Name: Andrew Edwards
Age: 45 (born 13 April 1956 in Birkenhead)
Gender: Male (0 points)
Ethnicity: White British
Sexuality: Closeted Homosexual, unmarried (15 points)
Avatar: Luke Pasqualino
Discord Username: aboltik
Education: Laird Street School (Primary), Conway Street Central School (Secondary)
Career: Apprentice Craftsman (Welding) for Cammell Laird (1973 - 1975). Welder for Cammell Laird, then British Shipbuilders (1975 - 1979). Quality Inspector, British Shipbuilders (1979 - 1985), Underwater Welder, British Shipbuilders, then VSEL (1986 - 1991). MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston (1992 - Present)
Party: Labour
Constituency: Ellesmere Port and Neston
Faction: Socialist Campaign Group
Parliamentary Career: MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston (1992 - Present). Private Parliamentary Secretary (1997 - 1998), Minister of State in the Home Office (1998 - Present).
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Andrew was born as the eldest child of four of Thomas Edwards, a welder at the Cammell Laird shipbuilding plant, and his wife Elizabeth. Thomas enjoyed his work and was considered to be skilled, and he would always proudly tell his son of his work on historic vessels like the HMS Ark Royal (though he had only joined the company in time to do finishing work on the original aircraft carrier) and the Prince of Wales. The idea of big, powerful ships was always appealing to Andrew and from when he was a young boy he’d be sketching and drawing all sorts of designs that would be critiqued by his father over the dinner table (Thomas knew nothing of ship design, though that didn’t stop him).
Andrew did well enough in his public primary and secondary school classes, but for the working-class family, university wasn’t something that was really planned for his future. Nor did Andrew show much of an interest in it. He was able to come on with Cammell Laird as an apprentice after completing secondary school at age 16, then worked his way up as a welder, moving for a time to quality control and inspection. When Andrew was 19, Thomas was injured and unable to work, and so Andrew’s income was used to support his mother and his eldest siblings- making up for what Thomas’ disability income couldn’t cover when it came to household expenses.
Andrew lived with his family even as a working adult in their two-up, two-down terraced home that was within walking distance of the shipbuilding plant where he worked. He stayed with the company as it was nationalised and then sold off again, and was a member of the ASB trade union (which is now part of GMB). It was with his work with the union that he met Barry Williams, the boilermaker and communist (meetings at the time that Andrew would say filled him with awe at the man’s fervent beliefs, even if some of them seemed silly).
As Andrew’s siblings grew up and moved out, he stayed living with his parents and taking care of them as best that he could on his income and getting involved both with the ASB and GMB unions as well as with volunteering in the local community. He was deeply impacted by the arrest of his brother Richard for class 1 assault in 1989 after a pub brawl (in which Richard used a bottle as a weapon); while Richard was released from prison in late 1991, he was unable to get a job and lived with Andrew at the family home in Birkenhead for a time.
In 1992, Andrew, tired of hearing that change takes a lot more work than just complaining about it, decided to put his name forward to run for office. He was long a member of the Labour Party (of course!) and stood in the formerly-Conservative seat of Ellesmere Port and Neston, defeating the Conservative candidate after Mike Woodcock (the MP since 1983) stood down. He won with a narrow majority- a majority that was greatly expanded in 1997.
In his time as part of Opposition, Andrew was heavily involved with discussions related to employment as well as criminal justice- two areas that he felt the most strongly about and that he had close ties to. In 1993 he was particularly vocal, for instance, about the closing of the yards where he had worked in Birkenhead and joined his former coworkers in protesting the closure. He was strongly opposed to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, speaking against it in Parliament and challenging then-Home Secretary Michael Howard on the bill’s contents.
When Labour moved out of Opposition in 1997 and into Government, Andrew was immediately appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the then-Secretary of State for Education and Employment David Blunkett. He served in the position until 1998, when he joined the Home Office as a junior Minister. There he served under then-Home Secretary Jack Straw.
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Points Total
Gender: Male, 0 points
Sexuality: Closeted Homosexual, 15 points
Age when first elected: 42, 10 points
Religion: Church of England, 0 points
Education: Left at 16 (Labour), 10 points
Family History: Working Class (Labour), 0 points
Career Information: Labourer, High-Level (Labour), 5+7+10 points; Union Officer, Mid-Level (Labour), 5+7 points
MP Election: 1992, free; 1997, 2 points
Front Bench Experience:1998, 1 point; 1999, 1 point; 2000, 1 point; Widely-publicized speech against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, 3 points
Total Points: 77/100
