Robert Smillie

Robert Smillie (17 March 1857 – 16 February 1940) was a trade unionist and Labour Party politician in Great Britain, especially Scotland. He was a leader of the coal miners, and played a central role in moving support from the miners away from the Liberal Party to the Labour Party. He had a firm commitment to socialism as an ideal, and militancy as a tactic.

Born in Belfast, the second son of John Smillie a Scottish crofter. Until his adult years he spelt his name as Smellie including on his wedding certificate in 1878. In his early years he was orphaned and brought up by his grandmother who taught him to read and write. By the age of nine he was working as an errand boy and by the age of eleven he was working in a spinning mill. He was able to obtain some books by authors such as Dickens, Burns and Shakespeare but his education suffered as he had to provide income for the family.

By the age of fifteen he had left Ireland for Glasgow where he secured employment in a brass foundry but left for the Mines of Larkhall which later in life led him to be the leader of British mineworkers. He was first a hand-pumper at the Sumerlee Colliery which involved working twelve hours a day with no human contact. He married Ann Hamilton on 31 December 1878 and began to educate himself in the evenings and worked his way up to be the colliery checkweighman.

Smillie became secretary of the Larkhall Miners' Association in 1885 after presiding over a mass meeting which ended in its formation and when the county federation was formed he became its president in 1893. He became the president of the Scottish Miners' Federation in 1894. Employers in a number of districts demanded wage reductions resulting in strikes. Following a special conference of the Miners Federation of Great Britain a ballot was taken and the strike that followed lasted from June to October 1894. Controversy arose between Smillie and Chisholm Robertson which came to head in 1900 with a debate at Glasgow Trades Council which Smillie won. Strikes left the Scottish miners in a greatly weakened position, they suffered further wage cuts in 1895 and 1896, in 1897 less than twenty per cent of the workers were organised.

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