1077 Benjamin Pickard

Constituency  :  Normanton  1885-1904

Benjamin  won  the  new  seat  of  Normanton  as  a  Liberal-Labour  candidate.

Benjamin  was  a  miner's  son  who  started  work  as  a  pitboy  aged  12  after  education  at  Kippax  Grammar  School. He  was  a  Methodist  lay  preacher. He  became  involved  in  trade  union  activities  aged  16  and  in  1873  became  assistant  secretary  of  the  West  Yorkshire  Miners  Association. He  united  it  with  a  similar  union  in  the  South  to  become  first  General  Secretary  of  the  Yorkshire  Miners  Association  in  1881. He  also  served  on  the  Wakefield  School  Board from  1881. The  YMA  came  to  an  agreement  with  the  local  Liberals  that  they  could  nominate  the  parliamentary  candidate  for  a  constituency  which  had  an  electorate  that  was  60%  miners.

Benjamin  was  active  in  promoting  the  Eight  Hours  Bill  and  other  industrial  legislation. In  1889  he  became  President  of  the  newly  founded  Miners  Federation  of  Great  Britain at  the  conference  in  Newport  that  he  had  instigated. In  1890  he  helped  establish  the  International  Federation  of  Mineworkers . In  1893  he  was  a  leader  in  the  miners  strike  and  supported  the  Board  of  Conciliation  that  resulted.

Benjamin  supported  the  payment  of  MPs , abolition  of  the  House  of  Lords  and  Charles  Bradlaugh's  right  to  affirm. He  opposed  the  idea  of  a  separate  labour  party  at  the  1886  TUC  declaring  that  he  was  a  Radical, Liberal  or  Whig  before  he  thought  of  becoming  a  labour  representative  and  that  "labour  is  best  served  by  the  Liberal  party,  and  that  the  Liberal  programme  is  a  working  man's  programme. In  1894  he  opposed  the  idea  of  nationalising  the  mines.

In  1897  Benjamin  supported  the  Liberal  candidate  Joseph  Walton, a  colliery  owner  against  the  ILP  in  the  Barnsley  by-election,  describing  the  ILP  as  "men  who  have  deliberately  come  into  your  midst  to  try  and  kill  your  power  and  influence  both  in  politics  and  in  combination".

Benjamin  was  a  pacifist  and  in  1897  he  visited  the  US  president   Grover  Cleveland  as  part  of  a  peace  delegation. He  was  also  a  teetotal  supporter  of  the  Temperance  Society.

He  died  in  1904  of  heart  failure  aged  61.