Robert Ascroft, JP. MP, (1847 – 19 June 1899) was a prominent

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...

solicitor and an English politician. He entered the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

on 13 July 1895 and was one of the two

Members 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 ...

for

Oldham Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham ...

between

1895 Events January–March * January 5 – Dreyfus affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. * January 12 – The National Trust for Places of Histor ...

until his death, as a member of the Conservative Party. He was known as the "Workers' Friend" and after his death, a public subscription enabled a statue of him to be erected in

Alexandra Park, Oldham Alexandra Park is a public park in Oldham, Greater Manchester, England. It was created in response to the Lancashire Cotton Famine of 1861–1865 as an attempt to keep local textile workers employed. The park is located in the Glodwick area of ...

Statue of Robert Ascroft MP, Alexandra Park

Robert Ascroft is mentioned in Chapter XVII of

Sir Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1 ...

's book ' My Early Life'. In the seventeenth chapter, entitled 'Oldham', Mr Churchill recalls the day where Mr Ascroft, MP for Oldham, talked to him about running the constituency together. Oldham was a two-member constituency and evidently, Mr Ascroft believed the young Winston -a war hero and celebrity- was ripe for the job.

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* 1847 births 1899 deaths Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1895–1900 Politics of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for constituencies in Lancashire {{England-Conservative-UK-MP-1840s-stub