WILLIE ADAMSON MP

Ronnie Watt

The Rt Hon William Adamson, was a miners’ leader, Labour MP, and the first Labour Secretary of State for Scotland (born 1863 – died 1936).

William Adamson, was born on 2nd April 1863 and brought up in Halbeath, then a mining village to the east of Dunfermline. His father was James Armstrong Adamson and his mother, Flora Cunningham, had also worked in the pits as a girl before the 1842 Act. He had rudimentary education at a local dame school but his father died and William had to become a pit boy aged 11; thereafter he was largely self-taught and at a young age he was one of the founders of the Mutual Improvement Society in Halbeath. He became strongly religious, a Baptist, and was actively teetotal.

He worked in the pits for 27 years but became a youthful delegate for Halbeath and Kingseat to the Board of the Fife, Clackmannan and Kinross Miners’ Association. In 1894 he became its Vice-President, in 1902 he was Assistant Secretary, a paid post, and in 1908 General Secretary.

In 1910 he was adopted as Labour Party candidate for West Fife and, though he was defeated by a Liberal in the first Election that year, he won in December 1910 to become the first Scottish miner to be elected to Westminster for a Scottish seat. Between 1917 and 1921 he was Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party and effectively Labour Leader in the Commons. When Labour formed a minority government following the 1923 General Election, Ramsay MacDonald appointed him Secretary of State for Scotland but Labour lost power after 11 months in November 1924.

In the 1929 General Election the Labour Party won 288 seats making it the largest party in the Commons. MacDonald became Prime Minister again but, as before, he had to rely on the support of the Liberals to get a majority. Once again MacDonald appointed Adamson as Scottish Secretary.

However, Adamson was running out of steam and was largely a figurehead with his Deputy, Tom Johnston taking most of the initiatives. The Government was confronted by a difficult economic situation at home and internationally and the May Committee recommended that the Government should cut its expenditure by £97m, including a £67m cut in unemployment benefit.

Adamson, as an old trade unionist, was one of those who voted against the cut in unemployment benefit and resigned. A new National Coalition Government was formed with Conservative Ministers joining but in October 1931 MacDonald called an election. In the landslide defeat of Labour, Adamson lost to the Conservatives, partly through the left’s vote being split with the Communists. Willie Gallacher, Communist, who had stood against him in 1929 and 1931, then went on to defeat Adamson for the seat in the 1935 election.

He was a forceful rather than an eloquent speaker, who preferred making a cogent case to flamboyant oratory. Beatrice Webb in a critical review of him, and others, in 1919 said he had made his way up from coal hewer ‘by industry and trustworthiness’ and he was ‘a typical British proletarian with instinctive suspicion of all intellectuals and enthusiasts’. In February 1887 he married Christine Marshall a linen factory worker. They had two sons, the elder killed in World War 1 and two daughters. His wife predeceased him in 1935 and he died on 23 February 1936.

“He was a typical British proletarian with instinctive suspicion of all intellectuals and enthusiasts”
- Beatrice Webb 1919

General Election 1910

There were two general elections in this year the breakthrough for Labour was the December election of Willie Adamson in West Fife. A constituency which at that time stretched from Methilhill to Kincardine. The main reason why both Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy had to wait to return Labour members were the boundaries. This changed radically in 1917 until then Dunfermline had been part of Stirling Burghs. The new Dunfermline Burghs took in the burghs of Cowdenbeath, Lochgelly and Inverkeithing. Similarly Kirkcaldy Burghs now took in Buckhaven and Methil and Burntisland.