Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
MacDonald, Gordon
Parallel form(s) of name
- Right Honourable Lord MacDonald of Gwaenysgor
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1888-
History
Gordon MacDonald was born on May 27, 1888 in Wales. He left school at the age of 13 to work in the mines until the start of World War I. During this period he was also a student at Ruskin College, Oxford. In 1920 he was elected a member of the Wigan Board of Guardians of which he was chairman in 1929, and he became president of Bryn Gates Co-operative Society, 1922-1924. In 1924 he was elected Miners' Agent for Lancashire and Cheshire in the Mineworkers Federation of Great Britain, a post which he held until he was elected M.P. (L) for Ince, Lancs., in 1929. He became a whip of the Labour Party. He was also Chairman of Committees in the House of Commons, 1934-1941. In 1942 he resigned from Parliament on his appointment as manager for the Lancashire, Cheshire and North Wales region of the Ministry of Fuel and Power. In 1946 he received a knighthood and was nominated Governor of Newfoundland. He steered the state to independence within the dominion of Canada and on the day of confederation in 1949 he returned to Britain and was elevated Baron of Gwaenysgor. Though he held the post of Paymaster General during 1949-51, Commonwealth and international affairs interested him most. In 1950 he attended a meeting of the United Nations, and he was active in the preparations for an important conference in Australia on economic aid to countries of south-east Asia. From 1952-1959 he was a member of the Colonial Development Corporation. After the fall of the Labour government in 1951 Lord Macdonald returned to Wales. He was the first chairman of the National Broadcasting Council for Wales throughout the 1950s. He published speeches and radio addresses he had made in Newfoundland in "Newfoundland at the Cross Roads" (1949), and his parliamentary impressions, "Atgofion seneddol" (1953).