Frank Hodges (trade unionist)
| Frank Hodges | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
30 April 1887 Woolaston, England |
| Died | 3 June 1947 (aged 60) |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | miner, trade unionist, Member of Parliament, board member |
| Known for | Leading the mining union of Great Britain through the inter-war period. |
| Political party | Labour |
Frank Hodges (30 April 1887 – 3 June 1947) was an English trade union leader, who became General Secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. A Member of Parliament (MP) for one year, he was Civil Lord of the Admiralty in the first Labour Government.
Hodges was born in Woolaston in Gloucestershire in 1887, but moved to Wales at a young age. At the age of 14 he was working at the Powell Tillery Pit in Abertillery, and due to his desire to read, he came to the attention of one of the mining officials, who sponsored him to attend night school. At the age of sixteen, inspired by the preacher Evan Roberts, he became a Methodist and was soon preaching in the evenings. Like many trade unionists before him, he found his religious beliefs tied into the plight of the coal-miners, and joined the Trade Union movement. At the same time his political views led him to become a member of the Independent Labour Party.
At the age of eighteen, Hodges heard Philip Snowden addressing a crowd. He found Snowden inspirational and from that moment he saw the politician as his 'ideal'. Hodges was also shaped by the views of the Welsh syndicalist Noah Ablett, whose Plebs' League he later joined. Through his trade union links, Hodges secured a scholarship to Ruskin College, Oxford, and spent two years there from 1909. Although many of the students from Ruskin were not treated with the same equality as those at other Oxford colleges, Hodges found the life away from the coal mines to be to his liking, describing it as the great time of his life. In 1911, after the end of his studies, Hodges spent a brief time in Paris, where he stayed with the Marxist Paul Lafargue and his wife Laura Marx, only a few months before their joint suicide.
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