Noah Ablett

Noah Ablett (4 October 1883 – 31 October 1935) was a Welsh trade unionist and political theorist. He contributed to The Miners' Next Step, a syndicalist treatise which Ablett described as "scientific trade unionism". Through the Plebs' League he helped establish Marxist educational programmes for miners in the Rhondda valleys.

Early life and education

Ablett was born on 4 October 1883 at Ynyshir in the Rhondda Fach to John Ablett and his wife Jane ; he was the tenth child of eleven. After attending Ferndale Higher Grade School, he began work at the Standard Colliery in Ynyshir at age 12 in 1895. Originally intending to join the ministry, Ablett was a lay preacher with the Baptists during the Wales religious revival.

Ablett suffered a serious work accident when a four-ton piece of coal landed on his leg, causing compound fractures, and also broke two fingers on his hand. He had been studying for civil service examinations as a means of escaping underground work, but the accident left him with a lasting disability and the civil service did not employ people with physical disabilities at the time. Ablett later recalled: He remained in the coal mines and later described the miner's working conditions: A further turning point came when he discovered that his father was to face a reduction in wages, which Ablett believed was punishment for his union activities. He "immediately rushed back to the pit, and on my own initiative posted up notices that a meeting at the pit top was to be held". The reduction was later cancelled, but the incident led Ablett to study the works of Robert Blatchford and Karl Marx, becoming a convinced socialist. At age 16, Ablett participated in the 1898 South Wales miners' strike, which led to the workers' defeat through a six-month lockout. Following this lockout, the miners formed the South Wales Miners' Federation. The strike and formation of the Federation had a major influence on Ablett's political attitudes.

He became concerned with the poor pay and working conditions of the Rhondda coal miners and joined the Independent Labour Party. A keen learner, he won a scholarship to Ruskin College, Oxford in 1907. Ablett was dissatisfied with the education he received at Ruskin, feeling that the college's connection to Oxford University was an example of the establishment attempting to control working-class knowledge and opinion. He organised alternative lectures on Marxist economics and history for his fellow students to promote different ideas from the college's more traditional offerings. While at Ruskin, Ablett was significantly influenced by the ideas of American socialist writer Daniel De Leon, whose theories on industrial unionism and workers' control would later shape Ablett's syndicalist philosophy. In March 1909, when the college authorities dismissed Principal Dennis Hird for supporting student Marxist activities, Ablett organised a student strike in protest.

On returning to the valleys he established Marxist educational classes and took part in campaigns for a minimum wage.

Syndicalist activism

On his return to South Wales in 1909, Ablett became a checkweighman at Mardy Colliery in Maerdy and the following year was one of the founders of the Unofficial Reform Committee. Ablett took part in the Cambrian Combine strike of 1910–11, a dispute that involved over 30,000 miners and led to the Tonypandy riots.

In 1912 he married Annie Howells, with whom he had one son (Watkin) and a daughter (Beatrice). During 1912 he also co-authored The Miners' Next Step, a pamphlet demanding a minimum wage for miners and advocating for workers' control of the mines. The pamphlet opposed nationalisation of the coal mines, instead favouring direct worker control of mining operations.

In November 1912, Ablett debated W. F. Hay at Trealaw on the question of political versus industrial action, asking his audience: "Are we willing to let ignorance in Whitehall sit in judgement on knowledge in the Rhondda, to let the man who does not know govern the men who do?"

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 posed a challenge to Ablett's syndicalist convictions. Having been brought up to believe that the only war worth fighting was the class war, he watched as thousands of Welsh miners enlisted. The Central Labour College closed for the duration and did not reopen until 1919, when Ablett himself was given the honour of reopening it. Between 1914 and 1919 Ablett's oratory drew large audiences and he influenced events including the South Wales miners' strike of 1915.

By 1919 Ablett was an executive of the South Wales Miners' Federation and was chairman of the board of governors of the Central Labour College, where he had served on the board of management representing the Rhondda district from 1911 to 1915. He also represented South Wales miners at the Leeds Convention of 1917, which expressed solidarity with the Russian Revolution. Although Ablett described himself as a "convinced communist", he never joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. At heart he remained a syndicalist, believing that socialism should be achieved through workers' control of industry rather than through the state, and warning of "the horror of bureaucracy co-mingled with the desire to govern as much as possible the conditions under which one has to live".

This scepticism towards state power also set him at odds with the Labour Party, whose commitment to harnessing the resources of the state was enshrined in Clause IV of its constitution. In 1919 Ablett was approached by the Labour Party to contest the Pembrokeshire constituency ahead of the 1922 general election. Ablett turned down the invitation, explaining that "my belief in the efficacy of the industrial movement of Labour far exceeds my hopes of the rapid success of Labour politics". Also in 1919, Ablett's sole book Easy Outline of Economics was published through the Plebs' League. Between 1921 and 1926 he served as an executive member of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. He lost his influence on the Labour movement and lost his seats on the executive committee of the South Wales Miners' Federation, the management committee of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, and the board of governors of the Central Labour College.

In later life Ablett struggled with alcoholism. He died of cancer at his home, Rock Villa in Dyke Street, Merthyr Tydfil, in 1935.

Legacy Aneurin Bevan, Labour politician and founder of the National Health Service, described Ablett as "a leader of great intellectual power and immense influence." Will Lawther, a pupil of Ablett's at the Central Labour College who later became a prominent miners' union leader, described him as "the greatest pre-war Marxist." The Miners' Next Step has been described as a landmark document in British labour history.

His educational philosophy, embodied through the Plebs' League, helped establish independent working-class education programmes that countered mainstream liberal educational approaches. His textbook Easy Outline of Economics was used to popularise Marxist economics within the labour movement.