Arthur Bottomley - Misplaced Pages

Parliamentary offices


Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough Middlesbrough East (1962–1974)
In office 15 March 1962 – 13 May 1983
Preceded by	Hilary Marquand
Succeeded by	Stuart Bell
Member of Parliament for Rochester and Chatham Chatham (1945–1950)
In office 5 July 1945 – 18 September 1959
Preceded by	Leonard Plugge
Succeeded by	Julian Critchley

Personal details

Born

Arthur George Bottomley
7 February 1907
London, England

Died

3 November 1995 (aged 88)
London, England

Political party

Labour

Spouse

Bessie Wiles (m. 1936)

Arthur George Bottomley, Baron Bottomley, OBE PC (7 February 1907 – 3 November 1995) was a British Labour politician, Member of Parliament and minister.

Early life

Before entering parliament he was a trade union organiser of the National Union of Public Employees (which later became part of UNISON). From 1929 to 1949 he was a councillor on Walthamstow Borough Council, and in 1945–1946 he was Mayor of Walthamstow. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1941 Birthday Honours.

Parliamentary career

Bottomley was first elected to parliament in the 1945 general election for the Chatham division of Rochester and he held the seat (later renamed Rochester and Chatham) until losing it in the 1959 general election to the Conservative Julian Critchley. He returned to parliament by winning Middlesbrough East in a 1962 by-election and held the seat, and its successor Middlesbrough, until his retirement in 1983.

Bottomley was a junior minister in Clement Attlee's governments, being Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs (1946–47), Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (1947) and Secretary for Overseas Trade at the Board of Trade (1947–51). In Harold Wilson's governments he was Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (1964–66) — during which time he sought to deal with the consequences of Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence — and Minister of Overseas Development (1966–67).

Announced in the 1984 New Year Honours, he was created a life peer as Baron Bottomley of Middlesbrough in the County of Cleveland, on 31 January 1984.

Lord Bottomley died on 3 November 1995 at the age of 88.

Family

His wife, Bessie Ellen Bottomley (née Wiles), JP, whom he married in 1936, was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1970 "or public and social services."

Bessie Ellen Bottomley died in 1998 in Redbridge, Essex.

Publications

The Use and Abuse of Trade Unions, London: Ampersand, 1963.
With George Sinclair, Control of Commonwealth Immigration. An Analysis and Summary of the Evidence taken by the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration 1969–70. London: Runnymede Trust, 1970 (ISBN 9780902397033).
Commonwealth, Comrades, and Friends, Somaiya Publications, 1986.

References

"No. 35184". The London Gazette (Supplement). 12 June 1941. p. 3287.
"No. 49583". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 1983. p. 1.
"No. 49637". The London Gazette. 3 February 1984. p. 1579.
Dalyell, Tam (7 November 1995). "OBITUARY: Lord Bottomley". The Independent.

External links

Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Arthur Bottomley
Catalogue of the Bottomley papers at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics.
Parliamentary Archives, Papers of Arthur Bottomley

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded byLeonard Frank Plugge	Member of Parliament for Chatham 1945–1950	Constituency abolished
New constituency	Member of Parliament for Rochester and Chatham 1950–1959	Succeeded byJulian Critchley
Preceded byHilary Marquand	Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough East 1962–1974	Constituency abolished
New constituency	Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough 1974–1983	Succeeded byStuart Bell
Political offices
Preceded byDuncan Sandys	Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations 1964–1966	Succeeded byHerbert Bowdenas Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs
Preceded byAnthony Greenwood	Minister of Overseas Development 1966–1967	Succeeded byReg Prentice

v t e International development secretaries of the United Kingdom
Ministers of Overseas Development	Castle Greenwood Bottomley Prentice Hart Wood* Hart* Prentice* Judd* Hart* Marten* Raison* Patten* Chalker*
Secretaries of State for International Development	Short Amos Benn Alexander Mitchell Greening Patel Mordaunt Stewart Sharma Trevelyan
Ministers of State for Development	Ford* Mitchell Dodds
* Served as Minister for (Overseas) Development as a Minister of State at the Foreign Office

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