William Reid Blyton, Baron Blyton (2 May 1899 – 25 October 1987) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Houghton-le-Spring in the County of Durham from 1945 to 1964. Early life Born in Bowman Street, in the Tyne Dock area of South Shields, Tyne & Wear (then in County Durham), he attended Holy Trinity Primary School and Dean Road Secondary Modern. Blyton married Jennie Ord at Holy Trinity Church in South Shields on 26 December 1919 and they had three daughters - Jennie, Marion and Rita. On leaving school, he began 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 the Second World War, he served in the submarine service. Political career Blyton was elected Member of Parliament for Houghton-le-Spring, County Durham, at the 1945 general election, serving until 1964. When MPs were discussing the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act, he successfully fought to have dominoes and Fives and Threes legally recognised as games of skill, rather than chance, saying: "5s and 3s takes a great deal more skill, if one wants to win, than chess – that monotonous game which I see played in the smoking room so often. It also requires more skill than playing draughts, in trying to think what the next moves will be." He was created a life peer as Baron Blyton, of South Shields in the County of Durham, by Harold Wilson on 16 December 1964. When approached by the College of Arms about commissioning a coat of arms, he asked if he could have a pint of brown ale quartered with a greyhound rampant, crossed darts and a miner's lamp. On being informed that he could not, he cheerfully retorted that he would keep his £300 then. In a debate in the House of Lords in 1965, responding to a statement by Lord Stonham, he made clear his views on the Conservative Party, saying: "My Lords, does my noble friend not recognise that the Conservative Party, both here and in another place, are very thin-skinned? Does he appreciate that my noble friend