Here is a biography courtesy of the Chambre Hardman Trust, visit it by clicking HERE.

When Bessie Braddock died on 13 November 1970 the flags in Liverpool flew at half-mast. She was born Elizabeth Margaret Bamber, seventy-one years before on 24 September 1899, to Liverpool socialists, Mary and Hugh Bamber. Her father was a book-binder and guillotine worker at one of the Liverpool newsagents, and her mother was a local trade union organiser and leading member of the local Labour movement. Bessie's socialist schooling began very early; as a three week old baby her mother took her to meetings where she spoke in her capacity as national organiser of the National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers. At the age of nine Bessie recited William Morris's The Coming Day in the presence of Philip Snowden at a Labour meeting held at Sun Hall.

Bessie left Anfield Road Council School when she was fifteen years old to begin work as a seed packer. Later she went to work in a small draper's shop, and then secured a job in the drapery department at the Co-operative Store on Walton Road. During the war, Bessie belonged to local pacifist groups. In 1921 she made her first public speech at an unemployment demonstration in the city. Bessie always said that it was the need to improve the conditions of the working people in Liverpool which had inspired her political activity. On 9 February 1922 Bessie married John (Jack) Braddock, a skilled railway worker blacklisted for agitating for better wages, whom she had been courting since 1915. The ceremony at Brougham Terrace Registry Office was held during the couples' lunch hour. The Braddocks lived on Freehold Street in the Fairfield area, at the north end of the city.

In 1922 Elizabeth Margaret Bamber married John Braddock. That year the Braddocks helped to found a branch of the Communist Party in Liverpool. During the 1920s Bessie firmly established herself within the local Labour movement as 'the spokeswoman of the underdog'. Bessie represented the Labour party locally and nationally. In 1930 the Labour Party invited Bessie to contest St Anne's ward in the municipal elections; she won this ward and remained a member of the City Council until 1955. After the Second World War Bessie successfully contested Liverpool's Exchange district for Labour; she went on to represent this constituency in Parliament until 1970.

Bessie made her presence felt on Council during the 1930s. According to her biographer Millie Toole, Bessie produced 'so much boat rocking that some of the opposition felt sea-sick as soon as they saw her'. Parliament was also a far more interesting place for the presence of Bessie Braddock. When she died in 1970, Bessie passed into political folklore not only as the first woman to have been suspended by the speaker of the House of Commons, but as the only minister to have danced a jig on the floor of the House and to have supposedly sat in Winston Churchill's seat.

To read more about Bessie Braddock, HERE is her Wikipedia entry.