Geoffrey Mander
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Sir Geoffrey Le Mesurier Mander KB (6 March 1882 – 9 September 1962), was a Midland industrialist and chairman of Mander Brothers Ltd., paint and varnish manufacturers in Wolverhampton, England, an art collector and radical parliamentarian.
He was the elder son of Samuel Theodore Mander, of a cadet branch of the prominent Mander family of Midland industrialists and public servants. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, served in the Flying Corps in World War I, and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple (1921).
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[edit] Politician
He entered the House of Commons as the Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Wolverhampton East at the general election in May 1929. He was the Liberal specialist on foreign policy between the wars, who was one of the first to take a strong stand against the Appeasement of the fascist dictators, and was a crusader on behalf of the League of Nations. During World War II, he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Sir Archibald Sinclair (later first viscount Thurso), the Secretary of State for Air. He won a reputation in Parliament for his determined use of parliamentary questions.
Wolverhampton East was one of the last urban constituencies which the Liberals managed to hold against both Labour Party and Conservative Party opposition up to 1945. Mander was expected to be nominated Chief Whip for the Liberals in the House of Commons, but he lost his seat at the 1945 general election, in the post-war Labour landslide.
Among many public offices, he was high sheriff of Staffordshire (1921), a county councillor, justice of the peace, and was made a Knight Bachelor (1945) for his public services on his retirement from Parliament.
[edit] Industrialist
He was chairman of Mander Brothers (established in 1773) for a generation, one of the principal local employers and a major manufacturer of paints, inks and varnishes in the British Empire. As an industrialist, he led many progressive initiatives in the field of labour relations and employment welfare between the Wars. Under his direction, Mander Brothers was the first British company to introduce the 40-hour week through an historic agreement signed and mediated by Ernest Bevin, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, in September 1931.
[edit] Art patron
He was an early conservationist. He offered to buy for the nation William Morris's Red House (London), if a suitable tenant could be found. He did present the family house, Wightwick Manor, in Staffordshire, with its outstanding collections of Victorian art and objects associated with the Arts and Crafts movement to the National Trust in 1937, the first country house to be so presented during the lifetime of its donor. His second wife, Rosalie Glyn Grylls, was a noted biographer of writers and artists of the romantic period and an early connoisseur of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Together they were influential in the overdue reassessment of the artists and writers of the Victorian age.
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- Sir Geoffrey Le Mesurier Mander (ed), The History of Mander Brothers, Wolverhampton. 1955
- C. Nicholas Mander, Varnished Leaves: a biography of the Mander Family of Wolverhampton, 1750-1950, Owlpen Press, 2004
- Patricia Pegg, A Very Private Heritage: the private papers of Samuel Theodore Mander, 1853-1900, Malvern, 1996
[edit] External links
- “Sir Geoffrey Mander: the last of the Midland Radicals”
- Brief history of the Mander family
- Wightwick Manor information at the National Trust
- Wightwick Manor Garden — a Gardens Guide review
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by George Rennie Thorne |
Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton East 1929–1945 |
Succeeded by John Baird |
