degradation of their social conditions". In 1917, Davies founded and was first chairman of the Burry Port and Gwendraeth Valley Trades and Labour Council. He was initially selected as the Labour candidate for the Llanelli constituency in the 1918 general election, but stood down when the SWMF backed his rival, J. H. Williams. In 1918, Davies sought the position of miners' agent for the Dowlais district of the SWMF. Against strong competition—his main opponent was William Mainwaring, later a long-serving Labour MP for Rhondda East—Davies gained the seat by 100 votes. The main role of the agent was to represent miners in disputes with their employers; typically these would involve issues of pay, redundancy, working hours, and compensation for injuries. Davies's surviving day books reveal the extent to which he was concerned with cases where the mining companies denied liability for underground injuries. In the summer of 1919, Davies married Elizabeth Margaret ("Madge") Eley in Cardiff; the couple had three daughters. The years following the First World War saw economic decline and hardship in the South Wales coalfields, conditions which deepened Davies's radical instincts, and he began to acquire a reputation for militancy. Contrary to mainstream Labour Party policy, Davies advocated workers' control rather than the nationalisation of the mining industry. In 1921, he unsuccessfully advocated affiliation of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB, precursor of the National Union of Mineworkers or NUM) with the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU). The following year, he was a delegate from the SWMF to the Second World Congress of the RILU in Moscow, and acquired a warm sympathy towards the Soviet system. He did not, however, join the recently formed Communist Party of Great Britain, and remained within the Labour Party. In 1924, Davies was appointed SWMF's chief organiser and legal adviser, and was elected its vice-president. He also served as the South Wales representative on the executive committee of the MFGB from 1924 to 1934. During the May 1926 general strike, the South Wales miners were among the most fervent in support of the action. When the national strike collapsed after nine days, Davies led the continued resistance from the Welsh coalfields through months of lockout, before capitulation on harsh terms in December. Dowlais was the last district to return to work. The period following 1926 saw much in-fighting between communist and non-communist factions in the coalfields. Davies and other