Ernie Roberts


Ernest Alfred Cecil "Ernie" Roberts was a Labour Party politician. He worked for the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers and was the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington from 1979–1987.

Early life

Roberts left primary school in Shrewsbury at the age of thirteen, having declined a scholarship to the Shrewsbury School of Art, to work in a coal mine to help support ultimately ten siblings. He worked as an engineering worker for many years, much blacklisted and dismissed for trade union activities, until he became Assistant General Secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers in 1957. Ideologically, he was on the left-wing of the Labour Party.

Political career

After unsuccessfully contesting Stockport South in 1955 United Kingdom general election, Roberts was elected as the Member of Parliament for the Inner London constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington aged 67, according to his obituary writer Frank Allaun the oldest new MP since the Second World War,. He served from the 1979 general election until the 1987 general election, when he was deselected in favour of Diane Abbott who would go on to become the first-ever Black British female MP.

Family

He married Joyce Longley in 1953, and had a son and two daughters.

Books