Name Ivor Thomas Role Politician | Died January 11, 1982 | |
Ivor Owen Thomas (5 December 1898 – 11 January 1982) was a British trade unionist and Labour Party politician.
Thomas was the son of Benjamin L. Thomas from Briton Ferry in South Wales. He was educated at Vernon Place School in Briton Ferry. He was employed as a barber's lather boy, and then at Gwalia Tinplate Works from 1912 to 1919, and then as a tinplate cleaner on the Great Western Railway from 1921 to 1923. He won a scholarship to the Central Labour College in London, where he studied from 1923 to 1925, then worked at the head office of the National Union of Railwaymen until 1945.
Thomas was a Labour Party councillor on Battersea Metropolitan Borough Council from 1928 or 1929 to 1945. At the 1945 general election he was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for The Wrekin in Shropshire. He was re-elected in 1950 and 1951, and held the seat until his defeat at the 1955 general election by the Conservative William Yates.
He then returned to work at the NUR headquarters until 1958, and worked for British Rail at London Waterloo station from 1960 to 1965.
There is a road named after him in the village of St Georges, situated in Telford (formerly the Wrekin constituency). (Ivor Thomas Rd St George's, Telford, TF2 9EZ, q.v., Google Maps)
Personal life
In 1929, Thomas married Beatrice Davis, daughter of William Davis. They had one daughter.
Beatrice died in 1978, and Thomas died in 1982, aged 83.