James Burnie

James Burnie MC (10 May 1882 – 15 May 1975) was an English businessman and Liberal Party politician.

Family and education

Burnie was born in Bootle, Lancashire, the son of Joseph Burnie, a local businessman. He was educated at St John's School, Bootle and at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby. In 1910, he married Ruth E. Thornton. The couple had a son and a daughter together. The marriage lasted until his wife died in 1939.[1]

Career

Burnie went into his father's business,[2] eventually becoming Director of Bell & Burnie Ltd, specialists in cold store insulation.[3] At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Burnie was mobilised as a Sergeant. He retired as a Major in Bootle Battalion, 7th King's Liverpool Regiment, having gained the Military Cross in 1918.[1] He retained his commission after the war and retired from the Territorial Army Reserve of Officers upon reaching the age of fifty.[4] In 1922, Burnie was chosen to formally unveil the new Bootle War memorial dedicated to the memory of over a thousand men from Bootle who had fallen in the First World War in a ceremony which took place on 15 October 1922.[5]

Politics

MP

Burnie was elected to Parliament as a Liberal at the 1922 general election for his home town of Bootle, gaining the seat from the Conservatives with a majority of 3,409 votes. He held the seat at the 1923 general election, this time in a three-cornered contest with the Conservatives and Labour but with a decreased majority of just 453 votes.[6]

Liberals divided

In March 1924, he was one of 24 Liberal MPs who voted with the Conservatives and against his own party during an internal split on a Liberal motion deploring the construction of five new naval cruisers [7] Around this time, the Liberal Party was frequently divided in Parliament over its stance towards the First Labour Government of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. Even on the initial vote to bring down the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin and install Labour's minority administration, ten Liberal MPs voted with the Conservatives.[8]

1924

The sort of difficulties which beset the Liberal Party in Parliament were apparent nationally at the 1924 general election. The Liberals were finding it difficult to define their political position in relation to the Labour and Conservative parties and electorally, as the third party in a two-party system, they were being targeted and squeezed by the others.[9] These electoral currents proved too strong for Burnie and in another three-cornered fight in Bootle he lost his seat to the Conservative candidate Vivian Leonard Henderson and finished in third place behind Labour's John Kinley; who would later serve as the MP for Bootle from 1929 to 1931 and again from 1945 to 1955.[10]

1924-1950

Burnie did not stand again until the 1935 general election, when he again contested Bootle for the Liberal Party, only just managing to save his deposit.[10] The following year, he was elected Mayor of Bootle [1] He was selected as the Liberal candidate for Chester after the 1935 election [11] but never fought the seat. He did return to the political fray for the 1950 general election however, contesting one of Bootle's near neighbours, Crosby [12] but this seems to have been his last attempt to get back into the House of Commons.

Death

Burnie died on 15 May 1975, aged 93 years.

References
  1. Who was Who, OUP 2007
  2. The Times House of Commons 1935, Politico’s Publishing 2003 p51
  3. Who’s Who of 475 Liberal Candidates fighting the 1950 General Election, Liberal Publications Dept. 1950 p13
  4. The Times, 1 June 1932 p19
  5. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 21 May 2010. Retrieved 27 January 2009.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. F W S Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949; Political Reference Publications, Glasgow, 1949 p97
  7. The Times, 20 March 1924 p14
  8. David Dutton, A History of the Liberal Party in the Twentieth Century; Palgrave Macmillan, 2004 p96
  9. Dutton, A History of the Liberal Party in the Twentieth Century, p98 ff
  10. F W S Craig, p97
  11. The Liberal Magazine, 1938, Liberal Publication Dept, pp418, 523
  12. Who’s Who of 475 Liberal Candidates fighting the 1950 General Election, LPD 1950 p13
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Sir Thomas Royden, Bt.		 Member of Parliament for Bootle
1922 – 1924		 Succeeded by
Vivian Henderson
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