There is a sign that I think about often. It sits at the side of the road between Newhouse and Holytown in North Lanarkshire.

Perched on the edge of wasteland, against a backdrop of warehouses and factories, it reads: “Legbrannock, birthplace of James Keir Hardie, 1856-1915, founder of the Independent Labour Party”.

I remember seeing a photograph of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn posing next to the sign during a tour of marginal constituencies in 2017.

But otherwise, save for the occasional periodic outing as a stock image during elections, this weather-beaten epitaph (and its matching sister sign a few hundred metres up the road), doesn’t seem to get much attention at all.

There is nothing that tells you anything more about the man to whom it refers, nor his raft of colossal achievements, although his name is everywhere around these parts.

The birthplace of James Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour party at Legbrannock, Holytown (Image: Colin Mearns)

Less than a mile away is the Keir Hardie Sports Centre in Holytown. Two miles as the crow flies is the Keir Hardie Memorial Primary School in Newarthill, a village that is also home to the........

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