William Reid Blyton

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William Reid Blyton, Baron Blyton (2 May 1899 – 25 October 1987), known as Billy Blyton, was a British Labour politician.

Born in Bowman Street, in the Tyne Dock area of South Shields, Tyne & Wear (then in County Durham), Blyton never married and lived in later life in the Biddick Hall area of the town, where he moved with his family in the 1930s. He was famed for his jovial and approachable personality and is claimed to have displayed none of the self-importance often associated with successful politicians[1].

He attended Holy Trinity Primary School and Dean Road School in the town, before starting an apprenticeship at Harton Colliery, where he worked for the next 32 years. Blyton represented Harton Miners Lodge and was also chairman of the local Labour Party. He remained a great trade union man throughout his life, becoming a member of the National Union of Mineworkers, and served as a member of South Shields Town Council, chairing its education and electricity committees.

During World War I, he served in the submarine service.

Blyton was elected Member of Parliament for Houghton-le-Spring, County Durham at the 1945 general election, serving until 1964.

He was created a Life peer as Baron Blyton, of South Shields in the County of Durham by Harold Wilson on 16 December 1964. Retiring to his old home in Biddick Hall, he was an active member of Simonside Social Club, where he was nicknamed Baron Billy.

Today, he would have been viewed as a eurosceptic. In 1972, as the United Kingdom prepared to join the European Union, he said: "The stark proposal...is to hand over power to legislate for, govern and tax British people in perpetuity to bodies outside this country... This Treaty takes away the sovereignty of Britain."

In a debate on the Loch Ness Monster, he said: "My lords, is my noble friend aware that it will be an act of sacrilege to take away from the Scottish Tourist Board the myth of the monster of Loch Ness by which they get many gullible tourists every year?"

He was the Chairman of the Governors at South Shields Grammar Technical School for Boys.

A primary school in South Shields is named after him[2]. He was made a Freeman of the town of South Shields in 1950.