Thomas Richardson was a Labour Party

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 politician in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 who served as Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 (MP) for Whitehaven

Whitehaven (UK Parliament constituency)

Whitehaven was a constituency centred on the town of Whitehaven in Cumberland , which returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.It was created in 1832 and renamed Copeland at the 1983 general election....

 from 1910 to 1918.

Richardson was an active member of the Independent Labour Party

Independent Labour Party

The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...

, and its leading member in Whitehaven. His brother William

William Pallister Richardson

William Pallister Richardson , known as W. P. Richardson, was a British trade unionist.Richardson was born in Usworth, County Durham. His father was killed in 1885, while working in the Usworth Colliery. A few months later, William began work in the same pit...

 was also active in the party, and later became Treasurer of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain.

He was elected as Whitehaven's first Labour MP at the December 1910 general election. A Labour candidate had stood unsuccessfully in January 1910 general election, but Richardson was assisted by the absence of a Liberal party

Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 candidate.

At the 1918 election

United Kingdom general election, 1918

The United Kingdom general election of 1918 was the first to be held after the Representation of the People Act 1918, which meant it was the first United Kingdom general election in which nearly all adult men and some women could vote. Polling was held on 14 December 1918, although the count did...

, he did not stand again in Whitehaven, but stood in Bosworth

Bosworth (UK Parliament constituency)

Bosworth is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.-Boundaries:...

in Leicestershire, where he was not elected, winning only 33% of the vote in a two-way contest.