Bootle - Politics

Politics

Originally a Conservative seat, Bootle elected early MPs such as Andrew Bonar Law, a future Tory Prime Minister. The seat was briefly Liberal in the early 1920s. Labour first captured the seat in 1929, in the personage of local hairdresser John Kinley, but lost it in 1931. Although Kinley recaptured it in 1945 it did not become safely Labour until the long tenure of Simon Mahon. It is now impregnable, politically, and since 1997 the Bootle constituency has been the safest Labour Party seat in the whole of the United Kingdom. The area is currently represented in parliament by Joe Benton.

For elections to Sefton Council the town of Bootle is split between the electoral wards of Netherton and Orrell, whose three representatives, who are all members of the Labour Party, are Susan Ellen Bradshaw, Robert John Brennan, and Ian Ralph Maher. Derby, whose three representatives are Linda Cluskey and Carol Gustafson, who are members of the Labour Party, and Paul Larkin who is a member of the Liberal Democrats, and finally Linacre whose three representatives, who are all members of the Labour Party, are John Fairclough, Gordon Friel, and Doreen Kerrigan. Overall there are nine councillors representing the Bootle area, all of them are members of the Labour Party. Overall the electoral wards of Sefton Council in and around Bootle and the parliamentary constituency itself are extremely safe seats for the Labour Party, sometimes standing uncontested by the other parties. This strong support for the Labour Party is mainly due to the town's working class population, whose mentality is very politically Left-wing, and active both from within the area and from outside. The population generally feel that they suffered badly from the Thatcherite political reforms of the Conservative Party and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and 1990s. During this period the area developed a reputation as a stronghold of Militant tendency and opposition to Thatcherism, as epitomised with Bootle's enthusiastic support of the Liverpool dockers' strike from 1995–1998. As a result of this strong Left-wing mentality, Conservative Party support in Bootle is minimal with the party struggling to retain its deposit during the general and local elections. However, as a result of the militants being expelled from the Labour Party and the negative reputation that the area received in the local and national press, most local politicians today are relatively moderate Centre-left.