Alfred Broughton

Who was Alfred Broughton?

Sir Alfred Davies Devonsher Broughton was a British Labour Party politician.

Broughton was educated at Rossall School, Downing College, Cambridge and the London Hospital and became a doctor, a member of a family who had been Batley doctors for 70 years. During World War II he worked in civil defence and in the medical corps of the Royal Air Force. He was a member of Batley Borough Council 1946-49.

Broughton was Member of Parliament for Batley and Morley from a 1949 by-election. He was an opposition whip in 1960. Broughton was in poor health throughout the 1970s, spending much of the time living in hospital in Yorkshire. The fact that the Labour government's majority had been lost meant that his treatment was often disrupted so that he could be taken down to London to be 'nodded through' to win key votes.

On 28 March 1979 the government faced a knife-edge vote of no confidence when Broughton was on his death bed. Broughton's doctors were extremely concerned for him and strongly advised him not to travel. Although he was willing to come down to vote, Prime Minister James Callaghan decided it would be obscene to ask him to do so.