coal owners, who, according to Kenyon, were making fabulous profits, and not towards the public or other industries, who would resent indiscriminate strike action. By July 1913 Kenyon was Treasurer of the Federation.

The best description of Kenyon's politics is Lib–Lab. There had always been close ties between the Liberal Party and organised labour and much overlap between them in terms of beliefs, political thought and personnel. In the late 19th and early 20th century many candidates were described as Lib–Labs but it was hard for working men to get adopted as Liberal candidates by Liberal Associations dominated by middle-class and professional men and this was a principal reason for the founding in 1900 of the Labour Representation Committee, the organisation which later became the Labour Party.

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