George Kemp, 1st Baron Rochdale

George Kemp, 1st Baron Rochdale CB (9 June 1866 – 24 March 1945) was a British politician, soldier, businessman and cricketer.

Kemp was born in Rochdale, Lancashire and educated at Shrewsbury. Matriculating at Balliol College, Oxford in 1883, aged 16, Kemp transferred to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1884, where he graduated B.A. in the Classical Tripos in 1888. In business Kemp went into the woollen industry eventually becoming Chairman of Kelsall & Kemp, flannel manufacturers.

From 1885 to 1892, Kemp played first-class cricket with Lancashire. A batsman, he scored three centuries in his career and also represented Cambridge University.

In 1895, he was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Heywood as Liberal Unionist. He served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to William Ellison-Macartney, Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, until January 1900, when he resigned to serve in the Second Boer War. In 1904, along with Winston Churchill, Kemp was among a group of Conservative and Liberal Unionist Free Traders who crossed the floor to join the Liberals in response to Joseph Chamberlain's Tariff reform policies. In 1909, he was knighted for his war services and at the January 1910 general election he was elected MP for Manchester North West, this time as a Liberal. Kemp found himself increasingly out of step with the acions of the Liberal government. He was opposed to the Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George's financial policies. He also opposed Lloyd George's advocacy of Welsh disestablishment. His long standing opposition to Irish Home Rule had not diminished and he opposed the Liberal Government's Irish Home Rule bill. As he still felt out of step with the Unionist's advocacy of Tariff Reform, he decided to retire from the House of Commons. He declared that he "loathed politics". A year later he was raised to the peerage as Baron Rochdale, of Rochdale in the County Palatine of Lancaster.

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