Sir Harold Josiah Finch (2 May 1898 – 16 July 1979), OBE was a WelshLabour Party politician. He was born in Barry, Glamorgan, the elder son of Josiah Coleman Finch and Emmie Finch (née Keedwell).[1] He married Gladys the daughter of Arthur Hinder in 1922, and had one son and one daughter.[2] He died in Newport.[3]
Early life
Finch attended Gladstone Road Elementary School in Barry and 'was brought up in a very religious atmosphere'[4] because his father was a Sunday-school teacher at the Wesleyan Chapel in Barry and his mother had a strong evangelical outlook. However, because of his father, he was also brought up in an atmosphere of trade unionism and politics. His father became the Secretary of the Barry branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants[5] and later held many local political posts. For example, in 1919 he was appointed the first Labour member to represent Barry on Glamorgan County Council; he was the first secretary of Barry Labour Party; he was elected a member of Barry Borough Council. Also, he became a magistrate.
Finch left school at the age of 14 and in 1912 he followed his father into the Barry Railway Company[6] as a clerk.[7] However, early on he began to take 'an intensive interest' in trade unionism. At the age of 17, he became the secretary of the Barry branch of the Railway Clerk's Association.[8] And, in keeping with his then keen interest in the Labour movement[9] he attended classes in Barry that were held under the auspices of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (which, along with the South Wales Miners' Federation, contributed to the Central Labour College).[10][11] Finch documented that the lecturers included A.J. Cook, Noah Ablett and James Gerry, a local lecturer on economics. He disclosed that, having been brought up in a religious home, he found the lectures that had a 'Marxist tinge' 'somewhat unsettling'.[12][13]
Trade unionism
About 1916, Finch felt that he was being discriminated against by his employer because of his trade union activities. Also he wanted to serve in the wider Trade Union Movement. Consequently, he attended an interview for the vacancy of a clerk in the offices in Blackwood, Monmouthshire of the Tredegar Valley Miners' District of the South Wales Miners Federation.[14] Finch was successful in his interview. Consequently he moved to Blackwood, where he lodged with Charles Edwards, the Assistant Agent, and his wife.[15] Later Finch moved with them to Risca, outside Newport, where, after his marriage to his fiancé Gladys in 1922, he set up home.
Evening classes were held in the Blackwood offices, which Finch attended and for which he undertook secretarial duties.[16] The lecturer at the classes was Sidney Jones, checkweigher at Llanover Colliery who had studied at the Central Labour College.[17] While Finch was attending the classes he met Aneurin Bevan, who was then working in Ty Trist Colliery, Tredegar, who he described as 'the star of the class.'[18]
In 1933 Finch was appointed the assistant compensation secretary and in 1935 he was appointed compensation secretary for the 'Fed'[19] and became an advisor to the National Union of Mineworkers, the NUM, in London.[20] By 1944 Finch had become a member of the 'Government Pneumoconiosis Advisory Committee' and had published several pamphlets on workmen's compensation, including that which was available as a consequence of the Temporary Increases Act, 1943.[21] In 1944 he had published his 'Guide to Workmen's Compensation Act 1925-43'.[22] Finch later extrapolated the considerable expertise that he had acquired about the epidemiology of what was eventually called 'pneumoconiosis' to the pulmonary disease from which the coal trimmers who loaded coal onto the boats in Cardiff, Penarth and Barry docks suffered.[23] He had first-hand experience of the disease because both his father-in-law and his brother-in-law were coal trimmers who died from it.[24]
^The classes had been preceded by the formation of the first Welsh branch of the Workers' Educational Association (WEA) in Barry in 1906, see Tatton (1988:116). However, a rivalry subsequently occurred throughout Britain between the WEA' and the Central Labour College movement which 'was more intense and bitter in South Wales than in any other area.' (Tatton again).
^ Griffiths (1983: 21) opined, independently of Finch: 'it is likely that the College reflected and recreated the preoccupations of Welsh marxists [sic], more than it originated them'. Ablett, who was extremely active politically (Tatton, p. 115), was a very likely Welsh Marxist, and might have been a lecturer or one of the lecturers to whom Finch alluded, but did not name.
^In 1916 Jones was the chairman of the joint Abernant and Llanover Lodges of the South Wales Miners’ Federation. Subsequently he became a notable local public figure. In 1920 he became a member of the Executive Council of the Federation. He was for many years the Secretary of Blackwood Welfare Scheme. He became an alderman of Monmouthshire County Council. And in 1948-49 he served as the Chairman of the Authority.
Bloor, Michael (2000). "The South Wales Miners Federation, miners' lung and the instrumental use of expertise, 1900-1950". Social Studies of Science. 30 (1): 125–140. doi:10.1177/030631200030001005. PMID11624678.
Finch, Harold (1944). Guide to Workmen's Compensation Act 1925-43. Cardiff: South Wales Miners' Federation.
Finch, Harold (1972). Memoirs of a Bedwellty MP. Risca, Newport: The Starling Press.
Jones, John Graham (2024). "Finch, Harold Josiah (1898-1979), Labour politician". In Johnston, Dafydd; Jones, Elin Haf Gruffydd (eds.). Dictionary of Welsh Biography. Aberystwyth: The National Library of Wales. Retrieved 19 November 2024.
Arnot, Robert Page (2023) [originally 1975]. South Wales Miners: Glowyr de Cymru: A History of the South Wales Miners' Federation (1914-1926). Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge. ISBN978-1-032-55142-5.
Bloor, Michael (2002). "No longer dying for a living: Collective responses to injury risks in South Wales mining communities 1900-47". Sociology. 36 (1): 89–105. doi:10.1177/0038038502036001005.
Borsay, Anne; Knight, Sara, eds. (2007). "Mining diseases and injuries". Medical records for the South Wales Coalfield, c.1890-1948. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN978-0-7083-2047-1.
Francis, Hywel; Smith, David (1980). The Fed A history of the South Wales miners in the twentieth century. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Multiple documents which cite Harold Finch and at least one audio recording of him are held in the South Wales Coalfield Collection of Swansea University. See Borsay, Anne; Sara, Knight, eds. (2007). Medical records for the South Wales Coalfield, c.1890-1948. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN978-0-7083-2047-1.
