Hyacinth Morgan

Hyacinth Bernard Wenceslaus Morgan (11 September 1885 – 7 May 1956) was a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1929 to 1931, and 1940 to 1955.

He was born in the West Indies, to poor Irish parents and came to the United Kingdom to study medicine at Glasgow University in 1904. while at University he was active in the Fabian Society and founded a students Irish Nationalist Club.

After qualifying, he worked in a number of Glasgow mental hospitals and then served as a doctor in France during World War I, and then entered general practice in London, initially at Greenwich, later Camberwell and finally at Paddington.

Political career

Morgan contested the South London constituency of the Camberwell North West at the 1922 general election, but lost by a wide margin to the National Liberal MP Edward Campbell Fact|date=September 2007. He stood again at the 1923 election, when Taswell had re-joined the Liberal PartyFact|date=September 2007, and lost by only 80 votes. In 1924, TaswellFact|date=September 2007 held on by only 194 votes, and Morgan finally won the seat at the 1929 general election.

However, the Labour Party split at the 1931 general election over fiscal policy; Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald had left the party to form a National Government with the support of the Conservative Party and some Liberals, and Labour's national share of the vote fell disastrously from 37% to 31%. [* cite book |last=Craig |first=F. W. S. |authorlink= F. W. S. Craig |title=British electoral facts, 1832-1980 |edition=4th |year=1981 |publisher=Dartmouth |location= |id= ISBN 0-900178-20-5] In most seats, Liberal and Conservative candidates agreed a single candidate to stand against Labour, and as a result Labour retained only 52 of the 287 seats which it had won in 1929. Morgan's Camberwell seat was one of those lost.

He did not stand for Parliament again until 1940, when the Labour MP William Kelly resigned his Rochdale seat. At the by-election in July 1940, Morgan was elected unopposed. He was re-elected in 1945, but with a majority of only 10%, he moved at the 1950 general election to the safer Warrington seat, which he won with a comfortable 19% majority. He was re-elected in Warrington in 1951 (when the Conservatives won Rochdale), and retired from the British House of Commons at the 1955 general election.

He served as a member of the Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE) union National Executive Committee and COHSE's Medical Guild from 1946-1951.

Dr Hyacinth Morgan, was central (along with Dr Charles Brook)in the establishment of the Spanish Medical Aid Committee (SMAC) in August 1936 to provide medical aid to the republican cause during the Spanish Civil War.

He died in 1956, aged 70.

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