Arthur Champion, Baron Champion

Who was Arthur Champion, Baron Champion?

Arthur Joseph Champion, Baron Champion PC was a British Labour Party politician.

He was born in Glastonbury as the youngest of six children and went on to work on the railways after serving in the First World War. He was married with one child.

He was elected as Member of Parliament for South Derbyshire at the 1945 general election, defeating the sitting Conservative MP Paul Emrys-Evans to win a majority of nearly 23,000 votes. After boundary changes for the 1950 general election, he was re-elected for the new South East Derbyshire constituency, and held that seat until his defeat at the 1959 general election by only 12 votes.

He was made a life peer on 11 May 1962, as Baron Champion, of Pontypridd in the County of Glamorgan. In January 1967 he was appointed as a Privy Counsellor.

In the last year of Clement Attlee's Labour Government, he served from April to October 1951 as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. After taking his seat in the House of Lords, he was a Minister without Portfolio from 1964 to 1967 in Harold Wilson's government. He died in Pontypridd aged 87.