Old Jim Horner's Boy

At No. 76 Clare Street in the little Welsh town of Merthyr, an old man sits before a glowing fireplace. Aberdare Mountain rises just opposite the front porch and the River Taff flows by the back garden. At 79, old Jim Horner, sometime foremen at the Merthyr railroad station, is as clear of speech and keen of wit as ever. He is also as stoutly devoted as ever to his son Arthur, old Jim's pride and pain. Arthur has gone far since his childhood in Merthyr. Today he holds the fate of the nation in his clenched fists.

As general secretary and boss of the National Union of Mine Workers, Arthur Horner controls the key to Britain's survival--coal. No matter how much aid the U.S. gives Britain and the Continent, Europe cannot recover unless Britons mine more coal. After a slight increase last spring, coal production is falling off again. That was the gist of Fuel and Power Minister Emanuel Shinwell's report to the House of Commons last week.

Arthur Horner himself, with a grimness he almost seemed to relish, told 50,000 of his men at Morpeth last week: "We shall be five million tons short of our requirements by the end of 1947." Mrs. Ivy Lee, a young London matron, understood what that meant. She said: "A good thing I didn't give away my little boy's push pram--looks like coming in handy again this winter, if we have to queue for a few pounds down at the old coal wharf."

How would Arthur Horner use his vast power in Britain's economic crisis? Arthur Horner's first loyalty is not to his country or his town, to his King or his father. Arthur Horner is a Communist.

The Preacher. When Arthur Horner was born in Merthyr 53 years ago, Britain was mighty and coal was at the core of her might. Old Jim Horner raised his son to fear God. Young Arthur forgot much of what old Jim taught him, but Arthur never forgot that coal meant power.

He went to work in a barbershop when he was twelve, as a wobbler's boy (in charge of lathering the customers). Then he became a grocer's helper; all evening he would fill his little wooden wagon with goods, and at midnight he started his laborious deliveries to the scattered cottages on the mountainside; at the edge of town a small, bespectacled man would meet him and help him pull the heavy load. It was his father, who always tried to make things easier for his son.

Arthur discovered a talent for preaching. One day, a lay preacher in the town fell ill and asked Arthur to take his place. From then on, though he was only 16, his fluent voice began to echo through the Welsh valleys. Old Jim skimped to send the youngster to a Baptist training college.

Then Jim Horner's money ran out. Arthur had to quit his religious studies, take a job in the coal pits. But he kept preaching. His sermons became tinged with socialism, and gradually only socialism remained. The mine owners fired him and he was blacklisted in all the Welsh mines. When World War I broke out, he refused to bear arms in what he called "an imperialist and anti-working-class war."

Police hunted him. His father tried to shelter Arthur, but the house on Clare Street was not safe enough. On New Year's Eve 1918, he left his father's house and took the mountain path up Aberdare. He walked all night and all day into the New Year till he saw the little mining town of Maerdy in the valley below. It was there that Arthur Horner's vindictive rise to power began.

The Prisoner. Together with a red-haired Welsh miner called Charlie Jones, he organized the miners of Maerdy. When the police got after Horner again, he fled to Ireland, and under the name Jack O'Brien served in the Irish Republican Army. When he heard that his wife had borne him a son, he returned to Britain. The minute he came ashore, the police arrested him. During his term at Wormwood Scrubbs Prison, he was the most obstreperous prisoner the wardens ever knew.

On his release, he was forcibly inducted into the Army, forcibly dressed in uniform; a tall Welsh Guardsman, who was to escort him back to Wales, ordered him to shoulder his pack. Homer refused. The deadlock continued till a crowd gathered. Finally a grey-haired little man stepped forward, quietly picked up the pack and murmured: "Come along, Arthur." It was Arthur Horner's father. Arthur's finish to the story: "Of course, as we got round the corner, I took the pack from the old man--but I was damned if I was going to cave in under the eyes of everyone there." Old Jim Horner has a topper to that finish; he claims that before they had traveled back to Wales, Arthur had converted his Guardsman escort to pacifism.

When Arthur still refused to serve in the Army, he was imprisoned again. His father traveled hundreds of miles to prisons all over the country, taking him clean clothing, cozening prison officials to allow him a few words with his son. Released, he went back to Maerdy, resumed his organizing work. "He was a bloody nuisance to everybody," said one of his critics. "Maerdy was run like a blasted Soviet." Soon Maerdy became known as Little Moscow.

In the great strike of 1921, Horner even forced the safety crew to walk out of the Maerdy mines. Without the safety men, the mines were flooded. Arthur Horner was jailed again. It was not until seven years later that some of the Maerdy mines were reopened, but they ran at a loss and had to be sold. The owners were beaten, but so was Maerdy. Today it is a silent town in which not a pit wheel turns.

The Devil. While his adopted town was decaying, Horner forged ahead, became one of the first members of Britain's Communist Party, visited Russia, helped build up his union into one of Britain's strongest. He achieved genuine betterment of the British miners' lot, and they loved him for it.

Today, a small, bespectacled, inconspicuous man, he sits in a dingy office in a dingy building, hiding behind the union's figurehead president, Will Lawther. He lives quietly in suburban Kenton. His power grows. He has distributed Communists in key positions throughout his union, is now trying hard to pull members from Ernie Bevin's Transport and General Workers into his own union.

At last week's National Union of Mine Workers' conference at Rothesay, in Scotland, Horner gave a demonstration of his tactics and his might. On the platform he sat between grim, green-eyed Manny Shinwell and buck-toothed Lord Hyndley, chairman of the National Coal Board. Horner got from both of them exactly what he wanted. He asked for the closed shop, shorter hours, more social security.

Shinwell said that if these demands were granted now Britain's whole economic machine might be thrown out of gear. But Shinwell knew that he had to stay on good terms with Horner if any coal at all is to be mined. So Shinwell helplessly held out his hands, shrugged and said: "I come in a mood of appeasement."

Will Horner try to do to Britain what he did to Maerdy? Some Britons would not put it past him. Horner himself has said: "If there were a possibility of war with Russia, the coal fields would stop."

As always, old Jim Horner, in his house at Merthyr, is sticking up for his son. Last week, putting his worn velvet slippers carefully on the blacklead fender before the fireplace, he declared stoutly: "They've had our Arthur in prison four times--but he never did do anything wrong."

Others feel differently. Said a mine owner: "That bad little devil! I'd willingly strangle him with my own bare hands."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.