John Wilson (1837-1915)

John Wilson (1837 – 24 March 1915) was an English coal miner, trade unionist, and a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for more than 25 years.

Born at Greatham, near Hartlepool, his mother Hannah died when he was four. After his father, Christopher (b. 1807 at Greatham), died of cholera when Wilson was ten, he worked in the mines, spent four years as a merchant seaman, and return to Durham as a miner in 1860. Married in 1832 to Margaret (née Firth), the couple emigrated to the United States in 1864, where Wilson worked the mines in Pennsylvania and Illinois. They returned to Durham in 1867; the first two of their five children had been born in America.

Wilson was one of the founders in 1869 of the Durham Miners' Association (DMA), which led to him being denied employment, but in 1878 he became a full-time union organiser, rising to become the DMA's general secretary in 1896.

The Reform Act 1867 had extended the vote to working-class men in urban areas, allowing the election in 1874 of Thomas Burt and Alexander Macdonald as Liberal–Labour Members of Parliament (MPs).

The Representation of the People Act 1884 extended the same qualifications to the county constituencies, enfranchising many miners for the first time. Wilson was elected at the 1885 general election as Liberal–Labour MP for the new Houghton-le-Spring constituency, but lost his seat when the Liberal Party split at the 1886 general election over Irish Home Rule.

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