Constituency : Bolton 1895-1912
George took the second seat at Bolton which had been solidly Tory since 1885.
George was the son of a cotton manufacturer who had been Mayor of both Bolton and Salford.. He was educated locally and then at Owens College. He went into the family business but in his spare time studied the classics and political economy. He was a committed Anglican despite his father being a Unitarian and co-founded the Church Reform Union. He was an ordained deacon and preached across Lancashire. Anticipating a general decline in the cotton business, he became a barrister in 1890 and moved to London.
George was an idiosyncratic Liberal who often ruffled party feathers. He criticised "the almost idolatrous regard" for Gladstone who he regarded as a "second rate man".
George was interested in licensing and the reform of working conditions. He supported a bill to introduce early closing of textile factories on a Saturday. During the Boer War he helped found the Telescope Fund to support the war effort. In 1903 he condemned motor cars "palpitating , throbbing and turning the whole of the thoroughfare into chaos and confusion.This is unjust... the many ought not to be thrust on one side for the few. " He was a critic of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. In 1906 he told a Liberal conference on land reform we were "a nation of helots, and stood in a position of slavery". In 1912 he introduced a Bill to better regulate the formation of cotton spinning companies.
In 1900 George and his Conservative opponent shared the representation on an unopposed basis.
George was Treasurer of the National Society for the Prevention of Consumption. He published a number of books on theology and politics.
George was a local philanthropist who presented a market cross and a park to the town.
He died in 1912 aged 67.
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