George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy

In July 2014, British media carried reports that the South Wales Police were investigating allegations that Thomas had sexually abused a boy aged nine in the late 1960s. In March 2015, South Wales Police confirmed that they were investigating claims that he had been involved in child abuse. The probe ended in March 2017 with no action being taken.

Although having agreed to remove the spoil tips above Aberfan, Thomas was party to a decision by the Wilson Government to forcibly take £150,000 from the Aberfan charity fund – raised to help the victims of the disaster and their families – as part payment for the removal operation. Only after in 1997, 30 years after the disaster, was the money paid back to the charity fund by the newly appointed Secretary of State for Wales Ron Davies, who was quoted as saying: "It was a wrong perpetrated by a previous government – a Labour Secretary of State. I regarded it as an embarrassment. It was a wrong that needed to be righted."

Thomas's opposition to Welsh nationalism was finally expressed in hostility to the Blair government's devolution proposals of 1997. He was asked by Robert Hodge, son of Sir Julian Hodge, to be a member of the steering committee of the "Just Say No" campaign (which opposed devolution in 1997). Despite ailing from cancer, Thomas agreed to a ceremonial role and became president. Other known persons in the movement included Nick Bourne, David Davies (Monmouth MP) and Alun Cairns.

Lord Tonypandy died in Cardiff on 22 September 1997. He was twice engaged to be married but he never did, so there was no heir to the viscountcy, which became extinct. He is buried at Trealaw Cemetery.

In the House of Lords Thomas was an outspoken critic of the European Union and the Maastricht Treaty, and in a June 1993 debate, he endorsed Margaret Thatcher’s comments and defended her after Roy Jenkins had criticised her similar "extreme" views against further European sociopolitical integration.

During that year, he also gave his very high-profile endorsement of Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party, believing that the European Union was compromising the sovereignty of Parliament. He also wrote the foreword to Adrian Hilton's book on this issue, The Principality and Power of Europe. Lord Tonypandy was later Chairman of the Bank of Wales between 1985 and 1991.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1983 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at London’s Royal Albert Hall, ahead of a charity concert for the National Children’s Home.

In 1976 Thomas was elected Speaker, in which role the first broadcasting of parliamentary proceedings brought him unprecedented public attention. He is the most recent Speaker to have served as a government minister before becoming Speaker. He retired from Parliament in 1983 and was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Tonypandy, of Rhondda in the County of Mid Glamorgan.

In 1974 Thomas was elected Chairman of Ways and Means and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. Two years later he succeeded Selwyn Lloyd as Speaker of the House of Commons. The first broadcasting of parliamentary proceedings (although only the sound was broadcast until 1989, not live pictures) brought him unprecedented public attention, but he proved more impartial than party colleagues had expected. In July 1983 he retired and was raised to the peerage with a hereditary peerage as Viscount Tonypandy, of Rhondda in the County of Mid Glamorgan. This was the last creation of a Viscountcy in the UK; Willie Whitelaw, who is often cited as the last such creation received his in June 1983. Also in 1983 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD) honoris causa by the University of Leeds.

Thomas initially showed sympathy to the people of the village, bereaved and devastated by the disaster, where a NCB colliery spoil tip, loosened by heavy rain, slid down a hillside and engulfed houses and a primary school. The disaster cost the lives of 144 people, 116 of them children at Pantglas Junior School. The villagers campaigned vigorously for the remaining tips to be removed. On 20 July 1968 Thomas addressed a meeting, at the Welsh Office in Cardiff, to discuss the tips. When Thomas refused to agree to their removal, an angry crowd of villagers, took the meeting over and dumped a sackful of slurry on the floor of the offices. Thomas fled into hiding, elsewhere in the building, but after a stand-off returned, to be roundly berated by the villagers. Thomas later announced that the tips would be removed.

In early 1967 he became Minister of State for Commonwealth Affairs. As Secretary of State for Wales from 1968 to 1970 he presided over the investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle in 1969. Thomas was fervently attached to the Royal Family and also strongly opposed to Plaid Cymru, and particularly to the Welsh Language Society.

Born in Port Talbot, South Wales, he initially worked as a teacher in both London and Cardiff. A MP from 1945 to 1983, he held office in Harold Wilson's 1964–1970 Labour administration, notably as Secretary of State for Wales from 1968 to 1970. As a junior minister at the Welsh Office, he was one of the first on the scene of the Aberfan disaster (21 October 1966), and was later involved in the controversial government decision to use money from the Aberfan Charity Fund to clear remaining National Coal Board waste tips from around the village.

Elected to Parliament in the Attlee landslide at the 1945 general election, Thomas held Cardiff Central between 1945 and 1950, and Cardiff West between 1950 and his retirement from the Commons at the 1983 general election. When the Labour Party came to power under Harold Wilson in 1964, Thomas was made joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, In April 1966 he was appointed Minister of State for Wales, and was one of the first on the scene of the Aberfan disaster in October 1966.

Thomas was born in Port Talbot, Glamorgan, the second son of Zachariah Thomas, a Welsh-speaking miner from Carmarthen, and Emma Jane Tilbury, daughter of a founder of the English Methodist Church in Tonypandy. He had two elder sisters, Ada May and Dolly, one elder brother Emrys and one younger brother Ivor. His father became a heavy drinker and the family were happy when he joined up at the start of the First World War. They were less pleased when Emma had to take her marriage certificate to court to prove she was Zachariah's wife and not the woman in Kent to whom he had allocated his soldier allowance. He never returned to South Wales and died of tuberculosis in 1925.

Thomas George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy, PC (29 January 1909 – 22 September 1997) was a British politician who served as a member of parliament (MP) and Speaker of the House of Commons from 1976 to 1983. He was elected as a Labour MP.