Horace King
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Dr. Horace Maybray King, Baron Maybray-King,(May 25 1901 – September 3 1986), was a British politician who served as a Labour MP from 1950 until 1970 before becoming a life peer. Following the death of Harry Hylton-Foster in September 1965, King, who had served as deputy speaker for ten months, became the Speaker of the House of Commons, he was the first person from the Labour party ever to hold this position.
King was born near Middlesbrough. He attended King's College London and graduated with a first-class degree in English. Upon graduating, King worked as a teacher in a school in Southampton, eventually becoming a headteacher in 1947. Whilst working as a teacher, King studied part-time for his Ph.D, he received the degree from King's College in 1940. He had been excused from military service during World War II due to a duodenal ulcer.
King first stood as a Labour party candidate in the 1945 general election, which Labour won with a massive landslide, but was unsuccessful in his attempt to take the safe Conservative seat of New Forest and Christchurch. The following year King was elected to Hampshire county council, on which he served until 1965 with only a single three-year break. In the 1950 general election King successfully fought for the newly created Southampton Test seat, albeit with a very small majority of the vote. He defended the seat in the 1951 election, which had been called after Labour's 1950 majority had proved unworkable. King switched his candidacy to the far safer Southampton Itchen seat prior to the 1955 election, he would hold the seat until he left Parliament in 1970.
When Harold Wilson was elected as the first Labour Prime Minister for 13 years in 1964, King was selected as the chairman of the Ways and Means committee and as the Deputy Speaker. Less than a year later he became the Speaker of the Commons, a position he held for five years before retiring in 1970. Whilst serving as Speaker King was responsible for the speeding up of Question Time. After leaving the House of Commons he was promoted to the House of Lords, in which he went on to serve as Deputy Speaker.
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