Member of Parliament
What position did Alfred Salter take from Nov 1922 to Nov 1923?
Alfred Salter Alfred Salter ( 16 June 1873 – 24 August 1945 ) was a British medical practitioner and Labour Party politician . Early life . Salter was born in Greenwich in 1873 , the son of Walter Hookway Salter and Elizabeth Tester . Following education at The John Roan School , Greenwich , he went on to study medicine at Guys Hospital , London . He qualified in 1896 and in the following year was awarded the Golding-Bird gold medal and scholarship in public health , and the Gull research scholarship in pathology . He was made house physician and resident obstetric physician at Guys and was appointed as bacteriologist to the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine . In 1898 he became a resident at the Methodist Settlement in Bermondsey , an area of south-east London alongside the River Thames , then an area with widespread poverty . The major source of employment in the area during the 20th century until the 1970s was the Port of London . Until the docks were nationalised after World War II , most of the men working in the docks were employed on a contingent daily basis ; the casual nature of this work made it difficult to make a decent living , and Bermondsey was an area of great poverty While at the Settlement , which had been established by Rev . John Scott Lidgett , Salter set up mutual health insurance schemes and adult education classes on health matters . In 1900 he married Ada Brown , who shared his political and social views . In the year of his marriage he established his medical practice in Bermondsey , and the couple worked together in trying to alleviate the effects of poverty in the largely working class area . He chose to offer services free to those who could not pay . This work was to lead the establishment of a pioneering comprehensive health service in the area . ( See the background to the formation of the NHS. ) Politics . Salter decided that by entering politics he could effect changes to the squalid environment in Bermondsey far more quickly and profoundly than he could outside the political arena . He was elected to Bermondsey Borough Council in 1903 , and was also a member of the local board of guardians . In March 1906 he was elected to fill a vacancy on the London County Council , representing the seat of Southwark , Bermondsey as a member of the Progressive Party following the election of the sitting councillor , George Cooper , as the areas Member of Parliament . He was re-elected to the LCC in 1907 . In October 1909 George Cooper MP died . Cooper had been elected as a Liberal Party Member of Parliament ( MP ) , and although Salter had succeeded him on the county council , he had since become aligned with the Independent Labour Party ( ILP ) . On 8 October , Alfred Salter was officially announced as the partys candidate at the by-election . The poll was held on 28 October , and Salter received 1,435 votes , finishing third of the three candidates . Crucially , his intervention probably led to the loss of the seat by the Liberals , with the Conservative candidate John Dumphreys securing a majority of 987 votes . In March 1910 the triennial election of the London County Council was held . Salter was chosen to defend the Bermondsey seat as a Labour candidate against both the Progressives and the Conservative-backed Municipal Reform Party . He was heavily defeated , coming at the bottom of the poll of five candidates . He contested the same seat in 1913 , but was again unsuccessful . All elections were postponed for the duration of the First World War . When a general election was called in December 1918 , the parliamentary constituencies were revised under the Representation of the People Act 1918 . Salter was selected as Labour Party candidate for the new Bermondsey West seat , and was described in the following terms by The Times : Dr Salter , the Labour candidate , is one of the highly educated idealists who are to be found in the ranks of that party . After a brilliant academic career , he decided to devote himself to work among the poor in Bermondsey , and there he has laboured for many years both as a doctor professionally and as a member of local administrative bodies . Personally , nobody has a word to say against him , but his views are of a very extreme kind . His attitude during the war was that of a pacifist , though he would not , it is said , admit the accuracy of this popular term . The new constituency was won by the Liberal candidate Harold Glanville , who had been the sitting MP for Bermondsey . In 1919 municipal elections resumed . In March both Alfred and his wife Ada were Labour Party candidates in the London County Council elections , standing in the neighbouring electoral divisions of Bermondsey West and Rotherhithe . Neither was elected . In November Ada was elected to Bermondsey Borough Council . She held the seat in 1922 , and in the same year was elected as the first female mayor of the borough . Member of Parliament . In the 1922 general election he was again nominated as Labour candidate for Bermondsey West . Salter secured 7,550 votes , a majority of 2,325 . He was helped to victory by there being three opposing candidates , with the Anti-labour vote split between Liberal , National Liberal and Independent Unionist opponents . His wife , as mayor of the borough , was the returning officer who declared him elected . A further general election was held in 1923 , and Salter lost the seat in a straight fight to the Rev . Roderick Kedward , the Liberal candidate , in spite of increasing his vote to 8,298 . Political instability led to another election in October 1924 . Salter was able to overturn the result of the previous year , increasing his vote to 11,578 and unseating Kedward with a majority of 2,902 . He was re-elected in the general elections of 1929 , 1931 , and 1935 , but stood down at the 1945 election , when he was in very poor health , and died soon afterwards , aged 72 . Personal beliefs . According to Fenner Brockway , the anti-war activist , Salter in his youth was known as the Settlement firebrand – militant Republican , militant Socialist , militant Agnostic , militant Teetotaller , militant Pacifist . Alfred Salter was a committed Christian and pacifist , a Quaker from 1900 onwards , and later an active member of the Peace Pledge Union . He was one of the founders of the Socialist Medical Association and a friend of its President Somerville Hastings , with whom he made a trip to the Soviet Union in 1931 . In 1936 he advocated the creation of a new League of Nations to which the possessions of the British Empire should be transferred . Salter believed appeasement could avert war with Germany , stating in November 1938 that the average German will withdraw his backing from Hitler if we show willingness to be just . The failure of appeasement and outbreak of World War II left Salter deeply depressed . Despite his constituency being heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz , he opposed the strategic bombing by the Royal Air Force Bomber Command on moral grounds , one of the few Parliamentarians to do so , along with fellow Labour MP Richard Stokes and Bishop George Bell in the House of Lords , Salter was a strong advocate of Guild Socialism and of associationalism . He was also a strong supporter of the Temperance Movement , i.e . abstaining from alcohol , and caused controversy when he spoke out against widespread drunkenness in the House of Commons . He supported free speech , and resigned from the Bermondsey Borough Labour Party and the local trades council when they organised a counter-demonstration to prevent the British Union of Fascists from holding a march in the borough . ( See the 1936 Battle of Cable Street for context. ) He accused the trades council of being Communist in sympathy and Fascist in methods . Memorials to Alfred and Ada Salter . The Alfred Salter Primary School was opened in 1995 to meet the growing demand for school places in Rotherhithe , due to the redevelopment of the old Surrey Docks . The Ada Salter Garden is in Southwark Park within the Old Surrey Docks area . The Alfred Salter Bridge is a footbridge leading off Watermans Lane , between Stave Hill and Redriff Road , near Greenland Dock as part of the Russia Dock Woodland . The statue of Dr Salter seated on a bench , shown above , was stolen , presumably for the value of its bronze , in November 2011 . The Salter Statues Campaign group raised £60,000 , which Southwark Council matched , to pay for replacement statues , and these were unveiled on 30 November 2014 . A Salter Memorial Lecture is promoted by the Quaker Socialist Society each year as a fringe event at the Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends ( Quakers ) .