Fred Messer

Sir Frederick Messer CBE (12 May 1886 – 8 May 1971) was a British trade unionist and Labour Party politician. He was a member of the House of Commons and Chairman of Middlesex County Council.^[1]

Messer was born in north London, and was the son of a poor law officer. He was educated at Thornhill Primary School, Islington before entering an apprenticeship as a French polisher. He became one of the first members of the French Polishers Union.^[1] He subsequently changed his career, becoming national organiser of the Industrial Orthopaedic Society.^[1]

He was elected as a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Tottenham South at the 1929 general election. Two years later another election was held and Messer was defeated in a straight fight with the National Labour candidate, Francis Palmer^[2] The situation was reversed when he regained the seat from Palmer at the next general election in 1935.^[3] He held the seat until its abolition in 1950, and was MP for the successor seat of Tottenham from 1950 until his retirement from parliament in 1959.^[1] He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1948 "for political and public services" and knighted in the 1953 Coronation Honours List.^[4][5]

As well as serving in parliament, he was for many years a member of Middlesex County Council. For 15 years he was chairman of the Labour group on the council, and in 1938 was elevated to become an alderman.^[1] He served as chairman of the council from 1947 to 1948, the first member of the Labour Party to hold the chair. A Bevanite, in 1958 he became the first president of Victory for Socialism, a left-wing ginger group within the Labour Party.^[6]