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Auction: 3016 - Orders, Medals, Decorations & Militaria
Lot: 597

Order of the Companions of Honour, G.VI.R., neck Badge, silver-gilt and enamel, extremely fine, with full neck cravat, in its John Pinches, London, case of issue
Attributed to George Gibson, C.H., an important figure in the inter-war Trade Union movement.

C.H. London Gazette 13.6.1946, George Gibson Esq. Ll.D., Vice Chairman National Savings Committee,. A past chairman of the Trades Union Congress.

George Gibson, C.H. (1885-1953), was born and brought up at Calton, a suburb of Glasgow, the son of an Irish-born maker of vinegar and castor oil, who later owned a fish and chip shop and afterwards a newsagents. He left school at the age of eleven, holding a number of different jobs before moving to England in about 1909 to become a charge nurse at Winwick Asylum at Warrington, Cheshire. In July 1910 he was one of the co-founders of the National Asylum Workers' Union (N.A.W.U.) and was elected as its first Honorary Secretary, embarking on a career which saw him become one of the most important figures in the development of nursing in Britain during the early decades of the 20th century, and was a dominant figure in the union's affairs. He became Vice-President in 1911 and Assistant Organising Secretary in 1912. In 1913 he became full-time General Secretary of the union, a position which he held until his retirement in 1948 (the N.A.W.U. becoming the Mental Hospital and Institutional Workers' Union in 1930).

His career was interrupted by the First World War and in 1915 he enlisted in the Royal Garrison Artillery and received a commission in 1917. He was twice mentioned in despatches and gassed, which left him semi-asthmatic for the remainder of his life. He was demobbed in 1919 as a substantive lieutenant, but as commander of a battery was probably acting in a higher rank. During the inter-war period he threw his union's weight behind campaigns for the improvement of mental health services and for the improvement of the status of mental nurses. He was elected to the General Council of the T.U.C. in 1928, and subsequently led the T.U.C.'s successful campaign against the introduction of compulsory sterilisation for mentally handicapped people. He also played a leading role in the attempts to organise general nurses into unions in the 1930s and the 1937 Nurses' Charter.

Gibson was President of the T.U.C. and Chairman of its Council during 1940-41, and in the same period served as a full-time Director of the Children's Overseas Reception Board, responsible for evacuating children overseas. In 1941 he visited Sweden and the U.S.A. on official missions. He fulfilled many other public positions during and after the war, including Vice-Chairman of the National Savings Committee (1939-49), Director of the Bank of England (1946-49), Chairman of the North-West Regional Board for Industry (1945-48), Chairman of the North Western Electricity Board (1948-49), and Chairman of the B.B.C. General Council. He was made an LL.D. at Manchester University in 1945, and appointed C.H. in 1946.

His public career was brought to a close in 1949 amid allegations of his involvement in a minor financial scandal, although he resolutely maintained his innocence. Gibson died on 4 February 1953, and was survived by his second wife, his first having been tragically killed in a tram accident in 1917.


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