title: Gordon Oakes
text: # Gordon Oakes
  
  Gordon James Oakes (22 June 1931 – 15 August 2005) was a British Labour Party politician.
  
  ## Early life
  
  Oakes was born in Widnes, Cheshire, and was educated at Wade Deacon Grammar School, in Widnes and at Liverpool University. A solicitor by profession, he became a councillor on Widnes Borough Council in 1952, serving as Mayor in 1964.
  
  ## Parliamentary career
  
  Oakes unsuccessfully contested Bebington in 1959 and Manchester Moss Side at a 1961 by-election.
  
  He served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolton West from 1964 to 1970, when he was beaten by the Conservative Robert Redmond by 1,244 votes. He was re-elected 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".
  
  ## Personal life and death
  
  Oakes was married to the former Esther O'Neill from 1952 until her death in 1998; they had three sons. He died on 15 August 2005, at the age of 74.
  
  