George Howell was a British trade unionist and reform campaigner and a Liberal-Laboratory politician, who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1895.
Background
George Howell was born in Wrington, Somerset, the eldest of eight children of a builder and contractor. He was educated at a Church of England primary school in Bristol until the age of twelve, when he began work with his father, who owned a small builders.
Education
Others of his colleagues were Methodists, and Howell attended some of their meetings at Wrington Chapel, before becoming a lay preacher.
Career
By the week he worked twelve hours a day as a mortar-boy, and later a bricklayer, but dedicated Sundays to reading. Among his favourite books were John Foxe"s Book of Martyrs and John Bunyan"s The Pilgrim"s Progress. Howell grew to dislike his work as a builder so became an apprentice shoemaker.
Some of the men he worked with were active chartists and introduced him to radical newspapers including the Northern Star and the Red Republican.
As a result, he joined the chartist movement in 1848. He also became involved in the local temperance movement.
Howell moved to London in 1854 where he resumed work as a bricklayer, unable to find employment as a shoemaker. He attended many radical political meetings and met prominent radical thinkers of the day, including Karl Marx, George Holyoake, Charles Bradlaugh and Frederic Harrison.
He joined the Operative Bricklayers" Society (a New Model Trade Union)in 1859, and played a part in leading strike action in support of a nine-hour working day.
Through his work with the union he became one of the foremost New Model unionists, along with Robert Applegarth and George Potter, but was blacklisted by employers for five years. He was elected, along with Potter and Applegarth, to the executive of the London Trades Council (LTC) in 1861 and became its secretary. He also became involved in the campaign for universal suffrage, becoming full-time secretary of the Reform League in 1865.
Howell organised demonstrations in London in 1866 and 1867, and played an important role in the campaign behind the 1867 Reform Acting.
However, Howell was not satisfied with the scale of the reform and continued to campaign for universal suffrage. In 1871 Howell was appointed secretary of the Trades Union Congress (Trades Union Congress), and regularly contributed to the trade unionist journal the Bee-Hive as well as publishing a number of books throughout the 1870s.
Howell stood for parliament unsuccessfully at Aylesbury in the general elections of 1868 and 1874 and at Stafford in a by-election in 1881. He finally succeeded in 1885 as Liberal–Laboratory candidate for Bethnal Green North East, London.
In poor health, Howell retired from public life.
Views
In Parliament, Howell helped to pass the Merchant Shipping Acting 1894 and successfully defended his seat in 1886 and 1892 but was defeated by the Conservative Mancherjee Bhownagree in 1895.
Membership
23rd United Kingdom Parliament. 24th United Kingdom Parliament. 25th United Kingdom Parliament.