Items19The creator’s order
  1. 1William WilberforceWilliam WilberforceBorn 24 Aug 1759Wilberforce never held office. He introduced abolition motions and bills almost every year from 1791, lost repeatedly, and worked with the Clapham Sect and campaigners such as Thomas Clarkson on petitions, boycotts and evidence. The breakthrough in 1806 was procedural cunning: a Foreign Slave Trade…0i
  2. 2Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of ShaftesburyAnthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of ShaftesburyAs Lord Ashley, a Tory backbencher, the future Earl of Shaftesbury led the parliamentary campaign for factory reform after Michael Sadler lost his seat. His pressure produced the Mines Act of 1842, which banned women and children under ten from working underground, after a commission whose…0i
  3. 3Samuel PlimsollSamuel PlimsollBorn 10 Feb 1824The Liberal MP for Derby campaigned against 'coffin ships', overloaded and over-insured vessels that owners sent to sea expecting them to sink. When Disraeli's government dropped a shipping bill in 1875, Plimsoll shook his fist at the Speaker and called shipowners villains, was suspended, and the…0i
  4. 4Nancy Astor, Viscountess AstorNancy Astor, Viscountess AstorBorn 19 May 1879The first woman to take her seat in the Commons, Astor used the private members' route to pass the Intoxicating Liquor (Sale to Persons under Eighteen) Act of 1923, the law that set 18 as the age for buying alcohol in pubs. It was the first private member's bill introduced by a woman to become law.…0i
  5. 5A. P. HerbertA. P. HerbertBorn 24 Sept 1890A Punch humorist elected as independent MP for Oxford University, Herbert had satirised divorce law in his novel Holy Deadlock before arriving in the Commons in 1935. His Matrimonial Causes Act of 1937 added desertion, cruelty and incurable insanity as grounds for divorce, where adultery had been…0i
  6. 6Eleanor RathboneEleanor RathboneBorn 12 May 1872An independent MP for the Combined English Universities, Rathbone had argued for payments to mothers since the First World War. When the coalition's Family Allowances Bill of 1945 proposed paying the allowance to fathers, she threatened to vote against her own lifelong cause, organised cross-party…0i
  7. 7Sydney SilvermanSydney SilvermanBorn 8 Oct 1895Silverman, the Labour MP for Nelson and Colne, campaigned against capital punishment for twenty years. A Commons vote on his amendment to suspend hanging passed in 1948 but was overturned by the Lords, and his 1956 bill passed the Commons before the Lords blocked it again. After the 1964 election…0
  8. 8Leo AbseLeo AbseBorn 22 Apr 1917Abse, the flamboyant Labour MP for Pontypool, introduced the bill that became the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, decriminalising sex between men over 21 in private in England and Wales, a decade after the Wolfenden Report recommended it. Lord Arran ran the companion campaign in the Lords, and Home…0i
  9. 9David SteelDavid SteelBorn 31 Mar 1938Steel was a 28-year-old Liberal MP when he came third in the 1966 private members' ballot and chose abortion law reform, drafted with the Abortion Law Reform Association. The Abortion Act of 1967 allowed termination with the agreement of two doctors on set grounds, and the government gave the bill…0i
  10. 10Alf MorrisAlf MorrisBorn 23 Mar 1928Top of the 1969 ballot, Morris, a Labour MP in Manchester, turned his place into the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act of 1970, the first law in the world to give disabled people specific rights to services and access. It required councils to identify disabled residents and provide help at…0i