Catalogue Number
NMLH.2024.42.1
Object Name
Ballot
Title
'South Wales Miners' Federation Ebbw Vale Parliamentary Division Ballot Paper for selection of Miners' Candidate'
Place
Ebbw Vale, Tredegar, Rhymney, Wales
People
South Wales Miners' Federation, Aneurin Bevan
Events
South Wales Miners' Federation election 1929
Description
A framed ballot paper produced by the South Wales Miners' Federation for the Ebbw Vale Parliamentary Division. The candidates were Aneurin Bevan from Tredegar, Evan Davies from Ebbw Vale, and Bryn Roberts from Rhymney. There are instructions for successful voting at the bottom of the page.
This ballot paper is to select which of the three candidates for Ebbw Vale parliamentary seat will be backed by the South Wales Miners' Federation in the 1929 election. Union backing was important in industrial areas as it was expected union members would vote as a block - a union's backing or refusal to back a candidate could make or break a candidate's campaign. Aneurin 'Nye' Bevan, a prominent South Wales miner and labour union leader, was backed by the union and selected as the Labour Party's candidate for the Ebbw Vale seat, displacing the sitting MP Evan Davies (also on this ballot). He won the seat with twenty thousand votes, a majority of twelve thousand.
Bevan had been a miner and member of the South Wales Miners' Federation since leaving school at 13. Bevan's union organising and whistle blowing about unsafe conditions, had him blacklisted by local mines. His father's death from pneumoconiosis (a lung illness which affects many mine workers who have inhaled coal dust) and lack of ability to afford good medical help deeply impacted Bevan's politics and may have contributed to his eventual commitment to founding the National Health Service on July 5th 1948, which would provide free and equal treatment at the point of access to all across the UK.
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