Bert Hazell

Infobox Politician


name = Bert Hazell
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small_| office = British Member of Parliament
term_start = 1964
term_end = 1970
predecessor = Edwin Gooch
successor = Ralph Howell
constituency = North Norfolk
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birth_date = birth date and age|1907|4|18|df=y
birth_place = Attleborough, Norfolk, England
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party = Labour Party
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occupation = President of the National Union of Agricultural Workers
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Bert Hazell CBE (born 18 April 1907), also known as Bertie Hazell, is a retired British Labour Party politician and trade union activist.

The son of a Norfolk farmworker, he left school at 14 to work on a farm in Wymondham, where his duties included scaring crows. When agricultural wages slumped after the First World War sparking the Norfolk farm workers' strike in 1923, Hazell became active in the National Union of Agricultural Workers.

He unsuccessfully contested the safe Tory parliamentary seat of Barkston Ash in Yorkshire in the 1945 and 1950 elections, before returning to Norfolk to help North Norfolk Labour MP Edwin Gooch.

He was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for North Norfolk in 1964. The constituency had the rare distinction of being an agricultural seat electing Labour MPs since 1945, owing to a history of organised agricultural trade unionism and a working-class rural Labour vote in Norfolk at the time, very untypical of the rest of the country. Hazell himself was the president of the National Union of Agricultural Workers. He lost his seat after six years, however, at the 1970 general election to the Conservative candidate Ralph Howell. Subsequently Labour have never regained Norfolk North, and were relegated to third place while the Liberal Democrats eventually gained the seat in 2001.

As president of the NUAAW for 10 years until he retired in 1978, Bert devoted nearly 60 years to the cause of agricultural workers.

Mr Hazell was made an MBE in 1946, and a CBE in 1962.

Mr Hazell, who reached his 100th birthday in April 2007, is the oldest living person to have served as an MP in the United Kingdom. He lives in Yorkshire and is now in frail health. Upon the death of Baron Renton in May 2007, Hazell became the last surviving MP in the United Kingdom to have been born in the 1900s. On 5 November 2008 he will overtake the late Lord Shinwell's record as the longest-living former MP of recent times, and on 4 July 2009 will beat Theodore Cooke Taylor's record to become the oldest ever.

ee also

Records of members of parliament of the United Kingdom

References

*Rayment
*"Who's Who 2007"
*"The Almanac of British Politics by Robert Waller and Byron Criddle"
* [http://www.dissmercury.co.uk/content/dissmercury/news/story.aspx?brand=DMAOnline&category=news&tBrand=DMAonline&tCategory=news&itemid=NOED26%20Apr%202007%2018%3A43%3A43%3A990 "Diss Mercury" - Worker's Hero Birthday Marked]
* [http://country-standard.blogspot.com/2007/07/bert-hazell-president.html "Country Standard"]