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Circus St, undated
© Liverpool Record Office
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'Battling Bessie' |
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Irish Jig Case
In 1947, during a debate on the Transport Bill, Tory MPs walked out of the House of Commons in protest. Bessie was among several Labour MPs who crossed the floor and sat in the Opposition side in order to prevent the Minister of Transport from addressing empty benches. An article in the Bolton Evening News accused Bessie Braddock of “dancing a jig” as she crossed the floor. The ‘Revelry at Night’ article said:
“The whole performance was nauseating, a sorry degradation of democratic government by discussion, the nadir, let us fervently hope, of this parliament.”
The article also referred to the incident as an ‘unlovely burlesque’, a word which, at the time, carried associations of strippers and strip joints.
Bessie denied the accusation and brought a libel case against Tillotson’s Newspapers, publishers of the Bolton Evening News. As academic Janet McLarney has uncovered in her research into the incident, Bessie took up libel case because her conduct was questioned. The suggestion that she had shown disrespect to the House of Commons was painful to Bessie who had grown to respect the institution a great deal. The “burlesque” comment was also hurtful, an implied slur against her moral standards.
The case was heard by a special jury, whose members had to have a certain level of income to qualify. Therefore, the jury was made up of people of a different background to Bessie, but well-acquainted with her reputation as depicted in the press. During the trial, Bessie’s eccentric behaviour on Liverpool City Council was used against her. However, she did not deny that she had called one councillor ‘a blasted rat’, or had said ‘I’d like to take a machine gun to the lot of you’ (in reference to Tory councillors). Inevitably, Bessie lost the case and made an apology to the House of Commons.
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