Talk Elections

Thread for the discussion of, well, British elections in the interwar period plus '45. Setting this thread up now because I'll be trying to make maps at a fairly local level of constituencies during this period (there's quite a lot online that can be used as bases for this now, though its a little more complicated for borough constituencies). Thread can also be used for random discussion of electoral patterns from the period.

Cool. 8)

% vote Labour in Dudley 1918-1945.

1918: 39.8*
1921b: 50.7*
1922: 39.8*
1923: 9.5
1924: 47.9*
1929: 47.6
1931: 43.1*
1935: 45.1*
1945: 62.8*

_{Bold = Labour win, Asterix = Two Horse Race.}

So, yeah, I'm not quite sure which of those is the strangest. I knew that Dudley was (and is) a weird place, but...

Btw, some high Labour profile candidates in Dudley during this period. Oliver Baldwin (Stanley's son) in 1924 and 1929 and William Wedgwood Benn in 1935. The victor of '45 was the unreal George Wigg.

Oh, a note on by-elections. 1921 was caused by the Tory incumbent being appointed to the Cabinet (that was one hell of weird rule). 1941 did not have a Labour candidate (obviously). However, a man advocating 'aerial reprisals against Germany' came within under 2,000 votes of winning.

How did women vote as a constituency in this period? I remember reading they trended Liberal at first but the majority later voted Conservative from 1924 onwards.

There's no way of telling, though we can be quite sure that they didn't vote as women (much as women don't vote as women now), so in some ways the question is moot. :)

It was generally believed that women were more likely to vote Conservative than men throughout most of the period. This is, I think, mostly based on the assumption that the wives of Union members were less likely to vote Labour than Union members and that active Anglicans (overwhelming female, then as now) were more likely to vote Tory. Maybe canvassing data comes into it, but I'm not sure.

Shropshire!

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This is percentage majorities, obviously. Standard keys, though I'll actually post keys up tomorrow (hopefully) to remove all confusion. There's a bigger version in the gallery.

Notes

1. Tories were unopposed in Ludlow in 1918, 1923 and 1924, and in Oswestry in 1935. A Coalition Liberal was unopposed in Wrekin in 1918.

2. Said Coalition Liberal died and his seat was won by a Bottomley-backed Independent in 1920. Said Independent then died and his seat was won by another Bottomley backed Independent, who then joined the Tories and didn't run for re-election. No Tory candidates ran in those by-elections.

3. Brief descriptions of the constituencies...

Oswestry: covered the north of the county. Rural and agricultural, but with small scale manufacturing in various small towns (especially Oswestry itself and Market Drayton) and a tiny coalfield on the border with Wales. It also had an unusually high Nonconformist population for an English constituency that was consistently Tory (though the Liberals came fairly close in '23). This is because Oswestry did not vote as if it were an English constituency.

Shrewsbury: covered the centre-west of the county. Main town was (of course) Shrewsbury, which was still a fairly bourgeois town in those days and was traditionally Tory. Also included a large rural, agricultural area. It seems likely that the Liberal vote was mainly rural (certainly the area around Chirbury has a long Liberal tradition), though I'm not entirely sure.

Wrekin: covered the centre-east of the county. Unlike the rest of Shropshire this was pretty industrial, though still obviously rural. Important towns included Wellington (mostly middle class, probably quite Tory), Oakengates (industrial, usually Labour) and the various old industrial communities around the Gorge (Broseley, Coalbrookdale, Ironbridge, Dawley, etc. Again, usually Labour). Also plenty of market towns like Much Wenlock, Newport and Shifnal; these would have been Tory.

Ludlow: covered the south of the county. A very, very rural constituency with an economy dominated by agriculture. Seat was controlled by the family of the Earl of Plymouth for most of the period. I suspect that the best area for non-Tories was Bridgnorth (a carpet-weaving town back then) and various tiny rural-industrial towns.

Thanks for that Al.


Is this Horatio Bottomley, the patriotic fraudster?


This period was long before Telford was built of course.

That's the one, yes.


Yeah, even 45 was a bit less than thirty years before serious development started in 'Telford'. There were still a few active collieries in the area during this period. A different world, in many ways.

Excellent stuff Al. Any chance for some stuff on Scotland and Cornwall during this time period?

(Of course this calls for a similar thread on France!)

