Cylchgronau Cymru

understanding of the value of advertisements in the financing of newspapers, and this in turn was a reflection of a growing awareness on the part of advertisers of the power of the press to communicate a message speedily and effectively to a large number of people. It was this that appealed to the ambitious politicians of the Left, just as much as to politicians of all camps. Certainly the combination of a greater accessibility to newspaper technology and a growing confidence in the power of newspapers to influence their readers led to a boom in politically orientated newspapers. Between 1880 and 1909, approximately 800 newspapers were published in the interest of Labour, and of these around a half were explicitly socialist newspapers.3 The Independent Labour Party alone produced over 70 newspapers, mostly local and regional, while many of the leaders of the early Labour movement were active journalists; Philip Snowden, Ramsay MacDonald, Bruce Glasier, Tom Mann, H. H. Champion and Keir Hardie. Others achieved pro- minence in the movement because they were journalists; Joseph Burgess, G. W. Wardle and, most important of all, Robert Blatchford. New political parties established their own newspapers as a matter of urgency; the Socialist League and Commonweal, the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Standard, while the frequent up- heavals within the syndicalist movement were usually manifested by the creation of yet another new newspaper. In these early days, newspapers were the respiratory system of socialism. The socialists of Merthyr Tydfil appreciated all this. They were fully aware of their impotence in the face of the unchallenged onslaught of the local Liberal press, and they recognised that the true symbol of their political maturity, and the best index of their local support, was a local socialist newspaper. It is not clear, however who began the first initiatives. It is usually assumed that Keir Hardie was the chief spirit behind the Pioneer,4 if only because he was the local MP and, at the same time, the doyen of the British Labour movement at the time. Moreover, Hardie had always been closely associated with newspapers, from his early days as a correspondent on mining affairs on the Ardrossan and Salcoats Herald to his long period as owner and editor of the Labour Leader. Indeed, when he sold that paper to the National Executive Committee of the ILP it was clearly laid down, as a condition of sale, that he should not publish another paper for at least five years.5 Certainly, Hardie contributed a regular column for the Pioneer right up until his death in 1915. Yet, at no time, was Keir Hardie formally involved with the setting up and management of the paper. Nor for that matter, despite what Hardie's biographers have suggested, was the Merthyr ILP. The Pioneer vigorously denied, time and again, that it was the 'organ' of any party in Merthyr.6 It was intended to be, and remained, a broadly based newspaper reflecting the diversity of the Merthyr Labour movement. It was, in every respect, the newspaper of the movement as a whole, and it was, for much of its existence, owned by a large section of that movement. In December 1907, a Merthyr solicitor submitted an application form to the Regi- strar of Public Companies to establish a new company, the Labour Pioneer Printing and Publishing Company. The registered office was given as The Ruskin Institute, Victoria Street, Dowlais, and a list often directors was presented. In the absence of Keir Hardie's