Arthur Moody

Last updated May 22, 2021 • 2 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Arthur Seymour Moody (6 June 1891 – 12 December 1976^[1] ) was a British joiner and politician. He was a low-profile backbench Labour Party Member of Parliament for nearly twenty years.

Early career

Moody was born in Kingston upon Hull and went to local schools run by the local council before training in woodworking at Hull Technical College. He was an active member of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers from 1912, holding several union posts, and also joined the Labour Party. In 1934 Moody was elected to Hull City Council, serving a single three-year term. At the 1935 general election, Moody was the Labour Party candidate for Liverpool Fairfield, losing by more than 7,000 votes.

Election to Parliament

In 1942 Moody was elected unopposed to the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in the Trade Union section, his candidature sponsored by the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers. At the 1944 Labour Party conference he replied on behalf of the NEC to a debate about housing. He was chosen again as candidate for Liverpool Fairfield, and in the 1945 general election secured a swing of 14% to win the seat by 1,147 votes. He then stood down from the National Executive Committee in 1946.

Political views

Moody was a low-profile Member of Parliament who spoke rarely. In 1946 he criticised the National Insurance Bill for containing "too much Beveridge and too little Socialism". He was generally a loyal supporter of the government, but in 1948 he did break the whip to oppose an annuity to be paid to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh after their marriage. However, Moody urged disciplinary action be taken against Labour MPs who had signed a telegram to support Pietro Nenni, the Communist-allied Italian socialist.

At the 1950 general election, Moody's constituency was merged with others and he was selected instead for Gateshead East where he opposed Konni Zilliacus, who had been expelled after signing the Nenni telegram. He beat Zilliacus into third place and emerged 1,719 votes ahead of the Conservative candidate. His majority increased to over 5,000 in the 1951 general election, when Zilliacus did not stand.

Retirement

Moody was one of the few Labour MPs strongly to support capital punishment through the 1950s. At the age of 70 in April 1962, he announced that he would not be a candidate at the next election; however, he was criticised by the BBC TV programme "That Was The Week That Was" in January 1963 for not having made any speeches in the House of Commons since the previous general election.

Notes

↑ Stenton and Lees' "Who's Who of British MPs" (Vol IV, p. 263) gives his year of death as 1971, but appears to be in error: "Who's Who" continued his entry until the 1977 edition and in 1978 gives the date of his death as above.

Related Research Articles

The Labour Independent Group was an organisation of five former Labour Party Members of Parliament (MPs) in the United Kingdom.

George Porter was a British Labour Party politician. He was the first Labour candidate to contest Liverpool Fairfield and was the first president of the Liverpool Fairfield Divisional Labour Party. He was first elected as Member of Parliament for Leeds Central at the 1945 general election, and re-elected in 1950 and 1951. He did not stand in the 1955 general election, when his constituency was abolished.

Wandsworth Central was a parliamentary constituency in the Wandsworth district of South London. It 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 voting system.

John McGovern was a Scottish socialist politician.

John Herriotts was a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom.

Arnold Gregory was a British textile company worker, lecturer and politician who was a Labour Party Member of Parliament for six years.

Charles Mapp was a British Labour Party politician.

Leslie George Seymour, JP was a British company director and politician from the city of Birmingham.

Thomas Leslie Teevan was an Ulster Unionist Party politician and lawyer, notable for his extreme youth when first elected, brief career, and very early death.

George Deer, OBE was a British Trade union official and politician.

Richard Clitherow was a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom.

The 1961 Labour Party leadership election was held when, for the second year in succession, the incumbent leader was challenged for re-election. Normally the annual re-election of the leader had been a formality.

George Harold Oliver QC was a British engineer, barrister and politician who was for a longtime Member of Parliament (MP) for Ilkeston and served briefly as a junior government minister.

George Lathan was a British trade unionist and politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Park from 1929 to 1931 and from 1935 until his death.

Janet Laurel Adamson was a British Labour Party politician who served as a Member of Parliament from 1938 to 1946, and a junior minister in Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government.

The Holland with Boston by-election, 1937 was a parliamentary by-election held on 24 June 1937 for the British House of Commons constituency of Holland with Boston.

The North Cornwall by-election, 1939 was a parliamentary by-election held on 13 July 1939 for the House of Commons constituency of North Cornwall.

Wilfrid Andrew Burke was a British Trade union organiser and politician who achieved high office in the Labour Party and served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Burnley for 24 years. He was briefly in the Attlee government as Assistant Postmaster-General. After leaving the government he concentrated on party work, fighting Bevanites and serving as Chairman of the National Executive Committee.

Harry Thorneycroft was a British hairdresser and Labour Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1942 to 1955.

Harold Roberts was a British solicitor and Unionist (Conservative) politician. After a long career in local government in Birmingham, he represented the city in the House of Commons for the last five years of his life.

References

M. Stenton and S. Lees, "Who's Who of British MPs" Vol. IV (Harvester Press, 1981)
"Who Was Who", A & C Black
"The Times House of Commons 1935".

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Sir Edmund Brocklebank	Member of Parliament for Liverpool Fairfield 1945–1950	Succeeded by Constituency abolished
Preceded by Konni Zilliacus for Gateshead	Member of Parliament for Gateshead East 1950–1964	Succeeded by Bernard Conlan

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Year_of_death-1] Stenton and Lees' "Who's Who of British MPs" (Vol IV, p. 263) gives his year of death as 1971, but appears to be in error: "Who's Who" continued his entry until the 1977 edition and in 1978 gives the date of his death as above.

[1]