A V Alexander: Weston-super-Mare’s ‘First Lord’

Albert Victor (‘AV’) Alexander rose from obscurity in a Somerset seaside town to become a major political figure from the 1920s to the 1960s. Throughout that time, he retained strong links to his Somerset roots.

Alexander was born on 1 May 1885 in what he himself later described as a “small working-class villa” in George Street, Weston-super-Mare. His father, a blacksmith, died the following year, when he was only 15 months old, so his mother took the family back to her home town of Bristol.

He returned to Weston-super-Mare, where, in 1908, he got married and began his political activities by joining the Cooperative Society and the Liberals. Politically, he moved on to a more national stage in 1920, by taking up the post of parliamentary secretary to the Cooperative Congress in London.

In this new job, his leading role in a successful campaign against the proposed imposition of a tax on cooperative societies, led to the offer of a parliamentary candidacy in Sheffield for the Cooperative Party, which was allied to the Labour Party. He won the Sheffield Hillsborough seat at the 1922 general election with a large majority, winning it from the Lloyd George Liberals.

His first taste of government came quickly. The December 1923 general election ushered in a short-lived minority Labour Government under Ramsay Macdonald, and he became a junior minister at the Board of Trade, under the social reformer, Sidney Webb.

In 1929, when Labour returned to government, he joined the Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty, a surprise appointment as he had had no previous naval experience. In 1931, with other Labour rebels, he refused to join the Conservative-dominated National Government formed to fight the economic crisis. In the subsequent general election he lost his seat, but won it back in 1935. However he did not try for the Labour leadership, which was won by Clement Attlee. Alexander was never a party politician in any careerist sense, so shunned the normal routes to high office.

When Labour joined Churchill’s wartime coalition government in May 1940, Alexander returned to his old post of First Lord of the Admiralty, replacing Churchill himself), and held it through the War, and (barring a brief period when Labour left the coalition prior to the July 1945 general election) in the new postwar Labour Government. In 1946, he became Minister Without Portfolio, and then Minister of Defence, but in 1950 he was given a peerage, staying in the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for the final months of the Labour Government.

He was Deputy Leader, then, from 1955, Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords until 1964, a thankless task in a Chamber which was then hugely dominated by the Conservatives. He remained active in the Lords until shortly before his death in January 1965. On 19 January, the House paid a series of generous tributes to his life and political career. A local newspaper article on his death reported that the previous autumn he had campaigned for the Labour candidate in Weston-super-Mare in the 1964 general election.

When granted the freedom of Weston-super-Mare in 1943, he declared his affection for his home town and county. “I count myself lucky that I was born and bred in one of the loveliest counties in our most beautiful island… The history of Somerset in many ways epitomises the history of England.” Weston was “a handsome town, the Mecca of holiday-makers from our industrial cities and ugly surroundings.”

He was made an earl in February 1963, also taking the title of Baron Weston-super-Mare. A bust of him was presented by his family to the local council in 1966, to reside in the Council Chamber, and in 1989 a blue plaque was unveiled at his George Street birthplace.

As a final example of his affinity to Somerset, there is a story that, when First Lord of the Admiralty during the War, he had sent personal signal to Admiral James Somerville about a difficult military action, “Good luck, from one Somerset man to another. I be relying on you”. Somerville is said to have replied: “Doan’ ‘ee worry. We got they in the bag.”