Ah, well, this sort of thing is a bit harder to come by for France, now, isn't it?

Of course, such a thread for France would cover a vaster period, like 1871 to 2010.

Do you mean random statistics, maps-and-stuff or both? The answer is "yes" to all of the above, of course.

Mostly maps and some random statistics (which aren't too obscure). All's good, both ways.

The main key:

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It is worth noting that party label did not appear on the ballot during this period, which can cause confusion in a few cases. Anyway...

CPGB: Communist Party of Great Britain. I will be going against the usual convention and using this colour for the few CPGB candidates elected with Labour support in the early 1920s, as well as for CPGB candidates elected without such formal endorsements.

ILP, etc: Independent Labour Party. Colour will be used for ILP candidate after the break with Labour in the early 30s, for CommonWealth candidates, and, probably, for Independent Labour candidates.

Labour: self explanatory, but will also include National Socialist Party* candidates in 1918.

NDP, NLab: National Democratic & Labour Party candidates in the early 20s and National Labour candidates in the 30s. Traitors to the cause. NDP was basically ex-Labour member who supported the First World War and the Coalition with great enthusiasm. National Labour were the followers of Judas MacDonald.

CoLib, etc: the colour used for any Liberal organisation outside the official party and headed by David Lloyd George. Coalition Liberal in 1918, National Liberal in 1922 and Independent Liberal in 1931.

Liberal: the official Liberal Party.

National Liberal: the right-wing of the Liberal Party broke away during the 1931 crisis. They eventually merged with the Tories in 1948, though some Tory candidates were known as National Liberal & Conservative until the 1960s.

Con, etc: basically the Tories, but things were more complicated than that during this period. It also includes Coalition Conservatives in 1918 and Unionists in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Birmingham. I'm also using the colour to include the small group of anti-Socialist candidates (including a failed ex-Liberal cabinet minister called Churchill) who ran as 'Constitutionalist' in 1924, and for candidates described simply as 'National' in 1931 and 1935.

And now to add to any confusion that might exist... party colours during this period weren't uniform. While most CLPs used red by this period, Labour in Newcastle continued to use green (and would do so until the 1970s) and I don't think it was the sole exception. A lot of local Liberal parties used blue, and in Northumberland the Tories (hilariously) used red due (IIRC) to the influence of the Percy family, while in Cumberland the Tories often used yellow (again, an aristocratic link). Not that I'll be using local colours on any maps, mind.

*The right wing of the old (Marxist) SDF. The left wing ultimately became the CPGB.

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Again, there bist a bigger map in 't gallery.

Notes

1. A Coaliton/National Liberal was unopposed in Northern in 1918 and 1922. A National Liberal was unopposed in St. Ives in 1931 and 1935 and a Liberal (none other than Isaac Foot) was unopposed in Bodmin in 1931.

2. There were actually two official Liberal candidates in Camborne in 1923. I've coloured it as if it were unopposed.

3. The defeated Liberal ran as a Constitutional candidate in 1924 and has been coloured accoridng to the conventions set out earlier.

4. Brief descriptions of the constituencies... won't be much on voting patterns, as I don't really know enough (besides, personal votes probably account for quite a lot anyway...).

Northern: the northern Cornish coast. Overwhelmingly rural and agricultural (pastoral), with the exception of a few fishing towns, small resorts and the traditionally important town of Launceston on the Devon border.

Bodmin: the other constituency in eastern Cornwall. Again, rural and agricultural. Included the traditional county town of Bodmin and the Plymouth suburbs of Saltash and Torpoint. This would once have included some mining, but not by this point.

Penryn & Falmouth: the one that went Labour in 1945. A very diverse constituency, that included the port of Falmouth, the administrative centre of Truro, St Austell (dominated by Kaolin quarries), and some areas once dominated by metal mining. I think (though will have to check) that the long-dead Cornish copper industry was based in this area. Labour strength would have come from the more industrial areas, not sure about the Tories and Liberals (but then that's always been confusing in Cornwall). The Labour M.P elected in 1945 later re-emerged as a right-wing Tory M.P for South Dorset in the 60s and 70s.

