The Redhills Team has welcomed a direct descendant of the pioneering trade union leader Alexander MacDonald.
Peter Livingstone visited Redhills to view the statue of his esteemed ancestor on the grounds of Durham Miners Hall. Peter, from Dorset, was in the region visiting family.
MacDonald was born in New Monkland, Lanarkshire and began his working life as a miner aged 8. Self-educated, he later left the mines and became a teacher but dedicated himself to improving pay and conditions in the mining industry. He built a mining trade union in Scotland and later became the first president of the Miners National Association. In 1871, he spoke from the platform at the first Durham Miners’ Gala.
In 1874, he was elected as the Lib-Lab candidate for Stafford, becoming one of the first working-class MPs. Across the decades, his organising, leadership and lobbying of government resulted in a series of acts of parliament, slowly improving working conditions in coal mines.
Following his death in 1881, the DMA erected a statue in his honour at the first Miners Hall in North Road.
The then DMA President William Crawford said: “It is the last tribute of respect we can pay to one who kept steadily in view the object of his life – to reduce the misery and alleviate the sorrows of the mining population.”
The statue of MacDonald, along with those of Crawford, Patterson and Forman, was originally positioned on a first-floor window ledge of the original miners’ hall on North Road before moving to the grounds of Redhills when it opened in 1915.