57 Facts About Bessie Braddock

Elizabeth Margaret Braddock was a British Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament for the Liverpool Exchange division from 1945 to 1970.

Bessie Braddock was a member of Liverpool County Borough Council from 1930 to 1961.

Bessie Braddock inherited much of her campaigning spirit from her mother, Mary Bamber, an early socialist and trade union activist.

Bessie Braddock left the CPGB in 1924 and later joined the Labour Party.

Bessie Braddock served on Labour's National Executive Committee between 1947 and 1969.

Between 1953 and 1957 Bessie Braddock served on the Royal Commission for Mental Health which led to the Mental Health Act 1959.

Bessie Braddock was the dominant early influence on her daughter Elizabeth, who formed a lifelong determination to represent and fight for the disadvantaged.

Bessie Braddock later described herself at this time as "strong, agile, fond of walking and eating".

Bessie Braddock played a leading role in a TUC "Hands Off Russia" rally in Liverpool's Sheil Park, where she and others resisted the efforts of the British Empire Union to capture the ILP's red flag.

Bessie Braddock had arrived in Liverpool from Dewsbury in 1915, hoping to emigrate to Canada, but had stayed in the port and immersed himself in left-wing politics and the fight to improve working conditions.

Bessie Braddock had been living for some time at the Bambers' home when, in February 1922, the couple were married at Brougham Terrace registry office, during the course of a working day.

Bessie Braddock was rescued by the action of Sir Benjamin Johnson, a liberal-minded industrialist, who lent him the money to purchase a Co-operative Insurance Society agency.

Jack and Bessie Braddock were now determined to pursue their political aims by democratic methods, and in 1926 they joined the Fairfield ward of the Liverpool Labour Party.

Bessie Braddock was thereupon deselected by the St Anne's ward, which chose Bessie as their candidate for the 1930 election.

Bessie Braddock faced a difficult task, since Hughes chose to stand against her as an Independent Socialist, with the support of leading local Catholics in a ward where the electorate was 85 per cent Catholic.

An intense campaign, during which Bessie Braddock claimed to have visited every street in the ward, brought her success.

Nevertheless, Bessie Braddock, who had been appalled by the housing conditions in the ward, helped to instigate a slum clearance campaign which slowly brought improvements.

Bessie Braddock became involved in the reform, reorganisation and modernisation of many of the city's health facilities, particularly those related to mothers and children.

Bessie Braddock enjoyed the strong support of around two-thirds of the Labour councillors; the Braddocks, and from 1932 Sydney Silverman, were part of the smaller leftist wing of the group.

When in 1936 Hogan tried to block the renewal of a grant to a local birth control clinic, Bessie Braddock led a cross-party rebellion of councillors which ensured that the grant was maintained.

Bessie Braddock argued that most of the 87 women who had died in childbirth the previous year might have survived with access to contraception.

Bessie Braddock justified this behaviour on the grounds that "if you didn't do something outrageous, nobody would take any notice of you".

Bessie Braddock had earlier resorted to using a two-foot megaphone in a council meeting, to demand action over housing conditions and slums.

In 1936 Bessie Braddock was selected as Labour candidate for Liverpool Exchange.

Bessie Braddock was then 36 years old; she would have to wait for nearly 10 years before she could fight her seat, as the general election that would normally have been held in 1939 or 1940 was postponed by the Second World War.

Bessie Braddock was outspoken in her attacks on fascist groups, and in her defence of those who attacked their parades.

The death of her mother Mary Bamber in June 1938, at the age of 63, was a considerable personal blow to Bessie Braddock, and was widely mourned within Liverpool's socialist community.

Bessie Braddock became a section leader and then a deputy leader of G Division, an administrative post that should have kept her at headquarters.

Bessie Braddock remained with the ambulance service almost until the end of the war in 1945.

Bessie Braddock became honorary president of the Liverpool Trades Council and Labour Party, the body that had been formed in 1921 when the Liverpool Trades Council merged with the newly formed local Labour Party to form a united labour front.

