Victor Collins, Baron Stonham
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Biography
Victor John Collins, Baron Stonham OBE PC (1 July 1903 – 22 December 1971) was a British Labour Party politician.
Born in Whitechapel, London, he was elected at the 1945 general election as Member of Parliament for Taunton, in Somerset. He lost his seat at the 1950, to the Conservative Henry Hopkinson. Collins has been the only Labour Member of Parliament for the Taunton constituency. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946.
Collins returned to the House of Commons at a by-election in 1954, when he was elected as MP for the inner London constituency of Shoreditch and Finsbury, following the death of the Labour MP Ernest Thurtle.
He left the Commons and was created a life peer as Baron Stonham, of Earl Stonham in the County of Suffolk on 2 August 1958. During Harold Wilson's first spell as Prime Minister, Lord Stonham served as a junior minister at the Home Office from 1964 to 1967, and as Minister of State at the Home Office until 1969. As Minister of State with responsibility for Northern Ireland, he made a three-day visit there starting on 4 June 1968.
Stonham was appointed as a Privy Counsellor in 1969. He died in Enfield aged 68.