Thomas
Burt,
was born in the colliery village of Murton Row in Northumberland on
12th November 1837. His father, Peter Burt, a miner, was an active
trade unionist and a Primitive Methodist.
After a bitter mining strike Burt was victimized and the family were
forced to move from their tied cottage.
After two years of schooling, Thomas Burt, aged only ten, became a
trapper boy in Haswell Colliery. Burt worked in a wide variety of
pits, and like his father, was forced to move because of his union
activities. In 1852 Burt was employed at Seaton Delaval Colliery where
he stayed for thirteen years.
Despite his brief schooling, Burt had a strong love of reading. His
favourite authors incuded Percy Busshe Shelley,
Charles Dickens, Thomas
Carlyle, John Stuart Mill and John
Ruskin and in order to obtain books, Burt had to walk a distance
of eighteen miles to Newcastle. Burt's
knowledge of politics and economics impressed his fellow miners and
in 1863 he was elected secretary and agent of the Northumberland
Miners Association (NMA).
Following the 1867 Reform
Act, the working class made up the majority of the electorate.
It was now possible for working class candidates to win parliamentary
elections. In 1874 General Election Burt
stood as the Radical Labour candidate for Morpeth. The local Liberal
Party agreed not to put up a candidate in Morpeth and Burt easily
beat his Conservative opponent (3,332
to 585). Burt joined Alexander Macdonald,
another miner who had been elected as the Lib-Lab
MP for Stafford.
In the House of Commons Burt campaigned
for reform of the 1871
Trade Union Act,
land reforms suggested by Henry George,
in his book Our
Land and Land Policy, the
disestablishment of the Church of England,
Irish Home Rule and adult male suffrage.
Burt was also active in the Temperance
Society and the International League of Peace.
Burt was re-elected unopposed in the
1880 General Election and held the seat for
the next thirty-eight years. After the 1892 General
Election, William Gladstone appointed
Thomas Burt as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board
of Trade, a post he held for three years. Burt remained loyal
to the Liberal Party and refused to join
the Independent Labour Party when it was formed
in 1893.
Ill-health forced Burt to retire at the 1918
General Election. He spent the final three years bed-ridden before
his death on 12th April 1922. Thomas
Burt was buried at the Jesmond
Cemetery near his Newcastle home.
Members of Parliament, Punch Magazine
(1)
Philip Snowden, An Autobiography
(1934)
The
Trades Unions were very dissatisfied with the attitude of the Liberal
Government to the legal position of Trade Unionism. In 1869, at the
instigation of John Stuart Mill, an organisation was formed under
the name of the Labour Representation League to carry out a national
campaign to secure the return of working men to Parliament. It does
not appear to have been the intention of this League to form a party
which could be permanently in opposition to the Liberal Party. Mills'
idea was that, if the working classes put forward working-men candidates
and threatened the Liberal majority, the Liberals would be glad to
come to terms and provide opportunities for the return of working
men. After the election of 1874 the League placed twelve working men
in the field, and of these Thomas Burt and Alexander MacDonald were
elected at Morpeth and Stafford respectively.
(2)
J. R. Clynes, Memoirs (1937)
In the 1874 General Election, twelve Labour candidates were offered
to the electorate. When the bitter election campaigns were done, and
the polling was over, England awoke to an amazing fact. Two Labour
representatives had been returned to Parliament. Thomas Burt and Alexander
MacDonald, the forlorn hope of the mighty army of British workers,
flung open the gates of St. Stephen's; and those gates have never
been quite shut against since.
(3)
In February 1887, The Miner, edited by James
Keir Hardie, included an article on the career of Thomas Burt.
Although unsigned, it is believed that James
Cunninghame Graham was the author of the article.
From his boyhood he had
subjected himself to a course of reading including the choicest literary
productions of the English language. He also mastered the mysteries
of shorthand, while French and German came in for a share of attention.
Mr. Burt is the recognised authority on all labour questions. He has
great faith in the doctrines of the Political Economy; and capitalists
knowing this, and trading on his honesty, feel that they are quite
safe in following his lead.
Had Mr. Burt been born into a middle class family, the chances are
he would have been an honest conscientious Conservative. As it is,
circumstances have made him an extreme Radical in all matters of Reform,
but more than half a Conservative on all matters affecting the interest
of capitalism.
(3)
In 1906 Thomas Burt wrote a letter correcting a comment made by William
Stead in Review of Reviews that he was a Primitive
Methodist.
I am not a member - nor have I ever been - of the Primitive Methodists
body. My mother and father were Primitives. I went to the Primitive
Methodist Sunday school and chapel as a boy and youth. From the travelling
preachers - who often came to our house - I derived intellectual stimulus,
and benefit; but as I have said, I never was a member.
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