1050 Llewellyn Atherley-Jones

Constituency : North West  Durham  1885-1913

Llewellyn  won  the  new  seat  of  North  West  Durham  with  62 %  of  the  vote.

Llewellyn  was  the  son  of  the  Chartist  leader  Ernest  Jones. He  was  educated  at  Manchester  Grammar  School  and  Oxford. Like  his  father  he  became  a  barrister. He  represented  the  Miners'  National  Union  at  an  accident  inquiry  in  1880. He  became  Honorary  Secretary  of  the  Westminster Committee  supporting  Gladstone  on  the  Eastern  Question. He  was  approached  by  radicals  in  Leeds  to  put  up  against  Herbert Gladstone  in  1881  but  declined. He  was  adopted  for  Ealing  in  1884  but  North  West  Durham  was  a  much  better  prospect.

Llewellyn  was  a  proponent  of  the  New  Liberalism  believing  that  the  party  had  to  cultivate  working  class  appeal  and  not  be  diverted  by  other  issues. His  first  speech in  the  Commons protested  at  the  inequitable  rating  of  mansions. He  questioned  the  Home  Secretary  about  the  arrest  of  socialist  lecturers  for  obstruction. In  1904  he  introduced  amendments  to  a  bill  on  copyright   with  the  aim  of  making  music  cheaper.

Llewellyn  was  a  long  standing  supporter  of  female  suffrage  and  was  thought  to  entertain  thoughts  of  leading  the  Women's  Emancipation  Union, an  idea  angrily  rejected  by  Elizabeth  Elmy  who  said  the  movement  needed  "no  master". She  described  him  as  a  party  man  who  had  none  of  the  courage  of  his  father. Llewellyn  did  succeed  in  detaching  Mary  Cozens  and  with  her  formed  the  Parliamentary  Committee  for  Women's  Suffrage  in  1894.

In  1897  Llewellyn  secured  a  government  defeat  over  the  Home  Secretary's  flippant  treatment  of  a  case  of  wrongful  arrest  that  he  had  raised.

In  1898  in  a  debate  on  the  Prisons  Bill,  Llewellyn  declared " A  sentence  of  two  years'  hard  labour  is  a  sentence  which  no  judge, in  my  judgment, and  in  the  judgment  of  persons  more  capable  than  myself, should  impose  on  a  fellow-creature."

In  1905  Llewllyn  was  appointed  Recorder  of  Newcastle. In  1913  he  resigned  his  seat  to  become  a  judge. In  the  1920s  he  became  known  for  his  leniency  towards  homosexual  offences.

He  died  in  1929  aged  78.