An election meeting on behalf of Herbert Samuel, Liberal candidate. Elected to Parliament in 1902, He had several posts in the Government, including Home Secretary, and Postmaster General, very appropriately standing next to Loftus Post Office. Mary Bielby tells us:”Despite popular belief Leon Brittain was not the the first Loftus MP to hold a Cabinet office, Herbert Samuel (Mr or Sir!) was about sixty or seventy years ahead of him!” Herbert Samuel was knighted in 1920; the placard proclaims ’Boots instead of Beer’, perhaps he is being supported by the Temperance Movement.
Bill Danby in ”Skelton-in-Cleveland in History” tells us: ” The Labour MP, Keir Hardie made a speech at Marske in favour of a Labour candidate in Cleveland and the Miners Association held a meeting in Saltburn, but in the end no representative was put forward. This displeased many in the Independent Labour Party, one of their leaders calling Samuel a ”plutocratic Jew”, because he was an Oxford man, who had been left a lot of money by his banker father. In the end it was a 2 horse race with Herbert Samuel gaining 5.834 votes to the Conservative, Geoffrey Drage’s 3,798. Samuel retained the Cleveland seat until 1918, serving later as Postmaster General and then Home Secretary. In the following years he was High Commissioner to Palestine 1920/25 and involved in the creation of Israel, led an inquiry into the Mining Industry, leader of the Liberal Party, made a Viscount in 1937 and died at the age of 93 in 1963.”
Image courtesy of Mary Bielby and many thanks for the update regarding Cabinet Ministers. Also many thanks to Bill Danby for information from the Skelton website.
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