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.
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 Mary Bamber, Bessie Braddock's mother, can be seen second from the left with other members of the Liverpool Labour Movement at Sun Hall, Kensington in 1913. |
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. |
