John Bromley (politician)

John Bromley (16 July 1876 – 7 September 1945) was an English Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Barrow-in-Furness from 1924 to 1931, and a trade union leader.

He was born at Haston Grove, Hadnall, Shropshire, son of Charles Alfred Bromley, a dyer, and his wife Martha Helen nee Wellings, and baptised at Hadnall on 6 August 1876.

He was educated at elementary schools until the age of twelve (1888), when he began working successively as a country post boy, a chemist's errand boy, and assistant on W.H. Smith & Sons' bookstall at Shrewsbury railway station. At age fourteen (1890) he began working for the Great Western Railway (GWR) as an engine cleaner at Shrewsbury. In 1892 he became an assistant fireman, and a regular fireman in 1896. He was a registered train driver in the GWR until 1905.

Becoming a fireman qualified him to join his trade union, the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF).He became active in union branches in Shrewsbury and, as he moved employment in the GWR, at Worcester and Southall, Middlesex. In 1903 he joined the GWR locomotivemen's negotiating committee and in 1908 became ASLEF representative on the sectional conciliation board. In 1909 he became its organiser in the North of England, based in Manchester. In succession to Albert E. Fox, he was elected with clear majority to national general secretary in October 1914.

When the railway companies were brought under government control during the First World War, he was a railway unions representative on the Advisory Committee to the Ministry of Transport. During the same period, as his union's head he campaigned for the interests of its trades against the claims of rival railway unions and secured an agreement in December 1918 for a standard eight-hour day for locomotive footplatemen.

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