George Nicoll Barnes

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George Barnes (1916)

George Nicoll Barnes (born January 2, 1859 in Lochee , Dundee , † April 21, 1940 in London ) was a British politician ( Labor Party ). He officiated a. a. as Chairman of the Labor Party and Minister in the British Cabinet during World War I.

Life and activity

George Nicoll Barnes circa 1920. Portrait study by James Guthrie for Statesmen of World War I .

George Nicoll Barnes was the second of five sons of the engineer and mine manager James Barnes and his wife Catherine nee. Landlands. At the age of eleven, Barnes began working in a jute factory in Podners End , Middlesex, which his father ran . He had previously attended church school on Enfield Highway for a number of years . He later spent two years as an engineering apprentice at Pows James of Lambeth and then at Parker's Foundry in Dundee . He then worked at the Vickers shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness . At the end of the 1870s he went to London, where he was initially unemployed. He then managed to get by in changing short-term positions before he found a permanent position at Lucas and Airds in Fulham .

In the 1880s Barnes began to be active in the trade union movement: He became a member of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers , in which he finally brought as a full-time functionary post as assistant secretary (1892-1896) and general secretary (1896-1908). In the period from July 1897 to January 1898 he organized and led a nationwide strike by British engineers in the latter position. In 1893 Barnes joined the newly formed Independent Labor Party .

On the occasion of the British general election in 1906, Barnes was elected for the first time as a member of the House of Commons , the British Parliament, as a candidate for the Labor Party against the Conservative incumbent and later Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law in the constituency of Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown . He was one of the first two Labor Party members to be elected to parliament in Scotland . Previously he had run unsuccessfully for the Independent Labor Party for parliament in 1895. In the following years he was re-elected several times, and was a member of parliament for this constituency for a total of twelve years, until 1918 when his constituency was dissolved. For this reason, Barnes stood in the December 1918 election in the newly established constituency of Glasgow Gorbal , which he - after a successful election - represented in parliament until 1922. He was a member of the House of Commons for a total of 16 years (from 1906 to 1922).

From February 14, 1910 to February 6, 1911, Barnes served as chairman of the Labor Party.

In 1916, Barnes was appointed Minister of Pensions to the government of David Lloyd George . In 1917 he gave up his post to John Hodge , but was a minister with no portfolio in the British Cabinet until 1920. His first task was to represent the Labor Party in government: when he refused to take this step after the Labor Party left the Lloyd George government in 1918 and instead remained in government, he was expelled from the Labor Party . He then founded the National Democratic and Labor Party together with the British Workers League , which - in contrast to the Labor Party - continued to support the idea of ​​an all-party government - as it had been in government in Great Britain since 1915. As a candidate for this new party, he was able to be re-elected to the House of Commons in the December 1918 election, although the Labor Party with John Maclean put up a candidate against him, as the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party did not put up a candidate of their own in this constituency , but recommended that their family members elect Barnes as a Labor candidate supporting the ruling coalition (Coalition Labor).

In the general election in 1922, Barnes decided not to run again as a candidate for parliament after the Labor Party announced that it would also run an opponent against him in this election with George Buchanan and it because of the strong pro-Labor - The mood that prevailed in Glasgow at the time was hardly in doubt that the candidate who would represent the old Labor Party would automatically win this constituency.

As a retiree, Barnes wrote several books and continued to advocate for labor issues.

At the end of the 1930s, Barnes was classified as an important target by the police forces of National Socialist Germany , although he had withdrawn from active politics for a decade and a half at that time: In the spring of 1940 the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people whom the Nazi surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why they should be located and arrested by special SS units following the occupation troops in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht.

Barnes died as a retiree in his London home. He was then buried in Fulham Cemetery.

family

In 1882 Barnes married Jessie Langlands, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. His younger son died in combat operations as a member of the Seaforth Highlanders during World War I.

literature

  • Alastair Reid: "Barnes, George Nicoll", in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ,

Fonts

  • From Workshop to Cabinet , 1923. (Autobiography)
  • History of the International Labor Office , 1926.

Web links

Commons : George Nicoll Barnes  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry about Barnes on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .