George Roberts (British politician) explained

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.

Biography

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.

References

Bibliography

Meeres, Frank. George Roberts MP. A Life That 'Did Different. (Poppyland Publishing, 2019)