Gordon Oakes

Who was Gordon Oakes?

Gordon James Oakes was a British Labour Party politician.

Oakes was educated at Wade Deacon grammar school, Widnes and at Liverpool University. A solicitor by profession, he became a councillor on Widnes Borough Council in 1952, serving as Mayor in 1964.

Oakes unsuccessfully contested Bebington in 1959 and Manchester Moss Side at a 1961 by-election. He served as Member of Parliament for Bolton West from 1964 to 1970 and for Widnes from a 1971 by-election until 1983, and for Halton from 1983 until 1997.

Oakes served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary from 1966, and in the government of Harold Wilson as a junior minister and as a Minister of State under James Callaghan. He was made a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1979. He left the Opposition front bench in 1983.

He was one of the MPs approached in the 1994 Cash-for-Questions affair, to which he responded "That is not how we do things here".

He died of cancer in 2005.