The expectations of a Labour victory in Liverpool Exchange were not high, but Bessie Braddock's chances were boosted by the poor local record of the sitting member, Colonel Shute, and she herself was confident.

Bessie Braddock won Liverpool Exchange with a majority of 665 from 16,000 votes cast.

Bessie Braddock ended her speech with a promise that she and other Labour back-benchers would continue to agitate until the conditions in which many were forced to live, "as a result of having been represented for so long by the Conservative Party", were removed.

Bessie Braddock lost the case, and a subsequent appeal was unsuccessful.

In 1947 Bessie Braddock was elected to the Labour Party's National Executive Committee.

Bessie Braddock resigned from the Fellowship in 1950, along with fellow-MPs Fenner Brockway and Ellis Smith, when it condemned the United Nations intervention in the Korean War.

Attlee's second government was short-lived; in the October 1951 general election Bessie Braddock increased her personal majority again, to 6,834, but nationally Labour was defeated by the Conservatives and went into opposition.

Outside her political duties Bessie Braddock, a fan of boxing, accepted the honorary presidency of the Professional Boxers' Association, and was a defender of the sport.

Bessie Braddock's enthusiasm arose in part from her experiences as a juvenile court magistrate; she believed that the sport fostered character and mutual respect.

Bessie Braddock was frequently at odds with her parliamentary colleague Edith Summerskill, a physician who wrote the anti-boxing tract The Ignoble Art, and campaigned for the sport's abolition.

Bessie Braddock did not support Aneurin Bevan when he resigned from the government in April 1951 over the introduction of National Health Service charges, and later asserted that, by making dissidence fashionable, Bevan had "weakened the [Labour] National Executive to the point where it could no longer deal effectively with infiltrating Trotskyists and Communists".

Bessie Braddock regularly attacked the Labour left at party conferences, and in 1952 was involved in scuffles with other delegates after the unexpected success of Bevanite candidates in the NEC elections.

Bessie Braddock, convinced that this vote had been rigged, appealed to the NEC, who set the decision aside and imposed her on the constituency.

Bessie Braddock gave up her St Anne's ward seat, after 25 years, but remained on the council as a co-opted alderman.

Bessie Braddock alarmed the house by brandishing two such pistols which, she explained, she had confiscated in the course of her duties as a juvenile court magistrate.

In July 1957, when the enabling legislation reached its second House of Commons reading, Bessie Braddock described the scheme as regional rather than local, and claimed that some parts of Wales would benefit from it.

In Liverpool Exchange Bessie Braddock defied the national swing, and increased her proportion of the vote.

On 12 November 1963 Jack Bessie Braddock died of a heart attack at the age of 71, while attending an official function in Liverpool.

The October 1964 general election brought Labour a narrow victory under Harold Wilson, while in Liverpool Exchange, Bessie Braddock achieved her best personal majority to date, 9,746.

Bessie Braddock did not take a post in the new government; according to The Guardian she was offered a job, but declined on the grounds of health and age.

In 1968 Bessie Braddock became vice chairman of the Labour Party.

Bessie Braddock was especially appreciated in Liverpool, where much of her campaigning zeal for better housing and healthcare was concentrated.

Bessie Braddock was renowned for the sharpness of her tongue, either in pursuit of her campaigns or in denouncing her enemies.

Bessie Braddock frequently used inflammatory, colourful language, once describing an opposing councillor as a "blasted rat", and another time telling the Tory majority that she was willing "to take a machine gun to the lot of you".

Bessie Braddock did not smoke or drink, dressed conventionally and holidayed modestly in Scarborough.

Towards perceived adversaries, Bessie Braddock showed neither patience nor respect, especially those with whom she had once shared common ground on the far left.

Bessie Braddock is commemorated in Liverpool by the statue in Lime Street Station, and by a blue plaque erected at her modest home in ZigZag Road.