ABSTRACT
Keir Hardie’s relations with his middle-class allies in Ayrshire were not a matter of either bonhomie or trust in the years 1884 to 1886 during which he was drawn most closely into Liberal politics. He was often uncomfortable with them, thinking that they gave themselves airs and condescended to him as a man of the working class. Drummond was an influential figure in Cumnock. Soon to be a member of the town council, he was a moving force in the Junior liberal Association and a deacon in the Congregational Church, which Hardie had joined in 1881. Between 1884-1886, the younger leaders among the miners in the Hamilton district of Lanarkshire were evolving a socialist approach to the problems of the mining industry. In 1884, a socialist party was formed in London, called the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). The achievements of the SDF, real as they were, were limited by the tendency of its leaders to over-estimate the economic instability of British capitalism.
