the South Wales coalfields, the fourth child of Thomas Davies and his wife Esther. Thomas was a miner and trade union activist, who under the pseudonym Y Llwynog ("the Fox") wrote a column for the Welsh language newspaper Tarian y Gweithiwr ("The Worker's Shield"), in which he berated pit management and safety practices. His general militancy led to his blacklisting by pit owners, and after spells of unemployment he eventually found work as an insurance agent. Davies attended the local Cap Coch school, leaving at the age of 12, as was usual at that time, to begin work in the Cwmpennar coal mine. He remained there until the mine was exhausted in 1905, when he moved to Mountain Ash to work at Nixon's Navigation Colliery. His ambition and intelligence were quickly recognised by his superiors, and he was encouraged to study mining engineering, at first locally in Aberdare and, in 1907, at the Royal College of Science in London. In 1908, with sponsorship from the Brecon Memorial College, he passed his matriculation and began studying for a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree at University College, Cardiff, with a view thereafter to entering the nonconformist ministry. However, Davies's religious beliefs were influenced by R. J. Campbell, a noted preacher who rejected much traditional Christian teaching and asserted that socialism was the practical expression of Christianity. Davies's association with such supposed heresies was unacceptable to the Brecon college, which withdrew its financial support. Despite this loss of sponsorship, Davies completed his studies and graduated in 1913. His plans to enter the ministry were abandoned; he was an active member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and his religious vocation had been replaced by a commitment to working-class politics. In 1913, while still a student, he stood for election to Cardiff's Board of Guardians, as the ILP candidate in the Grangetown ward. This first foray into electoral politics ended in a narrow defeat, by 47 votes. Mineworker and union official After graduation, Davies returned to work in the mines, initially at Tumble in the Gwendraeth Valley. In December 1913, he unsuccessfully sought election as miners' sub-agent for the Anthracite Miners' district of the SWMF. When the First World War began in August 1914, he opposed it as capitalist militarism: "History teaches that war invariably brings in its wake a lower standard of morality, a restriction of the liberty of the masses, and a