A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the 1945 General Election and how Greenwich had elected a Labour member of Parliament - Joe Reeves. I thought Joe was an exceptional person which is why I took time to write about him
Joe won the seat for Labour - but it may be a surprise to many people to learn that throughout most of the 1920s and all of the 1930s Greenwich was represented by a Tory Member of Parliament. Joe Reeves’ win was probably not only because of the Labour ‘landslide’ but also because the Tory, George Hume, had retired and in fact died quite soon after in September 1945. So, Hume had retained the seat for over 20 years - what could I find out about him? The first thing that caught my eye was that he was born in the city of Poltava. I’ll come back to that later and I must admit I had never heard of the place – but, thanks to Google Street View I now know that it is an extremely beautiful city – with a phenomenal number of street trees.
George Hume appears to have been in his mid 30s when he became involved in Greenwich politics. His family seems to have had some longstanding connection to Greenwich –more about that later. He came to Britain from Russia.- probably in his teens – his father says he sent him and his brother to live in Cheltenham for a ‘thorough English Education’ at a school in Stroud. However his Parliamentary biography says he was educated in Russia, Switzerland and Finsbury Technical College. He later undertook an apprenticeship in Woolwich with Siemens as an electrical engineer. He was also a lawyer and was called to the Bar in 1900. He retained the relationship with Siemens acting as their legal adviser and eventually taking up a directorship with them.
His father describes travelling round parts of eastern Europe on geological expeditions with ‘my son’. He doesn’t say which son this is but I think it more likely to have been his other son, William.
In the first years of the 20th century local politics was going through an era of change in that the vestries and boards of guardians were, in London, being turned into municipal boroughs with the first elections to them in 1900. Hume had been elected to Charlton Vestry in the 1890s and then to the Lee Board of Works which covered the Charlton area. Both were about to be abolished.
In 1900 Hume was elected to the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich for their first session. He was the Leader of the Conservatives majority ‘Moderate’ Party – making him the first Leader of the Council . In a newspaper report of a tumultuous early Council meeting on the appointment and salaries of the newly appointed officers Hume’s calm, fact based, report is in contrast to the accusations and insults flying about from both Council members and public in the gallery..
He did not stand for Greenwich Council again and in 1910 he was elected to the London County Council as member for Greenwich. As such he sat on the Thames Conservancy Board for over 30 years . He was Chair of their London Electricity Committee and appears to have specialised in bodies with a public electrical supply interest. In May 1914 he presided over a ceremony to commission new turbines at the Greenwich Power Station, built to power London’s trams.
The London County Council was then dominated by the Conservative Party - calling itself at this point the Municipal Reform Party. He became their leader in 1918, making him in effect Leader of the Council. This really is the peak of his political career – the leader of the London County Council Is the equivalent almost of today’s London Mayor, now Sadiq khan. However In the 1920s the post wielded far more power influence - and money than Sadiq could ever dream of. It was certainly very very much more important than any backbench Member of Parliament.
In1922 he was appointed as County Alderman. which he held until his death and In 1924 he was knighted in Stanley Baldwin’s dissolution honours . In 1925 he resigned as Council Leader, and took on the ceremonial post of Chairman.
Clearly this early part of his political career in local government is one of someone who was exceptionally able. He doesn’t seem to have continued to get recognition of that as a Member of Parliament and spent his entire career of around 20 years as a backbencher. Did he decide that he was only interested in local relationships rather than national legislation? Did he do something exceptionally awful which would have excluded him ever again from office. I just don’t know.
He was first elected to parliament in 1922 as a ‘Unionist’ candidate . He had stood against the Labour candidate, Edward Palmer. General elections came thick and fast -in 1923 he lost and Palmer won the seat ...... and in 1924 he won the seat back .....but in 1929 Palmer won it ..... in 1931 Hume won Palmer didn’t stand again and in 1935 Hume won against Labour’s Joe Reeves = who I wrote about last week. In 1945 Hume didn’t stand and Joe Reeves won. Hume died a few months later.
I have gone on a bit here about his political career and we need to get back to the Ukraine. I am not going to even begin to try to list the number of organisations he was involved with in his 20 years as Greenwich’s Member of Parliament. In the local Press he appears most weeks at some local event or other and was involved with some national Conservative Party bodies like the Primrose League. He is said to have been very religious and was involved with some charities outside of Greenwich - for instance the Mildmay Mission in Hackney. Nationally he retained an interest in public electricity supply like the Advisory Committee of the Board of Trade on Electricity and Power Supply and the London Electricity Authority.
So how was it he came to be born in the beautiful city of Poltava in the Ukraine? In fact he seems to have lived for most of his childhood in Russia where he became fluent in French, German and Russian as well as English His father, also George Hume, had lived in Russia for some years and had a business and works in Poltava and in Kharkov. He was one of what seems to be many 19th cerntury young men who had trained as engineers in England and then went to Eastern Europe to seek their fortune - and some of them found it. Readers of Dicken’s Little Dorrit will remember how Arthur’s problems are all solved with the news of the engineering machinery opportunities in eastern Europe!
The Hume family seem to have had a Scottish background but his grandfather had come to work in a London brewery ‘to superintend the making of Scottish Ale. I do not know which brewery this was but the London breweries in this period where sources of vast profits. The family had clear links with Greenwich where his maternal great grand father, a Mr. Purvis, was a property owner–the young George Hume senior lived in Circus Street and commented that nearby Prior Street was named for his grandmother who had been a Miss Prior.
George Hume senior spent his childhood in Felbridge in Surrey and went to school in Egham. On leaving he undertook an engineering apprenticeship with a Mr.W. of Ipswich. On completing his time with them he returned to Greenwich to take up a post at ‘the great engineering works of John Penn’s – the proudest day of my life!’ He was soon working on’erecting the engines of several of our ships of war’ – the last he worked on was Warrior ‘the first engined ironclad’. Then working for Penn’s at Samuda’s Yard he went to sea while monitoring a device fitted on a vessel commissioned by the Russian Gcvernment
He eventually stayed on board the boat until it reached Odessa where it was to be delivered. After a whole saga of adventures he was asked to stay on as Chief Engineer – and a telegraph to Penns got a reply ‘Study your own interests – England is very slack’. Many more adventures followed all described in chaotic detail in his book ‘Thirty Five Years in Russia’. Eventually he began a business importing steam grain handling equipment from various British firms including Marshalls of Gainsborough. He also erected a number of mills. Later, in partnership with a Mr.Lister he opened a foundry and manufacturing businesss in Poltava. Unable to get workmen there he moved to Kharkov where built a distillery. He moved back to Poltava with a contract for mills and a dam, but again labour was only available in the major city of Kharkov.
Many sources say that he was in fact a British Vice Consul for this part of Ukraine – but there is no mention of this in his book. He also says very little about his family. He had married Jane Hopwood in Cheltenham and she lived with him in the Ukraine and possibly accompanied him on some of his adventures. The couple had six children, four of whom died as babies in the Ukraine. Hence the decision to send their two living sons – future MP George and his brother William - to England to be educated.
So our MP from the 1920s and 1930s having had a childhood in eastern Europe came to Greenwich and stayed until he died. I don’t know his earlier addresses but he lived in Lee Road for many years until the end of his life. In reference to his Parliamentary record for those who measure a Member of Parliament by the number of questions he asks of Ministers, George Huram said that he did not ask questions in Parliament - he got things done instead. And that doesn’t seem to be too bad in the way of her epitaph
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