Stephen Walsh (26 August 1859 – 16 March 1929) was a British miner, trade unionist and Labour Party politician.[1]
Background
Born in Liverpool, Walsh became an orphan at a very young age. He was educated at an industrial school in the Kirkdale area of the city, leaving school aged 13 to work in a coalmine in Ashton in Makerfield.[1]
Political career
Walsh was an official of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation before he was elected to parliament for Ince in the 1906 general election. Later that year he attacked the idea that an MP needed an Oxbridge education further adding that: "To use an arithmetical metaphor, the Labour party had reduced the points of difference among the working classes to the lowest common denominator, and had promoted and developed the greatest common measure of united action".[2]