Will Thorne

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Caricature of Will Thorne, in Punch magazine, 3 November 1920, celebrating an interjection made by Thorne during a debate on the Emergency Powers Bill

William James Thorne CBE (8 October 1857 – 2 January 1946), known as Will Thorne, was a British trade unionist, activist and one of the first Labour Members of Parliament.

Thorne was born in Birmingham and worked at a number of different trades in his early life, before moving to London and finding work at a gasworks in 1882. Thorne joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and became branch secretary. Previously barely illiterate, Thorne improved his reading skills with the assistance of Karl Marx's daughter, Eleanor Marx. In 1889, he helped to found a national gasworkers' union, one of the prominent New Unions and became its general secretary. He retained this position in the union and its successors, which became the GMB in 1924, up to 1934. Thorne also helped to organise the London Dock Strike in 1889.

Thorne served for many years on West Ham Town Council and was Mayor 1917-18. He contested several elections as a Labour candidate before finally winning a seat representing West Ham South at the 1906 general election. He remained with SDF as it became the British Socialist Party, but he supported Britain's involvement in World War I, and as a result joined the National Socialist Party. He visited the Soviet Union shortly after the Russian Revolution. He won the seat of Plaistow in 1918 and retained it until retiring at the 1945 general election. He was awarded the CBE in 1930.