Albert Stanley (1863 – 17 December 1915) was an English

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then Labour Party politician and Secretary of the

Midland Counties Miners' Federation The Midland Counties Miners' Federation was a trade union, representing coal miners in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands region of England. History The union was founded in 1886. It initially had seven affiliates, including the North Sta ...

Early life

Stanley was born at Dark Lane,

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, one of ten children in a coal-mining family who were religiously

Primitive Methodists The Primitive Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination with the holiness movement. It began in England in the early 19th century, with the influence of American evangelist Lorenzo Dow (1777–1834). In the United States, the Primiti ...

. He himself began work as a miner aged eleven at Stirchley before moving to another pit at

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, Staffordshire where he worked underground until a serious injury in an pit accident in 1884.

Political career

In 1877 at the age of 15 he became Secretary of his local Young Liberal Association. He supported

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and was an ardent follower of William Gladstone. From 1884 to his election to parliament he was Secretary of the

. He was elected to

Staffordshire County Council Staffordshire County Council is the top-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshir ...

at its inception in 1889 and sat until his death. In 1894 he was a founding member of the Midlands Liberal Federation. He was twice approached by the Liberal Party to stand for parliament but declined. However, on a third occasion in 1907 he accepted and was elected at the 1907 North West Staffordshire by-election. He sat as

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MP) for North West Staffordshire and was often described as a Liberal–Labour ('Lib-Lab') politician. He was opposed to the miners affiliating to the Labour Party but when in 1909 the

Miners Federation of Great Britain The Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) was established after a meeting of local mining trade unions in Newport, Wales in 1888. The federation was formed to represent and co-ordinate the affairs of local and regional miners' unions in Engla ...

voted to affiliate, although a lifelong Liberal, he agreed to seek re-election as a Labour Party candidate. He was returned to the

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again at the December 1910 general election, and died in office in 1915, aged 52.‘STANLEY, Albert’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2015; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 ; online edn, April 201
accessed 6 April 2015
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References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Stanley, Albert 1863 births 1915 deaths Liberal Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Liberal-Labour (UK) MPs Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Miners' Federation of Great Britain-sponsored MPs UK MPs 1906–1910 UK MPs 1910 UK MPs 1910–1918