Bessie Braddock
Elizabeth Margaret Braddock was a British Labour Party politician. She served as Member of Parliament for the Liverpool Exchange division from 1945 to 1970. Her combative style led to a brief suspension from parliament in 1952. Towards the end of her life she became Liverpool’s first woman freeman.
About Bessie Braddock in brief
Elizabeth Margaret Braddock was a British Labour Party politician. She served as Member of Parliament for the Liverpool Exchange division from 1945 to 1970. Braddock inherited much of her campaigning spirit from her mother, Mary Bamber, an early socialist and trade union activist. She was a member of Liverpool County Borough Council from 1930 to 1961. Although she never held office in government, she won a national reputation for her forthright campaigns in connection with housing, public health and other social issues. Her combative style led to a brief suspension from parliament in 1952. Towards the end of her life she became Liverpool’s first woman freeman. After her death in 1970 her Guardian obituarist hailed her as “one of the most distinctive political personalities of the century”. She was born on 24 September 1899 at 23 Zante Street, in the Everton area of Liverpool, the eldest daughter of Hugh Bamber and his wife Mary, née Little. Mary became a trade union organiser and campaigner against deplorable social conditions, and established a reputation as an outstanding platform speaker. In 1902 the Bamber family relocated to Smollett Street in nearby Bootle, one of several moves that caused Elizabeth’s formal education to be divided among different schools. At the age of eleven Elizabeth left the Sunday School and joined the youth section of the Independent Labour Party, where she studied socialism alongside a busy programme of social activities. At her mother’s insistence she attended classes in the drapery department of the Walton Road Co-operative store.
Elizabeth left school in 1913, and began work filling seed packets for five shillings a week. She later described herself at this time as’strong, agile, fond of walking and eating’ She was married to Jack Braddock, who worked in Liverpool’s ambulance service, before winning the Exchange division for Labour in the 1945 general election. In the early 1950s she moved steadily to the right wing of her party, and was increasingly acerbic in her judgements of her former colleagues on the left. She became a central figure in the controversy that arose in the 1950s over the city’s decision to acquire and flood the Tryweryn Valley in Wales for the construction of a reservoir. In August 1911 she was sometimes baton charge by police and troops at a rally in support of Liverpool’s striking transport workers. Hundreds were injured, and in the disturbances that followed two demonstrators were shot dead by police. The day became enshrined in Liverpool’s working-class history as Bloody Sunday. Elizabeth became a post-war member of the Shopworkers’ Union, and after a few months she found a post in the Drapery Department of the Co-op. After some years in the IndependentLabour Party, Braddock joined the Communist Party of Great Britain on its foundation in 1920, but quickly became disillusioned with the party’s dictatorial tendencies. She left the CPGB in 1924 and later joined the Labour Party. In 1924 she became an organiser for the Warehouse Workers’ Union, acting as a steward at meetings.
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