Scottish Independence and The Scottish Labour Party
Graham was a strong supporter of Scottish independence and in 1886 had helped establish the Scottish Home Rule Association, and while in the House of Commons made several attempts to persuade fellow MPs of the desirability of a Scottish parliament. On one occasion Graham joked that he wanted a "national parliament with the pleasure of knowing that the taxes were wasted in Edinburgh instead of London."
While in the House of Commons Graham became increasingly more radical and went on to found the Scottish Labour Party with Keir Hardie. Graham left the Liberal Party in 1892 to contest the general election in a new constituency as a Labour candidate.
He supported workers in their industrial disputes and was actively involved with Annie Besant and the Matchgirls Strike and the 1889 Dockers' Strike. In July 1889 he attended the Marxist Congress of the Second International in Paris with James Keir Hardie, William Morris, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling. The following year he made a speech in Calais that was considered by the authorities to be so revolutionary that he was arrested and expelled from France.
Graham was a supporter of the eight hour day and made several attempts to introduce a Bill on the subject. He made some progress with this in the summer of 1892 but he was unable to persuade the Conservative and Unionist government, headed by Lord Salisbury, to allocate time for the Bill to be fully debated.
In the 1892 general election Graham stood as the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party candidate for Glasgow Camlachie. He was defeated and this brought his parliamentary career to an end. He remained active in political circles though, and helped his colleague Keir Hardie establish the Independent Labour Party and to enter parliament as the MP for West Ham.
Graham retained a strong belief in Scottish home rule. He played an active part in the establishment of the National Party of Scotland (NPS) in 1928 and was elected the first ever president of the Scottish National Party in 1934. He was several times the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association candidate for the Lord Rectorship of the University of Glasgow, which he lost by only sixty-six votes in 1928 to Stanley Baldwin the then Prime Minister.
Read more about this topic: Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham
Famous quotes containing the words scottish, independence, labour and/or party:
“We’ll never know the worth of water till the well go dry.”
—18th-century Scottish proverb, collected in James Kelly, Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs, no. 351 (1721)
“It is my duty to prevent, through the independence of Cuba, the U.S.A. from spreading over the West Indies and falling with added weight upon other lands of Our America. All I have done up to now and shall do hereafter is to that end.... I know the Monster, because I have lived in its lair—and my weapon is only the slingshot of David.”
—José Martí (1853–1895)
“The habits of our whole species fall into three great classes—useful labour, useless labour, and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labor rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of its just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“A stiff apology is a second insult.... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)