WARRINGTON elected only its fourth ever woman MP last week in Warrington North.

She follows in the more recent footsteps of Helen Southworth and Helen Jones who were both elected in 1997.

But the town’s first female MP was elected in 1955.

Dr Edith Summerskill won two general elections for Labour in Warrington, serving from 1955 to 1961.

She was previously the MP for Fulham from 1938 to 1955 when the constituency was abolished.

As a feminist, she was concerned with women’s social and political issues, influenced by her medical career.

As a child she accompanied her father who was also a London doctor on home visits and later claimed that the exposure to ill health and poverty combined with his radical politics and support for women’s suffrage were crucial in shaping her professional and political careers.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s she campaigned for a free National Health Service and was an early member of the Married Women’s Association founded in 1938 she later became its president.

In a speech in the House of Commons in 1960 she famously remarked, “Nagging is the repetition of unpalatable truths.”

As Warrington’s MP she campaigned to improve the town’s poor air quality caused by industrial pollution.

She left the House of Commons in 1961 and was created a life peer as Baroness Summerskill on February 4, 1961.

The first woman to stand in Warrington was Alison Garland who represented the British Liberal Party way back in 1929.

In 1911 she was part of a group that met with Liberal Government leaders Asquith and Lloyd George to discuss the introduction of Votes for Women.

Unfortunately she trailed as a dismal bottom of the poll in a close-fought contest between Conservative candidate Noel B. Goldie and victor Charles Dukes whose credentials as a trade unionist made him a popular choice in an industrial town.

She was later made an OBE.