John William Gordon (born 1879) was an Irish

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...

official and political activist. Born in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

to a Catholic family, Gordon came to Britain to work on the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

, and joined the National Union of Railwaymen. He became correspondence secretary of the union's Paddington No.1 branch in 1907, then branch secretary in 1912. He studied in the evenings at the Regent Street Polytechnic, then at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

, and his skill with figures enabled him to work full-time for the union as its cashier, and he was later promoted to become its chief accountant. In his spare time, Gordon was active in the co-operative movement, and was president of the North West London Co-operative Society when it merged into the

London Co-operative Society The London Co-operative Society (LCS) was a consumer co-operative society in the United Kingdom. History The Society was formed in September 1920 by the amalgamation of the Stratford Co-operative Society and the Edmonton Co-operative Society, ...

. He was the founding secretary of the

Wembley Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in north-west Londo ...

Divisional Labour Party, and later served as president of the Paddington Labour Party and

Trades Council A labour council, trades council or industrial council is an association of labour unions or union branches in a given area. Most commonly, they represent unions in a given geographical area, whether at the district, city, region, or provincial or ...

. He also served as a magistrate. Gordon was sponsored by the union as a Labour Party candidate in

Paddington North Paddington North was a borough constituency in the Metropolitan Borough of Paddington in London which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post vot ...

at the

1923 Events January–February * January 9 – Lithuania begins the Klaipėda Revolt to annex the Klaipėda Region (Memel Territory). * January 11 – Despite strong British protests, troops from France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr area, t ...

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China hol ...

and

1929 United Kingdom general election The 1929 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 30 May 1929 and resulted in a hung parliament. It stands as the fourth of six instances under the secret ballot, and the first of three under universal suffrage, in which a party ha ...

s. Although he took second place on each occasion, by 1929 he was only 528 votes behind the victor. Gordon was selected to stand in the

1931 Ashton-under-Lyne by-election The 1931 Ashton-Under-Lyne by-election was held on 30 April. It was triggered by the death of the town's Labour MP, Albert Bellamy, and resulted in a victory for the Conservative candidate, Col John Broadbent. This was the first election conteste ...

, and took a close second place. He stood again in the

1931 United Kingdom general election Events January * January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics. * January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa. * January 22 – Sir I ...

, his vote falling back slightly.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gordon, John William 1879 births Year of death missing Alumni of the London School of Economics Alumni of the University of Westminster Labour Party (UK) parliamentary candidates Trade unionists from Dublin (city)