Papers of William Wilson MP (1913-2010), Labour politician and solicitor

Constituency and other correspondence and papers relating to individual cases and various local, regional, national and international issues, mainly 1960s-1983.

William Wilson was born in 1913 and qualified as a solicitor in 1939. He served in the army during the Second World War in North Africa, Italy and Greece and was demobilised in 1946. During the 1950s he fought several elections unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate in the Leamington and Warwick constituency. In 1964 he won the seat of Coventry South, which he represented until 1974. He was the MP for Coventry South East until his retirement from parliament in 1983. He was a member of the Commons Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration from 1970 to 1979. He was also a member of Warwickshire County Council from 1958 to 1970, and he was re-elected to that body in 1972, serving as the leader of the Labour group from then until 1993. He retired as a solicitor in 1999 and died in 2010.

Apart from records which are closed because they contain sensitive personal information, this collection is available to researchers by appointment at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. See http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/using/

Records with references beginning MSS.76 were deposited in the Centre by William Wilson in 1974-5, 1977, 1980 and 1983. The papers on divorce legislation (references beginning MSS.371/Wilson) were donated to the Qualidata archive at the University of Essex by the estate of Professor Robert Chester, who had used them for research. They were deposited in the Centre by Qualidata in April 2000.

Link to full catalogue: http://mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk/records/WIL

Further deposits are not expected.

Wartime correspondence of William Wilson, 1941-1946, is held at Coventry Archives. William Wilson's County Council papers, 1983-1993, are in Warwickshire County Record Office.