My thanks to Chris Brooke on twitter for reminding me about John S Clarke a Labour MP from 1929-1931 who belongs to a period long before social media when people with controversial pasts and backgrounds could still be effective Parliamentary figures.
The late socialist historian Ray Challinor wrote a biography, currently out of print, but a summary is below:
John S Clarke (1885-1959) was Labour MP for Glasgow Maryhill from 1929 until 1931.
He learned how to be a lion tamer in circuses in his teenage years and continued to do this throughout his life. He became a sailor and in that capacity ran guns to the 1905 Russian Revolution.
He opposed World War One, writing anti-war poems, but rather than apply to become a conscientious objector he successfully went on the run from the authorities.
After the War he was a non-voting delegate at the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920. While in Russia he famously cured Lenin’s dog of an illness.
In the early 1920s Clarke became a member of the Independent Labour Party though he left when the ILP disaffiliated from Labour in 1932.
After his period as a Labour MP, Clarke, the lion tamer and poet, pursued an interest in Renaissance Art sitting on a range of public bodies that protected it in Scotland.
It seems quite unlikely that a man with such a varied background would make it through a Labour Party candidate selection process today, let alone be elected as a Labour MP.
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