Walter Henry Ayles (24 March 1879 – 6 July 1953) was a British Labour Party politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for 11 years between 1923 and 1953.

Early life

Ayles was born in

Lambeth Lambeth () is a district in South London, England, in the London Borough of Lambeth, historically in the County of Surrey. It is situated south of Charing Cross. The population of the London Borough of Lambeth was 303,086 in 2011. The area expe ...

into a poor religious family. At age 13 he became an engineering apprentice at the London and South Western Railway. Working in Birmingham he met Bertha Batt from Worle, Somerset, and they married in 1904 in Axbridge.

Political career

In 1910 Ayles became a full-time organiser for the Independent Labour Party in Bristol. He was elected a Councillor on Bristol City Council for the Easton ward in 1910. In 1913 he joined the committee responsible for running the Port of Bristol and Avonmouth Docks. Ayles was a Methodist lay-preacher and a temperance campaigner. One of the founding group of the

No-Conscription Fellowship The No-Conscription Fellowship was a British pacifist organization which was founded in London by Fenner Brockway and Clifford Allen on 27 November 1914, after the First World War had failed to reach an early conclusion. Other prominent support ...

in November 1914, early in the First World War, he was a member of its national committee and a signatory of the ''Repeal the Act'' ( Military Service Act 1916) leaflet, which resulted in the committee members being prosecuted under the Defence of the Realm Act, a number of them, including Ayles, being imprisoned for two months. He was also imprisoned as a conscientious objector, and served as secretary of the No More War Movement, 1931–1932. He had been selected by Bristol East (UK Parliament constituency), Bristol East ILP to be their candidate for the 1918 General Election. but was replaced prior to the campaign. He was Member of Parliament for Bristol North (UK Parliament constituency), Bristol North from 1923 to 1924 and from 1929 to 1931; for Southall (UK Parliament constituency), Southall from 1945 to 1950; and for Hayes and Harlington (UK Parliament constituency), Hayes and Harlington from 1950 until he resignation from the British House of Commons, resigned his seat, on account of failing health, on 31 January 1953, by accepting the post of Steward of the Manor of Northstead. Ayles died that July, aged 74. Ayles Road, a street in Yeading, which formed part of his constituency, is named after him. Several nearby roads are also named after important people in the history of the Labour Party.

References

External links

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Walter Ayles
Bristol Radical History Group 1879 births 1953 deaths Amalgamated Engineering Union-sponsored MPs British conscientious objectors Councillors in Bristol English Methodists Independent Labour Party National Administrative Committee members Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies People from the London Borough of Lambeth UK MPs 1923–1924 UK MPs 1929–1931 UK MPs 1945–1950 UK MPs 1950–1951 UK MPs 1951–1955 {{England-Labour-UK-MP-stub