Harry Bernard Taylor, Baron Taylor of Mansfield, CBE, JP (18 September 1895 – 11 April 1991) was a British coalminer and politician who was a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for 25 years. He was then a member of the House of Lords for a further 25 years. Mining Taylor was from a mining family in Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire and left school at 14 to work at the Sherwood Colliery. After working at the coalface for several years, he was promoted to be a checkweighman. He was a conscientious objector in the First World War Politics A member of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, Taylor also joined the Labour Party. He was elected to Mansfield-Woodhouse Urban District Council in 1925, also serving on the Board of Guardians. From the 1929 general election he was Election Agent for Mansfield Constituency Labour Party, and organised the successful election campaigns of Charles Brown. Taylor kept the Mansfield seat Labour despite the electoral disaster of 1931 and in slightly more favourable times in 1935. That year he had himself been elected to Nottinghamshire County Council, and he was president of the Nottinghamshire Miners' Association in 1936–37, and vice-president of the Notts Miners' Federated Union from 1937 to 1941. Parliament Mansfield's Labour MP Charles Brown died just before Christmas 1940. Taylor was his obvious successor and he was elected unopposed at a by-election in April 1941. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ben Smith, who was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Aircraft Production in the wartime coalition government. Ministerial office Much of Taylor's concerns related to the welfare problems of miners and in the post-war Labour government he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jim Griffiths, the Minister of National Insurance. While this job normally entailed managing relations between the Minister and Parliamentary colleagues, Taylor also accompanied Griffiths on trips in the country. He was promoted to be Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of National Insurance in March 1950, after the 1950 general election, and served until the Labour government went out of office in October 1951. Political outlook In opposition, Taylor continued to take up issues such as workers' compensation for industrial injuries and improved welfare benefits. He often spoke on mining issues. During the Labour Party split in the early 1950s, Taylor sided with the left and Aneurin Bevan, opposing German rearmament and the development of the Hydrogen bomb. However,