Herbert Dunnico

Education

University of Nottingham.

Career

He was ordained as a Baptist minister in Warrington and Liverpool, and became president of the Liverpool Free Church Council. He formed the Peace Negotiation Committee in 1916 to call for a truce with Germany. From 1929 to 1931 he was Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, and Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Dunnico also holds the distinction of being the Labour Party"s first backbench rebel, when on 21 February 1924 he became the first Labour Member of Parliament ever to vote against a Labour government.

The vote was on the First Labour Government"s programme of building light cruisers, to which Dunnico (a former secretary of the Peace Society) objected because he feared the start of an arms race, and because believed that the Parliamentary Labour Party had not been properly consulted. At the 1931 general election, he was defeated in Consett by the Liberal National candidate John Dickie.

In January 1935 Dunnico announced that he felt it his duty to support the National Government because he felt political partisanship was damaging to the national interest. Dunnico was involved in founding an unusual masonic lodge, the New Welcome Lodge Number.

5139, which was consecrated in 1929, shortly before the formation in 1929 of the second Labour Government.

However, when the Parliamentary Labour Party was reduced in strength after its split at the 1929 general election over Ramsay MacDonald"s formation of the National Government, numbers were reduced, and in 1934 membership was opened to all men working in the Palace of Westminster. Dunnico was Master of the New Welcome Lodge in 1931. He was knighted in the New Year Honours 1938, "for political and public services".

From 1947 to 1953, Dunnico was president of the Essex County Football Association.

Achievements

• Born in Wales, he started work in a factory aged ten, but studied in his spare time and won a scholarship to University College Nottingham. He was National Labour candidate at Wednesbury at the 1935 general election but narrowly failed to win election.

Politics

A committed socialist, he was elected at the 1922 general election as Member of Parliament (Member of Parliament) for Consett.

Membership

31st United Kingdom Parliament. 32nd United Kingdom Parliament. 33rd United Kingdom Parliament.

34th United Kingdom Parliament.

35th United Kingdom Parliament.