Harry Gosling

Harry Gosling CH
Harry Gosling, circa 1910
Paymaster General
In office 1924–1924
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by	Archibald Boyd-Carpenter
Succeeded by	The Duke of Sunderland From 28 January 1925
Minister for Transport
In office 24 January 1924 – 3 November 1924
Preceded by	Sir John Baird
Succeeded by	Wilfrid Ashley

Harry Gosling CH (9 June 1861 – 24 October 1930) was a British Labour Party politician and trade union leader.

Gosling was born in 1861 at 57 York Street, Lambeth, London, on the southern bank of the River Thames. He was the second son of William Gosling, master lighterman, and his wife Sarah Louisa née Rowe, a schoolteacher. His family were watermen, working on the river for several generations. Following an education at Blackfriars Elementary School, he entered employment as an office boy, aged 13. A year later he reached sufficient age to begin a seven-year apprenticeship to the Watermen's Company, working with his father on the wharves that would later become the site of the County Hall.

The success of the 1889 London Dock Strike encouraged the river workers to form a union, the Amalgamated Society of Watermen, Lightermen and Bargemen. Gosling was one of its first members, and was appointed general secretary in 1892, aged 32. In 1908 he was appointed as the workers' representative on the newly formed Port of London Authority, and to the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress. When the Watermen's Society was merged into the Transport and General Workers' Union in 1922, Gosling became the TGWU's first and only president, holding office until his death.

He was also a member of London County Council from 1898 to 1925, representing St George's-in-the-East until 1919 and Kennington thereafter. Initially he was a member of the Progressive Party on the council, forming a left wing group of "Labour Progressives" with John Burns, Ben Cooper and Will Crooks. In 1920 Labour formally became a separate party within the council, and Gosling became the first leader of the Labour group.