Kier Hardie addresses a crowd in Manchester, 1905

And so were miners–over 250 of them up in a blast at Pontypridd in 1894, which pissed Keir off so fierce he stuffed his deerstalker on his head and proceeded to rage at the House of Commons. Five years later perfectly respectable ladies were practicing take-downs in their back gardens, collecting bags of stones to throw through shop windows, and smacking bobbies right in the face, when they weren’t spitting on them. But the ladies who were fighting and the miners who were fighting weren’t on the same side. And then there was the War, which was actually good for all of them.

Yes, it was the best thing that could have happened. Interesting story there . . .