Keir Hardie was a complicated man. Born illegitimate just outside Glasgow in 1856, his life didn't start gently. Before the age of ten he was the sole wage earner in his working class, atheist family. After the Christian baker he assisted fired him for being late to work (he'd been nursing his sick mother), he ended up in the coal pits at 11. He never went to school but was self-taught, avidly reading books lent him by a kind young clergyman. His life saw two major conversions: first to Christianity, and then to socialism. Most biographies omit the former, pointing out his experience of hardship as the source of his passion for social justice. But the role of Christianity in his life was profound, and without it a true picture of this extraordinary life cannot be drawn. Hardie was no plaster saint. But his fully human story - about rising above hardship to forge a better world - continues to be a source of inspiration today.

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Bob Holman has written a very readable and heart-warming account of that rarest of rare beings: a courageous and incorruptible politician who dedicated his life to bettering the wretched lot of the working man and woman. For many Holman’s description of the working conditions and pay of the majority in those not so distant days will be almost beyond comprehension. The emphasis he places on Hardie’s Christianity as the driving force behind his lifelong mission is to be commended. It stands in stark contrast to the Christianity of the wealthy industrialists with whom he had to contend. Holman succeeds quite brilliantly in bringing Keir Hardie and his world to life. Hard-hearted will be the reader who does not feel gratitude to a man who enjoys a deserved prominence in the ranks of those who shaped the vast improvement in the working conditions and prosperity claimed as a right by today’s workers. Keir Hardie, Labour’s Greatest Hero? is a must-read for all who have an interest in social history.

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