Obituary

1967, May 4th

Mr. Sam Watson, veteran miners' leader and a former chairman of the Labour Party, died yesterday at his home, Bede Rest, Durham, aged 69.

From humble beginnings in a cottage in Donkin's Row in the Durham village of Boldon Colliery, Watson rose to become an international figure but resisted all temptation to enter Parliament or move to London. He declared that his life's work was to serve the Durham miner.

He started work at the age of 14 at Boldon Colliery for 1s. 4d. a shift. To improve his education he joined the vicar's literary class and he also learnt at the bedside of his father, crippled by a pit accident.

At 20 he became secretary of Boldon miners' lodge and at 38 Durham miners elected him as an agent. Watson often describes this as one of his greatest successes. It was to prove a stepping stone that led to opportunities of great influence and of service to his fellow men. For it was followed by his appointment as secretary of the Durham area of the National Union of Mineworkers and it was in that role that he became nationally and internationally known.

Parliament was open to him with the prospect of a ministerial post in a Labour government. His reply was always a courteous refusal.

He never forgot that education had been one of the mainstays of progress of the Labour and trade union movement. After his retirement from the N.U.M. in 1963 he continued to give up his Sunday afternoons to carry on a tutorial class attended by a band of both young and mature men. Among those who have acknowledged the help which that class gave them in their earlier years is Mr. Norman Pentland, M.P. for Chester-le-Street.

For 22 years he was a member of the national executive of the Labour Party and in 1949 party chairman. He travelled widely, his favourite destination being Israel. He made many Israeli friends and in return Israel named a room in its new senate house "The Sam Watson Room".

Watson became a J.P., a director of North East Trading Estates, chairman of the Durham executive council of the National Health Service, and a member of the court of the University of Durham which conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law.

Traveller, writer, and orator, he took part in many great occasions but there is no doubt which was the greatest event to him. It was the Big Meeting — the Durham miners gala which he considered the greatest unorganised democratic demonstration in the world.

No one argued with him about that, nor questioned his own contribution to the change in character of the Big Meeting from being in its early days an indignant claim for the miners' rights to a joyous celebration of achievement. To take that further, one of Watson's most treasured documents was a statement of 27 improvements in the conditions of miners and their families — one for each of his years of service at Durham area union headquarters. Among them were the highest-ever wages, five-day week, pension schemes, modernisation of colliery houses, and free pit-head baths.

After his retirement from the N.U.M., the coal board and the Electricity Council benefited from his part-time membership.

He is survived by his wife, son, and daughter.

Source: The Times