Bernard Taylor, Baron Taylor of Mansfield

Bernard "Harry" Taylor, Baron Taylor of Mansfield CBE JP ( September 18, 1895 - April 11, 1991 ) was a British miner, trade unionist and Labor Party politician .

Early years

Taylor came from a family of miners from Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire . He left school at 14 and started working for the Sherwood Colliery coal mine . After a few years he was promoted to cradle inspector. In the First World War he refused to do military service.

Political career

Harry Taylor was a member of the National Union of Mineworkers and also joined the Labor Party. In 1925 he was elected to Mansfield-Woodhouse City Council and served on the Board of Guardians , which administered welfare services. In the British general election in 1929 he was campaign manager for Labor in Mansfield and organized the successful campaign for the politician Charles Brown . Despite defeats for Labor in the subsequent elections in 1931 and 1935 , Labor was able to hold its mandate in Mansfiel. Taylor himself was elected to Nottinghamshire County Council in 1935 . From 1936 to 1937 he was President of the Nottinghamshire Miners 'Association and Vice President of the Notts Miners' Federated Union from 1937 to 1941.

Just before Christmas 1940, Charles Brown, the Labor MP from Mansfield, died. It was obvious that Taylor would succeed him as MP, and he was elected in the April 1941 by-election. He became Parliamentary Adviser to MP Ben Smith , who was Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Aircraft Production during wartime .

In the post-war period he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to James Griffiths , the then Minister in charge of Social Security ( Minister of National Insurance ). While the main purpose of this post was to oversee relations between the minister and his parliamentary colleagues, Taylor also accompanied the minister on his travels across the country. After the 1950 elections , he became Parliamentary State Secretary in the same ministry until the Labor Party relinquished government responsibility in 1951.

As a member of the parliamentary opposition, Taylor, whose main concern has always been the social problems of miners, primarily focused on the issues of compensating workers after occupational accidents and illnesses and improving social benefits. When the Labor Party split in the early 1950s, Taylor sided with the left and Aneurin Bevan , who opposed the rearmament of Germany and the development of the hydrogen bomb . On the other hand, he was a critic of the Soviet intervention in the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the events that followed. After the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, he was one of the parliamentarians who signed a letter to US President John F. Kennedy calling for US nuclear missiles to be withdrawn from Britain in response to the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba .

Peerage and House of Lords

At the age of 70, Harry Taylor announced his retirement from political life in December 1965. After the 1966 election , he was peer- reviewed with the title Baron Taylor of Mansfield . In the same year he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

In 1981, Taylor teamed up with Lord Blyton , another former miner, and split the House of Lords over the Industrial Relations Bill , an industrial relations bill that the Labor Party opposed. He voted for reform of divorce law, but against euthanasia . In 1974 he was selected to respond to the Queen's speech with an address of allegiance. In the referendum on joining the European Economic Community , he argued against it. By the time he was over 90, Taylor was an avid visitor to the House of Lords, missing few sessions.

swell

• WD Rubinstein: The Biographical Dictionary of Life Peers . St Martin's Press. New York 1991
• M. Stenton and S. Lees .: Who's Who of British MPs . Vol. IV. Harvester Press 1981
• The Times

Web links

• Harry Taylor at Hansard (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 43981, HMSO, London, May 19, 1966, p. 5785 ( PDF , accessed October 20, 2013, English).