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Daniel Chater was born in Lambeth on 17 November 1870 he was the eldest son of Henry Chater and Maria Snell. His father had served in the army including seven years in India, his mother Maria Snell was a nursemaid. Having attended the local Board school he started work as a clerk to a solicitor at the age of 12. He worked in a range of other clerking jobs and taught himself shorthand and typing. In 1894 he married Kate Wood and the two moved to Ilford and the following year he secured a post with a firm of stockbrokers.

He joined the Ilford Socialist Party which subsequently merged with the local branch of the Independent Labour Party. He was a member of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, and also of the Plebs League. Between 1919 and 1922 he served on the local council and developed a strong interest in allotments and was active in the Vacant Lands Cultivation Society, he was also the first Chairman of the National Union of Allotment Holders. He was invited by the Agricultural Wholesale Society to manage their allotments department but this coincided with the economic slump and the scheme did not take-off.

Chater stood as a Labour candidate for the Ilford constituency in both the 1923 and 1924 general elections - losing out to Conservative candidates on both occasions. He was Chairman of the Ilford Labour Party between 1924-6 and stood again in May 1929 in the Hammersmith South constituency over-turning a safe Conservative seat with a slim majority of just over 400 votes. He lost his seat two years later in the 1931 election and instead became the organiser for the political committee of the London Co-operative Society and wrote and gave lecturers on their behalf.

He was re-elected in 1935 this time standing for the Bethnal Green North East constituency. Although he tended to vote with his party he did vote against the Government on the Means Test and against the omission of women from the war-time Personal Injuries Act and spoke out against the release of Oswald Mosely in 1943. After the war he was un-happy with aspects of nationalisation and called for good trade links with the Soviet Union to establish peaceful co-existence.

He stood down in 1950 when boundary changes effectively abolished his consistency. He was badly injured in a collision with a motorcycle in the mid 1950s and this had left him badly crippled. He died on 25 May 1959.

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