It always amazes me that Lancashire is so blue. It is a County that has some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country, whose wealth was built on the backs of those working class cotton mill workers who toiled under horrendous conditions and starved in the Lancashire Cotton Famine in the 1860’s and Slavery. Lancaster being the UK’s 4th largest port for slavery and of course Liverpool, which was then part of Lancashire, being the largest in Europe.

An agricultural and fishing County, where itinerant labourers queued up to get the opportunity to earn money for their family for the day and fisherman braved the Irish Sea and the Atlantic for their catch.

It is also a County of huge wealth, built on the profits of those cotton mills and slaves, the treatment of the working poor, the enslaved and the vulnerable disregarded in pursuit of profit.

The majority of MP’s in Lancashire are Conservative, last night the vast majority of those MP’s (8), including my own MP, David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale), voted against looking after the children of modern working class families over Christmas. It would have fed more than 1.4 million children during school breaks until Easter next year.

Just the 4 Labour MP’s, Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood), Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston), Kate Hollern (Blackburn) and Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) voted for the motion and two Conservative MP’s, Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) and Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) abstaining.

The Speaker (Lindsey Hoyle) and Deputy Speaker (Nigel Evans) did not vote, as is tradition.

I don’t know what the answer is but I know my family of labourers and cotton workers would despair at the way we are moving backwards. We deserve better representation.

https://www.lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/how-every-lancashire-mp-voted-19145999