Joseph Binns, CBE (19 March 1900 – 23 April 1975)[1] was a British Labour Party politician.
Binns was the son of Alderman Joseph Binns, who later became Lord Mayor of Manchester.[2] He was educated at elementary schools and at Manchester College of Technology, and became a consulting engineer,[2] working for ICI.[3]
He was a member of Greenwich Borough Council from 1932 to 1949, and was Chairman of the Joint Standing Committee of the Metropolitan Boroughs from 1945 to 1949.[2] At the 1945 general election he was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Gillingham in Kent.[4][5] He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Supply, John Wilmot, from 1946 to 1947. He was defeated at the 1950 general election,[6] after catching influenza during the campaign,[7] and was never returned to the House of Commons.
Binns was appointed as a Commissioner of the Public Works Loan Board in 1948, a role held until 1972, becoming deputy chairman of the board in 1958[8] and chairman in 1970.[2][9] He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year Honours 1961.[10]
Family
Binns married Daisy Graham in 1924,[2] and they had two sons: Graham and Joseph Christopher.[11] Graham Binns (1925–2003) was a broadcaster and arts campaigner who served for five years as chairman of the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles.[3] Another son, Joseph Binns (born 1931),[12] was a Labour Party councillor in Greenwich who stood unsuccessfully for Parliament on three occasions: as a Labour candidate in Bromley at the 1964 general election and in his father's old constituency of Gillingham in 1966,[13] and as a Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate in Birmingham Edgbaston at the 1983 general election.[12]
