John Verran (9 July 1856 – 7 June 1932) was an Australian politician and trade unionist. He served as premier of South Australia from 1910 to 1912, the second member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to hold the position. Verran was born in Cornwall and arrived in Australia as a young child. He began working in the copper mines at Moonta as a young boy and eventually became president of the local miners' union. He was elected to the South Australian House of Assembly in 1901 as a member of the United Labor Party, the predecessor of the current ALP. Verran was chosen as the party's leader in 1909, following the death of Thomas Price, and won a majority at the 1910 state election. His agenda was hampered by the obstructionist Legislative Council and the government was defeated in 1912. He resigned as leader in 1913 and left the party following the split of 1916, losing his seat in 1918. After several unsuccessful candidacies for non-Labor parties he was chosen to fill a casual vacancy in the Senate from 1927 to 1928, sitting as a Nationalist. Early life Verran was born at Gwennap, Cornwall in UK, on 9 July 1856 and when only three months old was taken by his parents to Australia. The family lived at Kapunda, South Australia, until he was eight, and then moved to Moonta where copper had been discovered in 1861. Verran received very little education and before he was 10 years old was working at the copper-mines as a pickey-boy, whose job it was to sort the ore above ground. He attended a night school some years later. Verran learned to read with encouragement from the ministers of the Primitive Methodist church at Moonta. When 18 he went to the Queensland gold-mines but soon returned to Moonta, where he worked as a miner for nearly 40 years. He was elected president of the Moonta miners' association (the Amalgamated Miners' Association) and held this office from 1895 to 1913. Verran was an active member and local preacher in the Primitive Methodist church, and later recognised this influence with the comment "I am an M.P., because I am a P.M." Verran married Catherine Trembath in Moonta on 21 February 1880. They had eight children together before she died in 1914. State parliament In 1901 he was elected a member of the South Australian House of