Alfred Onions

Two years after Onions started work in the Black Vein Colliery, it closed down for a while. Consequently, he obtained work in the collieries in the Rhondda and then Abercarn.^[5] Subsequently, he rose through the ranks of the local trade union movement. Initially in Abercarn colliery, he was selected as checkweighman.^[6] Then, in 1888 he was selected as the secretary of the Monmouth District of the Monmouthshire and South Wales District Miners' Association, which was based in Crumlin, in which capacity he served for ten years. While he was the secretary, in 1891 his peers selected him to represent the miners of South Wales at the Paris Congress of the Miners' International Federation.^[7]

From 1893 to 1898 Onions served as the Miners' Agent for the Rhymney Valley. In 1898 the Monmouthshire and South Wales District Miners' Association became part of the South Wales Miners' Federation ('The Fed'), for which he was one of its founding members and became its first treasurer.^[8] From 1898 to 1918 he served as the Miners' Agent for the Tredegar Valley (now known as the Sirhowy Valley). Also he represented South Wales several times on the committee of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. In 1910 he travelled with Robert Smillie, his Scottish counterpart, to the German coalfields in the Ruhr 'to investigate the conditions of the working-classes ... under the tariff system.'^[9][10] Their report was subsequently published later that year.^[11]

Onions was active in the Liberal-Labour movement, serving on local school boards, then on Monmouthshire County Council,^[12] on which he became its chair. He was also the first chair of Risca Urban District Council.

He was elected as member of parliament for Caerphilly at the 1918 general election and retired in 1921. He was succeeded by Morgan Jones.

• Arnot, Robert Page (2023) [originally 1967]. South Wales miners : Glowyr De Cymru : a history of the South Wales Miners Federation, 1898-1914. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781000963915.
• Edwards, Ness (1938). History of the South Wales Miners' Federation. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
• Francis, Hywel; Smith, David (1980). The Fed A history of the South Wales miners in the twentieth century. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Retrieved 5 October 2024.