Ernest Rogers Millington

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Ernest Rogers Millington DFC (born 15 February 1916) is a former British Common Wealth and (later) Labour Member of Parliament.

Millington was educated at Chigwell, the College of St Mark and St John, Chelsea and Birkbeck College, London. He served with RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War, rising to the rank of Wing-Commander and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1945.

He was elected as Member of Parliament for Chelmsford at a by-election in April 1945, for the short-lived Common Wealth Party.

The vacancy was created by the death of the previous Conservative member, Col. J.R.J. Macnamara, killed on active service in Italy.

Millington saw himself "as a communist with a small c", and advocated a socialist programme based on nationalisation of the land and public ownership. At the by-election he overturned a Conservative majority of 16,000 to win by 6,431 votes, becoming the Baby of the House of Commons. He was one of the first public figures to question the morality of the area bombardment of Germany.

“	We want - that is, the people who served in Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force and their next of kin - a categorical assurance that the work we did was militarily and strategically justified.	”
—House of Commons, 12 March 1946

Millington held his seat in the 1945 general election and joined the Labour Party in April 1946. He lost his seat in the 1950 general election.

Millington rejoined the R.A.F. in 1954, but later embarked on a career in education, becoming the Head of Education at Shoreditch Comprehensive School in 1965. He later retired to France, where he still lives.

Following the death of John Profumo on March 10 2006, Ernest Millington is the only living former MP elected prior to the 1945 general election. He is also the last surviving person to have served as a Common Wealth MP.

On 23 May 2007 Millington will take the record of having the longest post-service lifespan of any former MP, at 57 years and 88 days, currently held by Joseph Jackson Cleary¹.

Millington's autobiography, Was That Really Me?, was published in 2006.

[edit] Notes

¹ Joseph Aloysius Sweeney was elected Sinn Fein member for West Donegal in 1918, aged 21. He did not take his seat in the House of Commons, but sat in the Dail Eireann. He is believed to have died in 1980, some 57 years after the last occasion in 1922 that he could have taken his seat.

Patrick Joseph Whitty was elected Irish Nationalist member for North Louth in 1916, aged 21. He took his seat and sat until 1918. His date of death is unascertained.

[edit] See also

• UK by-election records

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by John Robert Jermain Macnamara	Member of Parliament for Chelmsford 1945–1950	Succeeded by Sir Hubert Ashton
Preceded by John Profumo	Baby of the House April 1945–July 1945	Succeeded by The Hon. Edward Carson