ABSTRACT
Labour leaders of the nineteenth century are often enigmatic personalities, and James Keir Hardie is no exception. Scholarly investigation has failed to portray a convincing human personality. It has concentrated on dismantling the legend created by hagiographers of the Independent Labour party, but has put in its place either a puzzling series of apparent contradictions or the two-dimensional stereotype of the party politician. One comes away from all this work feeling that one does not know Hardie as a man. Curiously enough, the materials for which such a reconstruction of Hardie’s personality can be attempted have been substantially ignored by historians and biographers. Morgan hurries breathlessly through them, on his way to the ‘fruitful years’ of progressivism after 1895.
