George Henry Roberts

Who was George Henry Roberts?

George Henry Roberts PC was a Labour Party politician who switched parties twice.

At the 1906 general election, he was elected as Member of Parliament for Norwich. He was a minister in the Lloyd George Coalition Government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade from 1916 to 1917, Minister of Labour from 1917 to 1919, and Minister of Food Control from 1919 to 1920. He was appointed as a Privy Counsellor in 1917.

Roberts stood in 1918 as a Coalition Labour candidate, opposed by the official Labour Party candidate. After leaving office in 1920, Roberts returned as a director to the firm he had left as works manager upon entering Parliament in 1906. He sat on the back-benches and as a Lloyd George Liberal retained his seat in the 1922 election but lost it as a Conservative in 1923. Roberts spent the rest of his life in the sugar beet industry.