A Liverpool Exemplar - Bessie Braddock

Mary Bamber & daughter Bessie Braddock

Elizabeth Bamber was born on 24 September 1899 at 23 Zante Street, in the Everton area of Liverpool, the eldest daughter of Hugh Bamber, a bookbinder, and his wife Mary. Mary had come to Liverpool as a child when her father, a well-to-do Edinburgh lawyer, abandoned his family after his descent into alcoholism and poverty. Mary "Ma" Bamber, née Little, was the mother of Bessie Braddock, and was herself a leading socialist, trade unionist, social worker and suffragist in Liverpool for over half-a-century. She became a trade union organiser and campaigner against deplorable social conditions, and established a reputation as an outstanding platform speaker. Sylvia Pankhurst described Mary as "the finest, fighting platform speaker in the country." In a city that was dominated by sectarianism, Mary refused any religious identification and was a regular heckler at Catholic and Protestant rallies. She was the dominant early influence on her daughter Elizabeth, and they formed a lifelong determination to represent and fight for the disadvantaged.

Born into this staunchly left-wing family, Bessie attended her first political meeting at three weeks old! She would follow in Ma’s footsteps, becoming an active trade unionist and a prominent Labour member serving as an MP for the Liverpool Exchange for over 20 years and becoming well known for her forthright and no-nonsense approach. From 1906–1907 Mary helped to make soup, sold for a farthing a bowl, as part of a collective helping Liverpool’s poorest. Bessie would later say, "I remember the faces of the unemployed when the soup ran out ... I remember blank, hopeless stares, day after day, week after week, all through the hard winter of 1906–07." She visited the sick, collected for the unemployed and frequently spoke at outdoor meetings. In 1911 both Mary and Bessie attended the 'Bloody Sunday' demonstration in the Liverpool general transport strike. Bessie was just 11 and shortly after leaving school was employed in the Walton Road Co-operative store in the drapery department, where she stayed until 1918. They both supported the 1922 hunger marchers when they passed through Liverpool.

Leading up to the First World War, Mary had become well known through her work as an organiser with the Warehouse Workers Union. After the end of the First World War, Bessie began work as a clerk with this Union and helped her mother win an election to Liverpool Council. In the course of her political work she met her future husband, Jack Braddock, who was also an activist in the Independant Labour Party. However some disillusionment with the ILP saw Bessie, Jack and Mary Bamber join the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain but in 1924 they found they were not comfortable with the leadership in the CPGB and along with the entire leadership of the Liverpool branch, they resigned and subsequently joined the Labour Party. Although both Bessie and Jack were suffering severe financial hardship they resisted an approach by the Daily Mail to be paid for telling about their life in the CPGB.

With both now elected to the Liverpool City Council in 1930, Bessie's focus was on empowering women, and encouraging low paid workers to organise and attend union meetings.She made slum clearance her priority, once famously taking a two-foot megaphone into the council chamber to force action. As a member of the council's Port Sanitary and Hospitals Committee, which controlled all the city's hospitals and residential homes for the elderly, Bessie discovered that the hospitals were generally verminous, drably decorated and poorly ventilated, with inadequate cooking facilities. She became involved in the reform, reorganisation and modernisation of many of the city's health facilities, particularly those related to mothers and children.

During WW2 she was an ambulance driver and reportedly drove her ambulance through all 68 of the devastating air raids which struck the city. However she left there to fight the 1945 General Election becoming the first Labour MP for the Exchange Division.  Her maiden speech in 1945 involved an impassioned plea to the new Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, for immediate measures to improve the slum housing conditions in Liverpool, and throughout the country; "...Particularly in industrial areas, people are living in flea-ridden, bug-ridden, rat-ridden, lousy hell-holes..." She 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 were removed.

In 1947 she was elected to the Labour Party National Executive Committee and was renowned as an assertive speaker. Bessie’s combative style sometimes caused controversy and she didn’t shy away from controversial issues, she was even briefly suspended from Parliament in 1952 after defying the Speaker. She carried on campaigning for slum clearance and better housing and in favour of improvements in health facilities. Her interests in housing and health in Liverpool were accompanied by a long campaign about poor conditions and staff violence in Walton Prison. This led to an official Enquiry into Prison Conditions which reported back in 1958. Continuing her work in Liverpool at a time when the local party was divided on both political and religious lines she helped on the commission which led to the Mental Health Act 1959.

Bessie Braddock statue Lime Street Station

Mary Bamber statue St Georges Hall

Bessie was awarded the freedom of the city of Liverpool, the first woman to be given that honour, months before her death in 1970. Bessie sadly passed away on the 13th of November 1970 in Liverpool's Rathbone Hospital at the age of 71. At her funeral at Anfield Crematorium days later Harold Wilson said that "she was born to fight for the people of the docks, of the slums, of the factories and in every part of the city where people needed help". After her death the Guardian newspaper obituarist hailed her as "one of the most distinctive political personalities of the century."

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2020/08/a-liverpool-exemplar-william-rathbone-v1.html