John Elliot Burns

John Elliot Burns (born Oct. 20, 1858, London, Eng.—died Jan. 24, 1943, London) was a British labour leader and Socialist, the first person of working-class origin to enter a British cabinet (1905).

Having begun work at the age of 10, Burns attended night school and read extensively. In 1883 he joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), which was at that time the only avowedly Socialist body in England, and in 1885 he unsuccessfully sought election to Parliament as a member of the SDF. Burns was tried for sedition in 1886 and was imprisoned in 1888 for his part in the “Bloody Sunday” riot that had taken place in London’s Trafalgar Square the preceding November.

With Benjamin Tillett and Tom Mann, Burns was a dominant figure in the great London dock strike of 1889, which brought casual and unskilled labourers into trade unions. In 1892 he was elected chairman of the Trades Union Congress and a Socialist member of the House of Commons. The following year the Independent Labour Party (a forerunner of the modern Labour Party) was founded, and, although he was active in the new party, he did not claim to represent it in Parliament.

On Dec. 10, 1905, he entered Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal cabinet as president of the Local Government Board, but he was ineffectual as a cabinet officer. Growing less radical, he thereafter remained aloof from the newly formed Labour Party. In 1909 he secured passage of the first British town-planning statute, and in 1911 he was the principal conciliator in a London dock and transport strike. Transferred to the presidency of the Board of Trade on Feb. 11, 1914, Burns resigned in August to protest Great Britain’s entry into World War I. He left Parliament in 1918.