A TOWN is marking 150 years of representation for its people in Parliament.

Sitting Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald and elected Mayor of Middlesbrough Dave Budd came together for the anniversary of the election of the town’s first MP, the ironmaster industrialist Henry Bolckow, on November 17, 1868.

Six years earlier Prime Minister William Gladstone had made his famed comment on Middlesbrough: “This remarkable place, the youngest child of England's enterprise, is an infant, but if an infant, an infant Hercules.”

At that time Middlesbrough had a population of around 19,000 as Bolckow and his business partner John Vaughan became the founders of modern Middlesbrough.

Historian Ian Stubbs takes up the story: “The town had been granted parliamentary representation under the Representation of the People Act of 1867.

“It was decided among the councillors and business people and industrialists and the movers and shakers of the town that Henry Bolckow, who had also been given the honour of being chosen as the town’s first Mayor after financing the Charter of Incorporation in 1853, would be allowed to stand unopposed as a Liberal candidate in the 1868 General Election, the first since the passing of the Great Reform Act; he had actually met with deputations from the Reform League at his palatial Marton Hall home.”

Bolckow would hold the seat until his death 10 years later in 1878. Since then seven MPs have been elected for the constituency of Middlesbrough – including Samuel Sadler and Isaac Wilson.

However the constituency was abolished and divided from 1918 to 1974. In the intervening period the town was split into Middlesbrough East and Middlesbrough West.

Today, the constituency is represented by Middlesbrough born-and-bred Mr McDonald.

He said: “It is the greatest honour to represent my hometown in Parliament. The history of our town is one of extraordinary progress.

“From Henry Bolckow founding our town, to Dave Budd and myself today, it is our responsibility as local elected representatives to continue that remarkable heritage of advancement."