Constituency : Tyneside 1906-18
John took Tyneside from the Tories.
John was from the Isle of Arran. He started work as a clerk then became a journalist, rising to become assistant editor of the Edinburgh Evening News. In 1878 he attended a lecture by Charles Bradlaugh and became an atheist, becoming active in the Edinburgh Secular Society. He went to London to work for Bradlaugh and became editor of the National Reformer when Bradlaugh died in 1891. In 1892 he published "The Fallacy of Saving" an early example of underconsumptionist theory. He stood as an "Independent Liberal" in Northampton in 1895 ; he came sixth but his intervention probably cost the Liberals the second seat. In the early twenitieth century he published books arguing against the historicity of Christ.
John was a committed radical and staunch Free Trader. He published Trades and Tariffs in 1908 which outlined the case in terms of cheap food and economic growth. He challenged the tenets of political economy, writing in The Meaning of Liberalism ( 1912 ) "laissez-faire .. is quite done with as a pretext for leaving uncured deadly social evils which admit of curative treatment by state action."
John became parliamentary secretary to the Board of Trade in 1911, holding the post until the formation of the coalition government in 1915.
John contested the successor seat of Wallsend in 1918 but came a distant third behind the NDP candidate and Labour.
John was President of the National Liberal Federation from 1920 to 1923.
In 1923 John contested Hendon and came second to the Conservatives.
He died in 1933 aged 76.
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