Robert Small
Labour Parliamentary Candiate 1923
Robert Small was selected as Uxbridge Division (including Hayes) Labour Party Parliamentary candidate for the 1923 General election. (other nominations included Dr Sommerville-Hastings and John Beckett of the ILP).
Robert Small was a Scotsman and since the age of twenty had been involved in the Labour Movement.
From 1912 he devoted his energies as a full time worker, becoming the Glasgow and Clyde Workers Union Organiser and Scottish Organiser for the General Federation of Trades Unions. Secretary of Glasgow Labour Party and Scottish Independent Labour Party (ILP) Executive Committee member, member of the ILP's Agricultural Committee, (member 16 years of ILP by 1923). Member of Middlesex Agricultural Concilliation Committee and Middlesex, Hertfordshire & Essex Joint Industrial Council. He was a prominent member of the Agricultral Wages Board.
Later he became the local, London and Southern Counties Workers Union Organiser. It was because of his local negotiations that he had become known, though it was he who had helped lay the foundations for the Labour Party victories on the Clyde at the general Election.
It was stated that he was a personal friend of all the present Glasgow members of Parliament Robert Small had the best wishes of Labour leader Ramasey MacDonald and George Dallas (Dollas) Divisonal Organiser of the Workers Union.
It must have been Robert Small's Workers Union (later TGWU) links at Hayes, as it was stated he "was well known in the consituency" that secured him the nomination as Labour Candiate. He was supported during the election campaign by Miss Saward, Workers Union Women's Organiser and local Workers Union, Hayes Branch Secretary, Labour Councillor Douglas Page.
