Robert Kenneth Litherland (23 June 193013 May 2011), known as Bob Litherland, was a British
Labour politician.
He was elected
Member of Parliament (MP) for
Manchester Central at a
by-election in September 1979, and held the office until he retired at the
1997 general election.
Early life
Litherland was born to a working-class family in
Collyhurst
Collyhurst is an inner city area of Manchester, England, northeast of the Manchester city centre, city centre on Rochdale Road (A664) and A62 road, Oldham Road (A62), bounded by Smedley, Manchester, Smedley, Harpurhey and Monsall tram stop, Mo ...
,
Manchester
Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...
. His father was an engineer and his mother was a mill worker. He attended a grammar school but left at the age of fifteen to train as a bookbinder, going on to be a sales representative for a printing company. He was active in the
trade union
A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
the
Society of Graphical and Allied Trades
The Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT) was a British trade union in the printing industry.
History
SOGAT was formed in 1966 by the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers and the National Society of Operative Pr ...
(Sogat) and joined the Labour party at sixteen.
Career
Litherland was elected to
Manchester City Council
Manchester City Council is the Local government in England, local authority for the City status in the United Kingdom, city of Manchester in Greater Manchester, England. Manchester has had an elected local authority since 1838, which has been re ...
in 1971
for the ward of
Harpurhey
Harpurhey ( ) is an inner-city suburb of Manchester, England, 2.3 miles northeast of the Manchester city centre, city centre. Historically in Lancashire, the population at the 2011 United Kingdom census, 2011 census was 17,652.
Areas of Harpurh ...
.
He became chairman of the council's direct works committee, overseeing
slum clearance
Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low-income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...
. A believer in
municipal socialism
Municipal socialism is a type of socialism that uses local government to further socialist aims. It is a form of municipalism in which its explicitly socialist aims are clearly stated. In some contexts the word "municipalism" was tainted with t ...
, he took pride in the improvements to
council housing
Public housing in the United Kingdom, also known as council housing or social housing, provided the majority of rented accommodation until 2011, when the number of households in private rental housing surpassed the number in social housing. D ...
in the city
and revealed a cartel fixing the price of cement.
Member of Parliament
After Labour's defeat in the 1979 general election,
Harold Lever
Norman Harold Lever, Baron Lever of Manchester, PC (15 January 19146 August 1995) was a British barrister and Labour Party politician.
Early life
He was born in Manchester, the son of a Jewish textile merchant from Lithuania, and was educated ...
, the MP for Manchester Central, was made a
life peer
In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. Life peers are appointed by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister. With the exception of the D ...
, leading to
the first by-election of that parliament. The first MP sponsored by Sogat, Litherland won the Labour nomination and was elected that September by a majority of 5,992.
A left-winger, he welcomed
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot (23 July 19133 March 2010) was a British politician who was Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom), Leader of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983. Foot beg ...
's successful
Labour party leadership bid and sponsored
Tony Benn
Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party politician and political activist who served as a Cabinet of the United Kingdom, Cabine ...
in his failed
1981 deputy leadership challenge. He would later support
Eric Heffer
Eric Samuel Heffer (12 January 192227 May 1991) was a British socialist politician. He was Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Walton from 1964 until his death. Due to his experience as a professional joiner, he made a speciality of th ...
and
John Prescott
John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott (31 May 1938 – 20 November 2024) was a British politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and as First Secretary of State from 2001 to 2007.
A member of the ...
in their leadership bids.
In 1981, a year after the beginning of the
Soviet–Afghan War
The Soviet–Afghan War took place in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from December 1979 to February 1989. Marking the beginning of the 46-year-long Afghan conflict, it saw the Soviet Union and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic o ...
, he made a controversial fact-finding visit to
Kabul
Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province. The city is divided for administration into #Districts, 22 municipal districts. A ...
with two other Labour MPs. After a five-day stay he concluded that
Babrak Karmal
Babrak Kārmal (Dari/Pashto: ; born Sultan Hussein; 6 January 1929 – 1 or 3 December 1996) was an Afghan communist revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Afghanistan, serving in the post of general secretary of the People's Demo ...
's government should be recognised but that Soviet forces should leave Afghanistan.
Litherland worked hard for his constituents. In 1982 he protested to ministers about poor conditions at
Strangeways prison
HM Prison Manchester is a Category A and B men's prison in Manchester, England, operated by His Majesty's Prison Service. It is still commonly referred to as Strangeways, which was its former official name derived from the area in which it is l ...
and in 1983 he demanded an inquiry into poor-quality tower blocks. After boundary changes in 1983, his local popularity meant he was selected for the redrawn Manchester Central seat over frontbencher
Charles Morris, whose
Manchester Openshaw
Manchester Openshaw was a parliamentary constituency centred on the Openshaw district of Manchester. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The constituency was created for t ...
seat had been abolished. He was re-elected with a majority of nearly 20,000.
He chose to retire from politics when he reached retirement age, stepping down as an MP at the
1997 general election. This meant that despite spending eighteen years in Parliament he never served as a government MP.
Political beliefs
Litherland was a staunch socialist and held some radical beliefs. However, he realised that Labour needed to pursue popular policies in order to gain power and that socialists had to co-operate to succeed. He was a member of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nucl ...
and opposed the deployment of troops to the
Falklands War
The Falklands War () was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and Falkland Islands Dependenci ...
.
He opposed
Conservative Party laws on trade unions and criticised
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...
for promoting democracy abroad, such as during her visit to Poland, while suppressing unions at home.
Personal life
Litherland married his wife Edna in 1953. They had two children, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
He died in May 2011 after living with cancer for ten years.
References
*''Times Guide to the House of Commons'', Times Newspapers Limited, 1992 and 1997 editions.
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Litherland, Bob
1930 births
2011 deaths
Graphical, Paper and Media Union-sponsored MPs
Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
Politicians from Manchester
UK MPs 1979–1983
UK MPs 1983–1987
UK MPs 1987–1992
UK MPs 1992–1997