Edward O'Hara (1 October 1937 – 28 May 2016) was a British Labour politician who became

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

(MP) for Knowsley South following the death of Sean Hughes. He held the seat from

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

until 2010 when the constituency was abolished. During this period his seat was considered the safest Labour seat in the country. He was chairman of the committee for technology and aerospace of the

Western European Union The Western European Union (WEU; french: Union de l'Europe occidentale, UEO; german: Westeuropäische Union, WEU) was the international organisation and military alliance that succeeded the Western Union (WU) after the 1954 amendment of the 1948 ...

and was succeeded in 2009 by the German politician

Axel Fischer Axel Eduard Fischer (born 5 May 1966) is a German politician. He is a member of the CDU and has been a member of the German parliament from 1998 to October 2021, representing Karlsruhe-Land since 2002. Early life and education From 1989 until ...

. O'Hara left the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

in 2010, after being defeated in the selection process to become Labour candidate for the new seat of Knowsley by fellow MP

George Howarth Sir George Edward Howarth (born 29 June 1949) is a British Labour Party politician who serves as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Knowsley. He also served the seat's predecessors since being elected in a by-election in 1986, firstly as the ...

Early life

O'Hara was born in

Bootle Bootle (pronounced ) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, Merseyside, England, which had a population of 51,394 in 2011; the wider Parliamentary constituency had a population of 98,449. Historically part of Lancashire, Bootle's ...

, near

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

. He was educated at the direct-grant grammar Liverpool Collegiate School, then Magdalen College, Oxford, gaining an MA in Literae Humaniores, and the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

. Before entering Parliament, Eddie was a councillor in Knowsley and Chair of the Education Committee. A lifelong loyal Liverpool FC supporter all his life, he taught Latin and Greek at Perse School, Cambridge, and at

Birkenhead School Birkenhead School is an independent, academically-selective, co-educational day school located in Oxton, Wirral, in North West England. The school offers educational opportunities for girls and boys from three months to eighteen years of ag ...

before lecturing at C.F. Mott College (became Liverpool Polytechnic) from 1970 to 1975, at the City of Liverpool College of Higher Education from 1975 to 1985, and at Liverpool Polytechnic from 1985 to 1990.

Personal life

He married Lilian Hopkins on 11 September 1962 in Bootle; the couple had two sons and a daughter.

References

External links

Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Edward O'Hara MP

TheyWorkForYou.com - Edward O'Hara MP
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ohara, Edward 1937 births 2016 deaths Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies English people of Irish descent UK MPs 1987–1992 UK MPs 1992–1997 UK MPs 1997–2001 UK MPs 2001–2005 UK MPs 2005–2010 Academics of Liverpool John Moores University Politicians from Liverpool Politics of the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley