Gordon Harvey
British politician (1858-1922)

Alexander Gordon Cummins Harvey (31 December 1858 – 6 November 1922) was a British cotton manufacturer and merchant and Liberal politician.
Career
Gordon Harvey (as he was usually known) was born in Manchester the son of Cummins Harvey who was a partner in the cotton yarn and cloth manufacturing firm of Fothergill and Harvey. Gordon Harvey himself went on to become the head of an important firm of cotton spinners, manufacturers and merchants with mills at Littleborough and with warehouses and offices in Manchester.
Politics
Lancashire County Council
A Liberal in politics, and sometime Chairman of Middleton Division Liberal Association, Harvey was elected to Lancashire County Council in the year after its creation and was later made an Alderman of the county. He remained chairman of the county education committee up until the time of his death. He also served as a Justice of the Peace in Lancashire.
Parliament
Harvey first stood for Parliament at the Khaki election of 1900 as Liberal candidate for Rochdale. The election was fought in the jingoistic atmosphere of the Second Boer War which favoured the Conservatives. Despite taking the anti-war side Harvey still managed to come within 19 votes of beating the sitting Conservative MP, Clement Royds.
Harvey was elected as MP for Rochdale, however, at the 1906 general election beating Royds, who had held the seat since 1895, by 1,463 votes.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 22, 2021. The linked authority identifier is Q5585252. VIAF identifies the subject as 280621848. The Library of Congress control number is nb2012027642. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1858, 1922, 1900 and 1906.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gordon Harvey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.