Tom Williams, Baron Williams of Barnburgh

[2] Born in Blackwell, Derbyshire,[3] Williams grew up in Swinton in Yorkshire, and began work in 1899 in Kilnhurst colliery.

In 1918, he was elected as a Labour member of the Bolton-upon-Dearne Urban District Council.

[6] In the First Labour Government, from January to October 1924, Williams was Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Noel Buxton, the Minister of Agriculture.

[2] Williams first held ministerial office in Winston Churchill's wartime Coalition Government, when he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries from 1940 to 1945,[2] serving under the Conservative minister Robert Hudson.

[9][10] His autobiography, in which he gives an account of his life since childhood, was published in 1965 with a foreword by Clement Attlee.