W. E. Morgan

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William Evan Morgan (1858 – 19 February 1916) was a Welsh trade union leader. He was born in Rhos and began work at the Main Colliery in Bryncoch when he was nine years old. He had little formal schooling but educated himself in his spare time. When he was eighteen, he broke his thigh and could not work, so he devoted himself to trade unionism. He was elected the first secretary of a new local miners’ union, which later became the Swansea Valley Miners’ Union. In 1895 this union joined the Western Miners’ Association, and Morgan remained secretary.

Morgan spoke Welsh and English. He was elected to the Cilybebyll parish council and School Board and helped persuade them to teach Welsh as well as English—the first parish in Wales to do so. He also served on the Pontardawe Board of Guardians, was a governor of Ystalyfera Intermediate School, and chaired the Alltwen and Pontardawe Co-operative Society.

In 1898 the union became the Western District of the South Wales Miners’ Federation, with Morgan again as secretary and a member of its executive council. Two years later he moved to Swansea and became the district’s sub-agent. In the 1907 Glamorgan County Council election, he stood as a Labour Party candidate in Loughor and Penderry but was defeated by J. T. D. Llewellyn, losing by only a few votes in the area where he lived.

Morgan’s health declined due to diabetes in the mid-1910s. His son died at the end of 1915, and Morgan died in February 1916.