Robert Smillie was a Scottish labour leader. He was born in 1857 at Lanarkshire and died in 1940. His early years were spent working as a coalminer in the Lanarkshire collieries. He showed strong personality and good organising abilities while in the trade union movement, and became president of the Scottish Miners' Federation in 1894. Robert Smillie was prominent in the mining industry disputes which led to the Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1908 and the Coal Mines Act of 1911, and from 1912 he was annually elected president of the Miner's Federation of Great Britain, who made him their permanent president in 1919. In 1919 Robert Smillie attracted wide attention as the chief representative of the Federation on the Sankey Coal Industry Commission at the House of Lords and as the leader of the miners at the strike of 1920. In 1921 ill health forced him to resign from the post of president, and he became president of the Lanarkshire Miners' Union. He served as a Labour member of Parliament from 1923 to 1929. Research Robert Smillie
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