Clement Edwards

(Allen) Clement Edwards (7 June 1869 – 23 June 1938), usually known as Clem, was a Welsh lawyer, journalist, trade union activist and Liberal Party politician.

Edwards was born in Knighton in Radnorshire, the son of a master tailor and draper, one of seven children. He was educated at the local school in Knighton, undertook private studies and also attended evening classes at Birkbeck Institute in London. In 1890, Edwards married Fanny Emerson, the daughter of the superintendent of Trinity House, Great Yarmouth. She died in 1920. Two years later Edwards was remarried, to Alice May Parker, a political colleague in the NDP. They had one son, John Charles Gordon Clement Edwards (1924–2004) who served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in the Second World War and later became a solicitor.

In religion, although born into an Anglican family, Edwards became a Congregationalist and was considered a typical Welsh-speaking champion of nonconformist causes.

Edwards began his law career working in a solicitor's office. In 1899, he was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple. As a barrister specialising in trade union and labour law he was briefed in some of the most important cases of the day concerning the rights of trade unions to engage in industrial and political action. He was drawn to trade union cases and in the Taff Vale case of 1901 he was one of Counsel briefed on behalf of the trade union. He was also briefed in another railway action, the Osborne case, concerning trade union support for MPs

Edward's law work for the unions strengthened his political and social awareness and from the 1880s, he was involved in the formation of trade unions for unskilled workers. Despite his legal connections to the railway unions, Edwards developed a special connection with the dock workers and was at one time assistant secretary of the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers' Union. He was also general secretary of the federation of dockland and transport unions. Edwards had a flair for mass organisation. In the great dock strike of 1889, he was one of John Burns' lieutenants in the organisation of the dispute and in 1893, he organised a mass demonstration in Hyde Park in aid of miners and their families undergoing severe hardship and was also responsible for another demonstration at the same venue by 30,000 laundresses. During his time working for the dock labourers, Edwards was to play a leading part in the public inquiry which looked into the sinking of the RMS Titanic. He put the miners' case following the infamous 1913 Senghenydd Colliery Disaster in which 439 men died. But Edwards never conceived of the trade unions as the industrial arm of the socialist movement. He understood them as the working-man's defence against unfair employers and a protection against an economic system which produced personal poverty, immorality, and misery.

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