Honorific-Prefix: | The Right Honourable |
George Henry Roberts | |
Office: | Minister of Food Control |
Primeminister: | David Lloyd George |
Term Start: | 10 January 1919 |
Term End: | 19 March 1920 |
Predecessor: | John Robert Clynes |
Successor: | Charles McCurdy |
Office1: | Minister for Labour |
Primeminister1: | David Lloyd George |
Term Start1: | 17 August 1917 |
Term End1: | 10 January 1919 |
Predecessor1: | John Hodge |
Successor1: | Robert Horne |
Office2: | Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade |
Primeminister2: | David Lloyd George |
Term Start2: | 14 December 1916 |
Term End2: | 17 August 1917 |
Predecessor2: | E. G. Pretyman |
Successor2: | George Wardle |
Office3: | Chief Whip of the Labour Party |
Leader3: | Arthur Henderson William Adamson |
Term Start3: | 1916 |
Term End3: | 1919 |
Predecessor3: | Frank Goldstone |
Successor3: | William Tyson Wilson |
Leader4: | Keir Hardie Arthur Henderson George Barnes Ramsay MacDonald |
Term Start4: | 1907 |
Term End4: | 1914 |
Predecessor4: | Arthur Henderson |
Successor4: | Arthur Henderson |
Constituency Mp5: | Norwich |
Term Start5: | 8 February 1906 |
Term End5: | 6 December 1923 |
Predecessor5: | Sir Samuel Hoare |
Successor5: | Dorothy Jewson |
Birth Date: | 27 July 1868 |
Nationality: | British |
Otherparty: | Labour Coalition Labour |
George Henry Roberts (27 July 1868 – 25 April 1928) was a Labour Party politician who switched parties twice.
He was born on 27 July 1868.
At the 1906 general election, he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Norwich. He was a minister in the Lloyd George Coalition Government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade from 1916 to 1917, Minister of Labour from 1917 to 1919, and Minister of Food Control from 1919 to 1920. He was appointed as a Privy Counsellor in 1917.
Roberts stood in 1918 as a Coalition Labour candidate, opposed by the official Labour Party candidate. After leaving office in 1920, Roberts returned as a director to the firm he had left as works manager upon entering Parliament in 1906. He sat on the back-benches and as an independent retained his seat in the 1922 election but lost it as the Conservative candidate in 1923. Roberts spent the rest of his life in the sugar beet industry.
He died on 25 April 1928.
Meeres, Frank. George Roberts MP. A Life That 'Did Different. (Poppyland Publishing, 2019)