Ivor Owen Thomas

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Ivor Owen Thomas (5 December 1898 – 11 January 1982) was a British trade unionist and Labour MP for The Wrekin from 1945 to 1955. He was born in Briton Ferry, South Wales, the son of Benjamin L. Thomas, and left school to work as a barber’s lather boy and then at Gwalia Tinplate Works (1912–1918). During World War I he was a conscientious objector and spent a year in prison. After the war he worked as an engine cleaner on the Great Western Railway (1919–1923) and earned a scholarship to the Central Labour College in London (1923–1925). He then worked at the National Union of Railwaymen’s head office until 1945. Thomas served as a Labour councillor on Battersea Metropolitan Borough Council from about 1928/29 to 1945.

In 1945 he was elected MP for The Wrekin and was re-elected in 1950 and 1951. He lost the seat in the 1955 general election by 478 votes to Conservative William Yates. After leaving Parliament he returned to work for the NUR until 1958 and then for British Rail at London Waterloo from 1960 to 1965. A road in St George’s, Telford, is named Ivor Thomas Road in his honour.

Thomas married Beatrice Davis in 1929, and they had one daughter. Beatrice died in 1978, and Thomas died in 1982 aged 83.