Arthur Hayday

Arthur Hayday (born October 24, 1869 in London , † February 28, 1956 ) was a British politician (Labor Party) and trade unionist.

Life and activity

Hayday was a son of Thomas Bloomfield Hayday and his wife Sarah Susannah, b. Glander. He attended St. Luke's National School in the Tidal Basin, which he left at the age of nine to work as a gardener. He then worked as a kitchen boy, chemical worker and stoker in the merchant navy.

In 1894, Hayday joined the Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF), the dominant workers' organization in his homeland, West Ham. Hayday began early on in the trade union movement, especially in the National Union of Gasworkers and General Laborers, which had its center in the West Ham district of London: in 1898 he became a full-time functionary of the same. From 1900 to 1908 he was the organizer and then district secretary of that union in Midland. From 1908 to 1937 he worked for the National Union of General Workers or (from 1924) National Union of General and Municipal Workers. In 1917 he took part in the workers' conference in Buffalo, America.

In 1912 Hayday joined the British Socialist Party (BSP).

During the First World War, Hayday stood out as an emphatic advocate of war: he appeared at recruitment events at which volunteers were to be recruited for service in the British army and after the introduction of the system of involuntary recruiting in 1916 he was a member of eviction commissions. This attitude, which was particularly welcomed by conservative circles, made his trade union work in the National Union of General Workers easier.

On the occasion of the general election of December 1918, Hayday first moved to the House of Commons , the British Parliament, as a member of the House of Commons : As a candidate for the Labor Party in the constituency of Nottingham West, he stood up against a competitor from the Liberal Party on a platform that was a mixture of appeal Represented patriotic feelings and social desires through. He initially represented Nottingham West in Parliament until 1931, with his mandate being confirmed in three elections (1922, 1924 and 1929). In the 1931 elections he lost his seat to the conservative Arthur Cecil Caporn , but was able to regain his seat in the November 1935 election. After his return to parliament he was a member of it without interruption until the elections in summer 1945. His successor as representative of the Nottingham West constituency was Tom O'Brien .

In the House of Commons, Hayday was considered an influential backbencher in the Labor faction and an expert on the intricacies of unemployment insurance. In 1929 he was appointed to the Morrisson Commission, which was supposed to re-regulate unemployment benefits against the background of the mass unemployment caused by the economic crisis. In the course of this activity, he developed a criterion that was widely known at the time as the basis for deciding who would receive support and who would not, which was known as the Hayday Formula: This read that a person who would turn down a job that was suitable for him State unemployment benefits would be lost. Ultimately, however, the Hayday Formula was not included in the official recommendations of the Morrisson Commission.

From 1922 to 1937 Hayday was in addition to his membership of the General Council of the British Trade Union Congress (Trade Union Congress), as its chairman he served from 1930 to 1931. He was also temporarily Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Lord Seal Keeper John Robert Clynes .

In 1933 Hayday took part in the International Workers' Congress in Geneva, where he criticized the chairman of the German Labor Front (DAF) Robert Ley for the National Socialist policy towards the labor movement, in particular the forced dissolution of the trade unions.

literature

• David Howell: "Hayday, Arthur (1869-1956)", in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography .