Constituency : Rushcliffe 1885-1910
John won the new seat of Rushcliffe.
John was a Quaker coal owner in Nottinghamshire . His father was chairman of the Midland Railway. He was educated at a Quaker school in Kendal. He was chairman of the Nottingham Joint-Stock Bank.
John was a radical. His maiden speech was supporting the Places of Worship Sites Bill which sought to allow other denominations the same powers of compulsory purchase as the Church of England. In 1887 he sought to amend the Mines Bill by banning the employment of girls under 16 as pit brow lasses.
John denounced the conditions in the British concentration camps in South Africa . He had a hard campaign in 1900 when the Tories seized on the "Solly correspondence". John had written to a lady in South Africa asking for information for parliamentary purposes. The Tories produced a poster reading "Radical Traitors in Correspondence with the Enemy" against which John failed to get an injunction. A Tory MP visiting the constituency during the campaign declared "Mr Ellis has been false to his oath and a traitor to his King and country". He won by a reduced majority of 466 votes and told the electors, "You have protested against the throttling of the channel of inteligence from South Africa which has been practised by those charged with acts of maladministration at the time they are seeking a vote of confidence in relation to the war".
In 1905 Campbell-Bannerman made John under-secretary of state for India. He backed Lloyd George's "People's Budget".
John was a philanthropist and gifted a public library to Hucknall in 1910.
John died in the middle of the December 1910 election campaign aged 69.
No comments:
Post a Comment