Herbert Butler

Who was Herbert Butler?

Herbert William Butler JP was a British Labour politician.

Butler was the son of Frank Butler. He was educated at a London County Council elementary school, and served in the Royal Navy during World War I, from 1916 to 1919. as a stoker. Following the war he became involved in Labour politics, and in 1922 became agent for Herbert Morrison who was elected Member of Parliament for Hackney South at the 1923 general election. In the 1930s he was a leading opponent of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirt movement, which was active in the Hackney area.

He became a Justice of the Peace for London in 1929, and in 1934 he was elected to Hackney Borough Council. He was subsequently made an alderman and Mayor of Hackney in 1936/37. He remained a member of the borough council for more than thirty years, and was also a member of the North East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board, chairman of the Hackney and Queen Elizabeth hospital group, and a freeman of the Borough of Hackney.

At the 1945 general election he was elected to succeeded Herbert Morrison as MP for Hackney South, and held the seat until its abolition in 1955.