Albert Smith (British politician)
Albert Smith was a British trade unionist and Labour Party politician from Nelson in Lancashire. He sat in the House of Commons from 1910 to 1920.
The son of Leeming Smith and Martha Smith from Cowling in Yorkshire, he became vice-president and Secretary of the Colne Overlookers Association in 1898, and later secretary of the Nelson Overlookers Association. In 1902, and again from 1920 to 1927, he was the president of the General Union of Powerloom Overlookers, and he was also president of the Nelson and District Textile Trades Federation.
Smith became an alderman of Nelson, serving as the town's mayor from 1908 to 1910, and was also a Justice of the Peace in Nelson. He was elected at the December 1910 general election as the Member of Parliament for the Clitheroe division of Lancashire. During World War I, he served with the Royal Lancaster Regiment as a Captain. He was invalided out in 1915, but returned to action in 1917. For his war services he was awarded the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal, the Victory Medal and the Order of the British Empire.
Smith held his seat until the 1918 general election, when he was elected for the new parliamentary borough of Nelson and Colne, but resigned his seat on 20 June 1920 by the procedural device of accepting appointment as Steward of the Manor of Northstead in order to take up a full-time post as a trade union official.
