George Shepherd, 1st Baron Shepherd

George Robert Shepherd, 1st Baron Shepherd and his wife, Ada

George Robert Shepherd, 1st Baron Shepherd PC (19 August 1881 – 4 December 1954), was a British Labour politician.

Early life

Shepherd was the son of George Robert Shepherd, a tailor of Spalding, Lincolnshire. He did not serve in the First World War as a conscientious objector.

Career

After the war he was Assistant National Agent for the Labour Party from 1924 to 1929 and National Agent from 1929 to 1946. This meant he was in charge of the Labour Party agents nationwide at the landslide election victory which brought Clement Attlee to No. 10. Prior to this he was Political Agent for the Labour Party (UK) for Dundee initially and then Blackburn.The Member of parliament for Blackburn was the senior Labour Party politician Sir Stafford Cripps, a post war Chancellor of the Exchequer and this position must have been important to his career in The Labour Party. When Sir Winston Churchill requested that Clement Attlee and the Labour Party enter into a wartime coalition, he negotiated the terms of the coalition agreement with George Shepherd.

House of Lords

On 28 June 1946 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Shepherd, of Spalding in the County of Lincoln, becoming one of the few Labour peers in the House of Lords. Shepherd then served in the Labour administration of Clement Attlee as a Lord-in-Waiting (government whip) from 1948 to 1949, as Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard (Deputy Chief Whip in the House of Lords) in 1949 and as Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (Chief Whip in the House of Lords) from 1949 to 1951. The latter year he was also admitted to the Privy Council.

Personal life

In 1915 he married Ada Newton. She was an active trade unionist and campaigner for women's rights who was supported by the Quaker families of Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree in fighting for a living wage for women. They had a son and a daughter, Margaret who died in 2015.

Lord Shepherd died in December 1954, aged 73, and was succeeded in the barony by his only son Malcolm, who also became a prominent Labour politician and held many of the same offices as George Shepherd.

Party political offices
Preceded by Egerton P. Wake	Labour Party National Agent 1929 – 1946	Succeeded by Richard T. Windle
Political offices
Preceded by The Lord Walkden	Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard 1949	Succeeded by The Lord Lucas of Chilworth
Preceded by The Lord Ammon	Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms 1949–1951	Succeeded by The Earl Fortescue
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by New Creation	Baron Shepherd 1946–1954	Succeeded by Malcolm Newton Shepherd

References

• Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990.
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages
• Obituary of his son Malcolm Shepherd, 2nd Baron Shepherd The Independent 7 April 2001