George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy

The Right Honourable The Viscount Tonypandy PC
Speaker of the House of Commons
In office 3 February 1976 – 10 June 1983
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Preceded by	Selwyn Lloyd
Succeeded by	Bernard Weatherill
Secretary of State for Wales
In office 6 April 1968 – 19 June 1970
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Cledwyn Hughes
Succeeded by	Peter Thomas
Personal details
Born	29 January 1909 Port Talbot, Wales, UK
Died	22 September 1997(1997-09-22) (aged 88) Cardiff, Wales, UK
Political party	Labour
Spouse(s)	Unmarried
Religion	Methodist

Thomas George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy, PC (29 January 1909 – 22 September 1997) was a British Labour Party politician and Speaker of the House of Commons. Born in Port Talbot, Wales, he initially worked as a teacher in both London and Cardiff. An MP from 1945 to 1983, he held office in Harold Wilson's 1964-1970 Labour administration, notably as Secretary of State for Wales from 1968 to 1970. As a junior minister at the Wales Office, he was one of the first on the scene of the Aberfan disaster in October 1966. In 1976 Thomas was elected Speaker of the House of Commons, in which role the first broadcasting of parliamentary proceedings brought him unprecedented public attention. He retired from parliament in 1983 and was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Tonypandy.

Early life and education

Thomas was born in Port Talbot, Wales, the second son of Zachariah Thomas, a Welsh speaking miner from Carmarthen, and Emma Jane Tilbury, daughter of a founder of the English Methodist Church in Tonypandy. He had two elder sisters, Ada May and Dolly, one elder brother Emrys and one younger brother Ivor. His father became a heavy drinker and the family were happy when he joined up at the start of the First World War. They were less pleased when Emma had to take her marriage certificate to court to prove she was Zachariah's wife and not the woman in Kent to whom he had allocated his soldier allowance. He never returned to South Wales and died of tuberculosis in 1925.

Thomas was raised by his mother in the village of Trealaw in South Wales, just across the river from the town of Tonypandy. All four of his siblings left school at age 13. His two sisters went into service, his elder brother went down the pit and his younger brother worked in a shop. He attended Trealaw Boys' School where he passed the scholarship examination for Tonypandy Higher Grade School, later promoted to Tonypandy Secondary Grammar School. On leaving school Thomas became a pupil teacher, first in Trealaw and then in Fanshawe Crescent School, Dagenham, Essex, after which he did a two-year teacher-training course at University College, Southampton. He then worked as a teacher in both London and Cardiff.

Political career

Elected to Parliament in the Attlee landslide at the 1945 general election, Thomas held Cardiff Central between 1945 and 1950 and Cardiff West between 1950 and his retirement from the Commons at the 1983 general election. When the Labour Party came to power under Harold Wilson in 1964, Thomas was made joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, In April 1966 he was appointed Minister of State for Wales, and was one of the first on the scene of the Aberfan disaster in October 1966.

Thomas showed sympathy to the people of the village, bereaved and devastated by the calamity, where a coal tip, loosen by heavy rain, slid down a hillside and engulfed houses and a primary school. The disaster cost the lives of 144 people, 128 of them children at the Pantglas Junior School. However, while later serving as Secretary of State for Wales, Thomas was involved in a decision by the Wilson Government to take £150,000 from a charity fund raised to help the victims of the disaster and their families to pay for the removal of other coal tips above the village.

(This money was paid back to the charity fund in 1997 by the newly-appointed Secretary of State for Wales Ron Davies, who was quoted as saying: "It was a wrong perpetrated by a previous government - a Labour secretary of state. I regarded it as an embarrassment. It was a wrong that needed to be righted.")

In early 1967 he became Minister of State for Commonwealth Affairs. As Secretary of State for Wales from 1968 to 1970 he presided over the investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle in 1969. Thomas was fervently attached to the Royal Family and also strongly opposed to Plaid Cymru and particularly to the Welsh Language Society.

In 1974 Thomas was elected Chairman of Ways and Means and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. Two years later he succeeded Selwyn Lloyd as Speaker of the House of Commons. The first broadcasting of parliamentary proceedings brought him unprecedented public attention, but he proved more impartial than party colleagues had expected. In 1983 he retired and was raised to the peerage as Viscount Tonypandy, of Rhondda in the County of Mid Glamorgan. Also in 1983 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD) honoris causa by the University of Leeds.

Thomas' opposition to Welsh nationalism was finally expressed in hostility to the Blair government's devolution proposals of 1997. It was during this year that he also gave his very high-profile endorsement of Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party, believing that the European Union was compromising the sovereignty of Parliament. He also wrote the Foreword to Adrian Hilton's book on this issue, The Principality and Power of Europe. Lord Tonypandy was later Chairman of the Bank of Wales between 1985 and 1991.

Personal life

After Lord Tonypandy's death, a former Welsh Labour MP, Leo Abse, created a controversy by revealing that Thomas had been homosexual and had been the victim of blackmail for this reason. Abse, the MP who introduced the private member's bill which decriminalised homosexuality in Britain, discussed this incident in his book Tony Blair: The Man Behind the Smile. He said that Thomas had paid money to blackmailers to keep information related to his sexual life secret. Abse said that he had once lent Thomas £800 to pay off blackmailers.

Throughout his career Thomas remained a deeply religious man, and was a prominent member of the Methodist church. He was a local preacher and former Vice-President of the Methodist Conference. Known by the nickname "Tommy Twice" (from his full name), his Welsh-accented cries of "Order! Order!" as Speaker were familiar to a generation of Britons. Lord Tonypandy died in September 1997; there was no heir to the viscountcy which became extinct.

Bibliography

• George Thomas, Mr Speaker: The Memoirs of Viscount Tonypandy, Century, London (1985) ISBN 0-7126-0706-4
• My Wales, with photographs by Lord Snowdon, Guild Publishing, London (1986) ISBN 0-7126-1897-X

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by George Thomas
• Official portrait of George Thomas by David Griffiths at david-griffiths.co.uk
• George Thomas begins his day clip from 1969 BBC fly-on-the-wall documentary Welsh Office.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Ernest Bennett	Member of Parliament for Cardiff Central 1945–1950	Constituency abolished
New constituency	Member of Parliament for Cardiff West 1950–1983	Succeeded by Stefan Terlezki
Political offices
Preceded by Hon. Montague Woodhouse Mervyn Pike	Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department The Lord Stonham 1964–1966	Succeeded by The Lord Stonham Maurice Foley
Preceded by Goronwy Roberts	Minister of State for Wales 1966–1967	Succeeded by Eirene White
Preceded by Judith Hart	Joint Minister of State for Commonwealth Affairs with Judith Hart 1967 The Lord Shepherd 1967–1968 1967–1968	Succeeded by The Lord Shepherd
Preceded by Cledwyn Hughes	Secretary of State for Wales 1968–1970	Succeeded by Peter Thomas
Preceded by Sir Robert Grant-Ferris	Chairman of Ways and Means 1974–1976	Succeeded by Oscar Murton
Preceded by Selwyn Lloyd	Speaker of the House of Commons 1976–1983	Succeeded by Bernard Weatherill
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation	Viscount Tonypandy 1983–1997	Extinct