Irving Albery

Who was Irving Albery?

Sir Irving James Albery was a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom who served as Member of Parliament for Gravesend from 1924 to 1945.

Albery first stood for Parliament at the 1923 general election, when he unsuccessfully contested the Labour Party safe seat of Bow and Bromley in the East End of London.

At the 1929 general election, he was elected as MP for the Gravesend constituency in Kent, defeating the Labour MP George Isaacs, who had won the seat in 1923 with a majority only 119 votes.

Albery held the Gravesend seat for 21 years, until his own defeat at the 1945 general election by the Labour candidate Garry Allighan. Allighan was expelled from the House of Commons two years later, but Albery did not contest the resulting by-election in November 1947, when Labour's Richard Acland held the seat with a reduced majority.

He was knighted in the King's Birthday Honours, 1936, for "political and public services".