George Howell (1833-1910) took part in almost every phase of working class activity, from the decline of Chartism to the rise of the Labour Party. Among the positions he held were Secretary of the Reform League, Secretary of the Trades Union Congress and the first Secretary of its Parliamentary Committee. He was also one of the first working class members of Parliament, when he won as a Lib-Lab candidate in Bethnal Green in 1885. One of his greatest achievements in Parliament was in helping the passage of the Merchant Shipping Bill that improved the working condition of merchant seamen. There is a link to a fuller biography on the Bishopsgate Institute website here: http://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/. In 1966, Nuffield College Library purchased 25 reels of microfilm of the George Howell collection from the Bishopsgate Institute, London. There is a printed index to the correspondence in the collection in the small collections folder and the collection itself is on the second floor of the Library in the microfilm cabinet (labelled 5).
See Small Collection description for other sub-collections.