Lawrence Daly (20 October 1924 – 23 May 2009) was a coal miner, trade unionist and political activist. Born in Fife as one of nine children, Daly's father Jimmy was a miner and a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), who suffered blacklisting due to his activities during the 1926 general strike. Jimmy was of Irish Catholic extraction whilst Lawrence's mother Janet was a Presbyterian. Lawrence was educated at local Catholic schools: he later said that his education had left him with both a considerable knowledge of Scottish poetry and "a need for a strongly authoritative dogma". He subsequently pursued adult education through correspondence courses organised by the National Council of Labour Colleges. At 15, Lawrence Daly began work as a miner at Glencraig Colliery. At this time he also joined the Young Communist League. Daly was soon active in the Scottish Mineworkers' Union. His initial involvement was in the labour movement's youth wing; amongst other activities he represented the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) on an international youth delegation to Moscow in 1945. He wrote a pamphlet on the visit titled A Young Miner Sees Russia, which was published the following year. He also attended the 1945 World Youth Conference in London as a delegate, where he met his future wife, Renee, who attended as a delegate from Worcestershire Youth Clubs. He was chair of the Scottish TUC's Youth Committee, and later was elected chair of the Scottish Youth Committee of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). He held a variety of offices in the Glencraig NUM Branch, probably the most important for an aspiring activist was his ten years as Workman's Inspector, an appointment provided for under the coal mines safety legislation. Although active in the CPGB from 1940, he was having differences with party doctrine from the late 1940s. Despite these differences, in 1951 Daly spent some time as full-time party agent in West Fife. He eventually left the Party in 1956, shortly before the mass exodus of membership over the Soviet invasion of Hungary. He became associated with the formation of the "New Left", in its journals New Reasoner and later the New Left Review. In 1957, Daly helped to found the Fife Socialist League. He joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament the same year. He was elected as a County Councillor for the Ballingry division in May 1958, and at the