Items15The creator’s order
  1. 1Bessie BraddockBessie 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…0i
  2. 2John HumeJohn HumeBorn 18 Jan 1937Before the peace process, Hume's politics began in Derry: he co-founded the city's credit union in 1960, which grew into one of the largest in Ireland, and campaigned for a university in the city. As MP for Foyle from 1983 to 2005, and an MEP at the same time, he used his European and American…0i
  3. 3Ian PaisleyIan PaisleyBorn 6 Apr 1926Whatever his national reputation, Paisley was regarded in North Antrim, which he represented from 1970 to 2010, as a tireless constituency MP who took up cases for Catholic and Protestant constituents alike. Nationalist councillors and farmers' groups acknowledged it, and his weekly surgeries in…0i
  4. 4Tony BennTony BennBorn 3 Apr 1925Benn fought three times, in the early 1960s, to keep his Bristol South East seat after inheriting a peerage, winning a by-election he was then barred from taking and helping force the Peerage Act 1963 that let him renounce the title. Later, as MP for Chesterfield from 1984 to 2001, he held regular…0i
  5. 5Dennis SkinnerDennis SkinnerBorn 11 Feb 1932Skinner refused to pair, to travel abroad on parliamentary trips or to take up the social side of Westminster, and spent his time in the chamber or in Bolsover. He held the seat from 1970 to 2019, through pit closures that devastated its villages, and was valued locally for fighting individual…0i
  6. 6Frank Field, Baron Field of BirkenheadFrank Field, Baron Field of BirkenheadBorn 16 Jul 1942Field represented Birkenhead for forty years and turned his casework into national policy: constituents' experiences of benefit delays drove his campaigns on hunger, and he set up Feeding Birkenhead to provide holiday meals for local children and research the causes of food poverty. He also helped…0i
  7. 7Simon HughesSimon HughesBorn 17 May 1951Hughes won the Bermondsey by-election in 1983 in a notoriously homophobic contest against Labour's Peter Tatchell, for which his own campaign later apologised, and then held the seat for 32 years through relentless local casework on council housing, estate repairs and the regeneration of the…0i
  8. 8Paddy AshdownPaddy AshdownBorn 27 Feb 1941Ashdown spent eight years working Yeovil before winning it from the Conservatives in 1983, using the Liberals' 'community politics' method: street-by-street leaflets, local action teams and taking up every pothole and planning case. He held the seat until 2001 and taught a generation of Liberal…0i
  9. 9Charles KennedyCharles KennedyBorn 25 Nov 1959Kennedy was elected for Ross, Cromarty and Skye in 1983 at 23 and represented the vast Highland seat, later Ross, Skye and Lochaber, for 32 years, covering a constituency larger than some countries by car and ferry. Locally he was known for his presence at ceilidhs and community halls and for…0i
  10. 10Stephen TimmsStephen TimmsBorn 29 Jul 1955Timms, MP for East Ham since 1994, was stabbed twice in the stomach by a radicalised constituent at his advice surgery in May 2010. He returned to work within weeks and kept holding open surgeries, a decision widely praised as a defence of MPs' accessibility. His constituency has one of the largest…0i