Bob Litherland
| Bob Litherland | |
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| Member of the United Kingdom Parliament for Manchester Central |
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In office September 1979 – 1997 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | 23 June 1930 Manchester, England |
| Died | 13 May 2011 (aged 80) |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Labour |
Robert Kenneth Litherland (23 June 1930 – 13 May 2011), known as Bob Litherland, was a British Labour politician.
He was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Manchester Central at a by-election in September 1979, and held the office until he retired at the 1997 general election.
Litherland was born to a working-class family in Collyhurst, Manchester. His father was an engineer and his mother was a mill worker. He attended a grammar school but left at the age of fifteen to train as a bookbinder, going on to be a sales representative for a printing company. He was active in the trade union the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (Sogat) and joined the Labour party at sixteen.
Litherland was elected to Manchester City Council in 1971 for the ward of Harpurhey. He became chairman of the council's direct works committee, overseeing slum clearance. A believer in municipal socialism, he took pride in the improvements to council housing in the city and revealed a cartel fixing the price of cement.
After Labour's defeat in the 1979 general election, Harold Lever, the MP for Manchester Central, was made a life peer, leading to the first by-election of that parliament. The first MP sponsored by Sogat, Litherland won the Labour nomination and was elected that September by a majority of 5,992. A left-winger, he welcomed Michael Foot's successful Labour party leadership bid and sponsored Tony Benn in his failed 1981 deputy leadership challenge. He would later support Eric Heffer and John Prescott in their leadership bids.
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