From Barton Hill to the House of Lords
» AV Alexander, Viscount Alexander of Hillsborough, the man who officiated at the opening of Fairfax House in 1962, is to be remembered later this month with a Bristol Civic Society blue plaque.
Albert Victor Alexander was born on May 1, 1885, in George Street, Weston-Super-Mare, and was named after both his father and Queen Victoria’s eldest grandson, Prince Albert Victor, but was always known as “A.V.” He had three older sisters.
His father, a blacksmith, died of tuberculosis the year after AV was born and his mother returned to her parents’ home in Bristol and supported the family by working as a corset-maker while her mother looked after the children.
He attended Barton Hill School from the age of three, but chose not to go to the St George Higher Grade School in order to help the family finances. By the age of 13 he was a clerk and by 18 he was working for the Somerset education authority.
After service in World War One, he became vice president of the Weston-super-Mare Co-operative Society and branch secretary of Nalgo, the local government union. By 1922 he was Co-operative Party MP for Hillsborough in Sheffield, one of only four Co-op MPs, although they worked increasingly closely with Labour. When Ramsay MacDonald formed his Labour government in 1929, AV became First Lord of the Admiralty.
He lost his seat in 1931 but regained it a few years later and joined Churchill’s wartime coalition, once again as First Lord of the Admiralty, an experience that was not always positive as Churchill, himself a former First Lord, insisted on various naval schemes with which Alexander and the admirals disagreed. Nonetheless, he remained in the job throughout the war, even travelling on an Arctic convoy and becoming the first government minister to visit France after D-Day.
He went on to become Minister of Defence in Attlee’s post-war Labour government and in 1950 was raised to the peerage as Viscount Alexander of Hillsborough, later becoming leader of the Labour peers in the House of Lords.
He married schoolteacher Esther Chapple in 1908 and they had one surviving child, a daughter. He was a devout Christian (to the point of quoting scripture at the bishops in the House of Lords) and was a keen piano-player and singer.
He was awarded honorary law degrees from Sheffield and Bristol universities as well as the Freedom of Weston-superMare and of Sheffield. He was also a lifelong supporter of Bristol Rovers and Sheffield Wednesday.
His granddaughter remembered him as “a man of great integrity, extremely hardworking and very determined. His great saying was ‘If you put more in you’ll get more out’.
“As a couple, my grandparents had a wonderful knack of getting on with everybody from royalty to the poorest people living in the constituency.”
» The blue plaque is due to be unveiled on Friday May 27 at the University Settlement, Ducie Road, Barton Hill (BS5 0AX) at 4pm.