Career
Before entering parliament he was a trade union organiser of the National Union of Public Employees (which later became part of UNISON). From 1929 to 1949 he was a councillor on Walthamstow Borough Council, and in 1945-1946 he was Mayor of Walthamstow. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in the 1941 Birthday Honours.
He was first elected to parliament in the 1945 general election for the Chatham division of Rochester and he held the seat (later renamed Rochester and Chatham) until losing it in the 1959 general election to the Conservative Julian Critchley.
He returned to parliament by winning Middlesbrough East in a by-election in 1962 and held the seat, and its successor Middlesbrough, until his retirement in 1983. He was a junior minister in Clement Attlee"s governments, being Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs (1946-1947), Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (1947) and Secretary for Overseas Trade at the Board of Trade (1947-1951).
In Harold Wilson"s governments he was Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (1964-1966) — during which time he sought to deal with the consequences of Rhodesia"s Unilateral Declaration of Independence — and Minister of Overseas Development (1966-1967). Announced in the 1984 New Year Honours, he was created a life peer as Baron Bottomley, of Middlesbrough in the County of Cleveland on 31 January 1984.
Lord Bottomley died on 3 November 1995 aged 88.