MYERS, Tom

Myers was a Labour political figure in Yorkshire, who served briefly as an MP and was later mayor of Dewsbury. 

Myers was born in Mirfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 15 February 1872. He left school at the age of twelve and worked in a coal mine before taking up employment in a factory making glass bottles. He was a supporter of the labour movement and the Labour Party from an early age, and entered politics in his early thirties when he was elected to Thornhill Urban District Council in 1904, and then later to Dewsbury Borough Council after Thornhill was absorbed into the latter. 

In 1918 Myers stood for parliament in the Spen Valley constituency, unsuccessfully. However, the incumbent died the following year and Myers successfully contested the by-election, defeating the Liberal candidate Sir John Simon. He served as MP for Spen Valley until the November 1922 general election, when he lost the seat to Simon. Myers contested the seat in the general elections of 1923 and 1924, but was both times unsuccessful. 

After a period out of politics, Myers stood again for Dewsbury Borough Council and was elected in 1935. He was mayor of Dewsbury in 1940-41. He died in Dewsbury on 21 December 1949. 

How Myers came into contact with the Rowntree conferences is not clear, but we can surmise that it was probably through local Yorkshire connection. His lecture, ‘Labour’s immediate ideal for industry’, follows a theme common to that of many other Rowntree speakers: an end to confrontation between capital and labour, and the start of a new partnership between them. 

For all that he evangelises on this partnership, Myers does not appear overly hopeful that it will happen. He is sharply critical of employers, whom he accuses of shirking their responsibilities. It is axiomatic, he says, that employers have a stewardship, a duty of care in modern terms, for the people they employ. In former times, employers exercised this duty. They lived close to the communities and factories they owned, they contributed to social welfare institutions and hospitals, they looked after their people. Today, says Myers, fewer and fewer are doing so. 

Myers goes on to call for a revival of the old spirit of co-operation. He references Robert Owen and others who believed that industry had a higher moral purpose, and says that spirit must be rekindled. ‘An industrial organisation should see to it that all our industrial activities are directed into channels which will uplift the community as a whole’, he says. ‘I believe that if to sound economic relationships we can harness social righteousness, many of the troubles and the difficulties which confront us will very soon disappear.’ He concludes: 

To sum up, trade and commerce are social functions. They must express themselves in the future in terms of service, and not of profits. Everyone who takes part in our industrial operations must at least be secured not only of an adequate subsistence, but of ample facilities for developing the higher attributes at human nature.