Morgan Phillips

Who was Morgan Phillips?

Morgan Walter Phillips was a colliery worker and trade union activist who became the General Secretary of the British Labour Party, involved in two of the party's election victories.

Born in Aberdare, Glamorgan, one of the six children of William Phillips, Phillips was brought up in Bargoed. He left school when he was 12 to become a colliery surface worker.

When he was 18, Phillips became a member of the Caerphilly divisional Labour Party, and served as secretary of the party in Bargoed, 1923–25. He was chairman of the Bargoed Steam Coal Lodge, 1924–26. He was able to attend the Labour College, London for a two-year course in economic and social subjects. He remained in London and became secretary of the Labour Party in West Fulham, 1928–30. and later in Whitechapel, 1934-37. He became a councillor on Fulham borough council, 1934–37. In Fulham Labour Party he met Norah Lusher, later Baroness Phillips, whom he married in 1930. They had a son and a daughter. The latter, Gwyneth Dunwoody, was a long-serving Labour MP from 1964 until her death in 2008.