The Welsh coal miner who became Father of the House of Commons

The life of a Welsh miner and MP who helped rescue dozens of refugees fleeing Nazi persecution is the subject of a new biography.

David Rhys Grenfell, known as D. R. (1881–1968) represented the Gower constituency in parliament for 37 years. Having left school at the age of 12, D. R. Grenfell spent 23 years working as a coal miner in the Gorseinon area before being elected Miners’ Agent and then holding Gower for Labour in a by-election in the summer of 1922.

Seen as firmly on the Left of the Labour Party in the 1920s, he rose to prominence after Labour’s defeat in 1931 through his work in parliament and as a tireless campaigner in the country as Labour re-established itself as a credible opposition in the 1930s.

Biographer Robert Smith notes: “From the mid-1920s he warned of the dangers of fascism in Europe and watched with horror as its influence spread in the 1930s. He helped shape Labour policy in response to the Spanish Civil War, assisting Basque children and others to flee the country. He then became the Labour Party’s representative in Prague following the Munich agreement, where he helped opponents of the Nazis, including many from Vienna and the Sudetenland who had sought refuge in Prague, to escape to Britain.

“Appointed as Secretary of Mines in the wartime coalition government, he grappled with the deep-seated problems that blighted coal production in the difficult years of 1940–42. This brought him into direct conflict with many of Churchill’s ministers, including several who were to be prominent in the post-war Attlee government.”

Robert Smith discusses Attlee’s decision not to include D. R. in the post-war Labour government and charts D. R.’s subsequent career as a backbencher, loyal to his Labour principles but often at odds with the party leadership on questions affecting Wales and also on international policy.

He adds: “This book aims to shed light on the career of one of the forgotten figures of the Welsh Labour movement, a man who may not have been at the centre of the famous post-war Labour government but whose work was undoubtedly essential in laying the foundations for what it achieved.”

D. R. Grenfell, Socialist, Welshman, Internationalist (Y Lolfa) will be published 8th September (ISBN: 978-1-80099-714-1, £19.99).

Find out more and buy from Y Lolfa HERE

Robert Smith graduated in History from the University of Wales, Swansea, where he subsequently was awarded a PhD and PGCE qualification. He is the author of Schools, Politics and Society, Elementary Education in Wales 1870–1902 (1999), Hanes Libanus, Gorseinon (2012) and, with W. Gareth Evans and Gareth Elwyn Jones, Examining the Secondary Schools of Wales 1896–2000 (2008).