Bessie Braddock

'Battling Bessie' represented Liverpool Exchange from 1945 to 1970 and was famous for working the docklands slums personally, taking up housing cases with the city council and pressing for slum clearance and rebuilding after the Blitz. Her bluntness, she once brought a toy air rifle into the Commons to make a point about gun laws, made her a national character, but in Liverpool she was valued as the MP who answered her door. Her husband Jack led the city council, which gave her unusual local leverage.