The weekly Merthyr Pioneer was launched by Keir Hardie in 1911 with Thomas Evan Nicholas (Niclas y Glais) as its Welsh editor.

[2] The suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst wrote a weekly article for the paper signed with the initial S.[4] Mark Starr taught a series of course on Industrial History based on Marxist economics that were the basis of a series in the Pioneer and were reprinted as A Worker Looks at History by the Plebs' League in November 1917.

[2] Hardie argued strongly in the paper for a decentralised, devolved type of socialism based on local communities as opposed to the centralised German system.

As he wrote in his weekly column of the Pioneer, "The lads who have gone forth by sea and land to fight their country's battles must not be disheartened by a discordant note at home.

[9] Emrys Hughes, secretary of the No Conscription Fellowship in the Rhondda, covered military tribunals for the Merthyr Pioneer.