George Alfred Spencer was a former miner and a councillor on Nottinghamshire County Council

Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...

 from Stapleford

Stapleford, Nottinghamshire

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, later Labour

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 MP

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 from 1918-29 for Broxtowe

Broxtowe (UK Parliament constituency)

Broxtowe is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election...

.

Family life

George Spencer was the second son of eighteen children. His youngest daughter was the wife of the director of the NSPCC in the 1930s.

Trade Union career

George Spencer was an official of the Nottinghamshire Miners Association, which was affiliated to the Miners Federation of Great Britain. In 1926, at the height of the General Strike

General strike

A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...

 he negotiated a deal with the mine owners in Nottinghamshire that enabled all miners to return to work. The deal was backed by the NMA. However, this brought him into conflict with the MFGB who wished to see the strike continue.

Unhappy with the influence of the MFGB, he left the NMA and set up the Nottinghamshire and District Miners' Industrial Union (NMIU) based mostly in The Dukeries

The Dukeries

The Dukeries was a district in the county of Nottinghamshire which was so called because it used to contain four ducal seats close to one another. It is south of the town of Worksop which has been called The Gateway to the Dukeries...

, which lasted for eleven years separate from the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, following the General Strike

1926 United Kingdom general strike

The 1926 general strike in the United Kingdom was a general strike that lasted nine days, from 4 May 1926 to 13 May 1926. It was called by the general council of the Trades Union Congress in an unsuccessful attempt to force the British government to act to prevent wage reduction and worsening...

. He earned the enemity of the established union.

In 1937, an agreement was reached between the NMA and the NMIU and they merged, with Spencer becoming the President of the merged organisation.

Political career

George Spencer was elected to parliament in 1918 as Labour MP for Broxtowe, and re-elected at the next three general elections.

Following the Nottinghamshire miners union split of 1926, he was expelled from the Labour party. He continued to sit in parliament until 1929, speaking from the Liberal party benches.

The Broxtowe Labour party, instead of replacing him with another local miners candidate, chose Seymour Cocks

Seymour Cocks

Frederick Seymour Cocks, known as Seymour Cocks , was a British Labour Party Member of Parliament ....

, an outsider with no mining background.

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