MINER Harry Smith, of Huncoat, created history back in 1933 when he became the first coal face worker to also be elected to the Miner’s Executive of Great Britain.

The honour had never been given to a working miner before – and he alternated his days between arguing for better conditions and enduring them hundreds of feet below ground.

He worked for Messrs George Hargreaves and Co’s collieries all his life, at Huncoat, Calder and Scaitcliffe pits.

His father Thomas Smith had been a miner before him and the president of Accrington and District Miners’ Federation for 16 years.

Harry, born in 1893, followed him as president and was also a member of the Lancashire and Cheshire and Miners’ Federation Executive as well as the Miners’ Joint Wages Board, which considered wages for the whole of the Lancashire coalfields.

He married Annie Pinder at the Baptist Church in Huncoat in 1915 and they lived with their five children, Hilda, Thomas, Marion, Muriel and Harry at 1, James Street.

Associated with the trade union movement for many years and a staunch Socialist, he had three times been a Labour candidate in local elections in both Central and East wards in the early 1930s.

He was also vice president of Clitheroe Labour Party, served on the Haslingden Board of Guardians and was a member of the Central Working Men’s Club.

Harry died at the age of 41 down the pit in the summer of 1934, only days after returning from a week-long conference in Edinburgh.

Only 10 minutes before the end of his shift, working under a 30inch seam, he complained of feeling unwell and collapsed on to his sledge.

He was pronounced dead at the surface by Dr Ross and a subsequent inquest gave the cause of death as natural causes.

Among those called to give evidence was his young drawer, James Boobier, of Fern Grove, Accrington, and miner Caleb Aspin of Major Street, Accrington, who had been working alongside him on the early shift.

Miners, mine officials and managers, trades union representatives and Labour party officials were among the mourners at his funeral at Accrington Cemetery, with a service held at Huncoat Baptist Church.

Harry’s father, born in 1871, who had been licensee of the Black Bull Hotel, at Huncoat, died at his home in Higher Gate, the following year.