Camborne: the centre of the collapsed Cornish tin mining industry. The great collapse had come in the mid 19th century, but the final collapse (with the exception of South Crofty) came during this period. Main towns included Camborne, Redruth and Helston. I think Redruth was the most Labour, but am not entirely sure. Labour came very close in 1945 and (!!!!!!) 1918 and had an amusingly solid quarter of the vote for most of the period in between. 1918 was almost certainly a fluke, turnout was 41%, but I do intend (one of these days) to find out if there was something else going on.

St. Ives: Lands End to Lizard. Main towns included Penzance and St Ives. The area was then dominated by the fishing industry (though it included some tin mining areas... again... long dead by this point) and had had seriously weird politics (even by Cornish standards) since the end of the 19th century.

This will be very interestng.

Trugarez Al. I know Cornwall votes LibDem to this day partly because of Liberal tradition, but what was the original cause way back when of this Liberal tradition? Celtic fringe opposition to the English-Anglican Tories? Local dynasties allied with the Liberals?

It's not Anglican.

That's really only true of eastern Cornwell; further west, the Liberal tradition collapsed during the postwar period. Contemporary LibDem success there has a lot more to do with David Penhaligon than anything else.


Well... basically...

I have a blank Scotland map kicking about somewhere...

EDIT: Aha.

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Are those dots inside what I would call Angus, Fife West, Fife East and Stirlingshire the BURGHS we hear so much about in the 1970's?

Yes; smaller burghs were grouped toghether into District of Burgh's

1918 saw;

Ayr D.B (Ayr, Ardrossan, Irvine, Prestwick, Saltcoats,Troon)D
Dumbarton D.B (Dumbarton, Clydebank)
Dunfermline D.B (Dunfermline, Cowdenbeath, Inverkeithing, Lochgelly)
Kirkcaldy D.B (Kirkcaldy, Buckhaven, Methil and Innerleven, Burntisland, Dysart, Kinghorn)
Montrose D.B (Montrose, Arbroath, Brechin, Forfar, Inverbervie)
Stirling and Falkirk D.B (Stirling, Falkirk, Grangemouth)

Not shown of course are the Combined University seats.

I've done 1918 for Scotland with Al's colour sceme...an awful lot of brown. At least it won't last :D. Will post it soon.

Tester using Als colour scheme. Where candidates are unnopossed they are coloured in the 'highesty' colour of the range.

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And sticking to unform colours...for the eyes

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Though once the Liberals implode and Labour start showing up it won't be necessary :)

Now you have to describe all the constituencies in one go! :D

London...

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Bigger map here (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=2596).

Notes

1. The Tories were unopposed in the City of London in 1918, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1931 and 1935, in Kensington South in 1923, 1924 and 1931, in both Lewisham seats in 1918, in Paddington South in 1924 and 1929, in St Marylebone in 1918 and 1922, in Westminster Abbey in 1918, 1923 and 1931, and in Westminster St George's in 1923, 1924 and 1931. Labour were unopposed in Woolwich East in 1918 (their candidate was Will Crooks), and a Coalition Liberal was unopposed in Hackney Central in 1918.

2. The Independent in Hackney South in 1918 was Horatio Bottomley. The Independent in Westminster St George's in 1922 was an Independent Conservative.

3. Communists were elected in Battersea North in 1922 and 1924 (Saklatvala), and for Stepney Mile End in 1945 (Piratin). Saklatvala was never elected against Labour opposition and in 1922 he had an official Labour endorsement.

4. In 1945 Hammersmith North was won by an Independent Labour candidate; the fellow travelling D.N. Pritt.

5. Although Shoreditch 1922 was technically a National Liberal hold, the incumbent (Christopher Addison; of Addison Act fame) was defeated as he left the National Liberals for the Official Liberals. Within a year he was a member of the Labour Party, and was later a Labour MP for Swindon (serving as a minister in the second MacDonald government) and a Labour peer (in the Attlee cabinet).

6. Special mention goes to Leslie Haden-Guest who was a candidate for an impressive range of parties in an impressive number of constituencies durin this period (though was ever only elected for Labour).

7. Descriptions of constituencies to follow.

Ah, Saklatvala (http://www.marxists.org/archive/pollitt/articles/1936/02/saklatvala.htm).

What's with the enduring Liberal machine in Bethnal Green?

These descriptions will be fairly brief (in part because I'm a little hazy about some parts of London during this period). This won't be done in one go, but will be updated until its finished. A map to make things clearer:

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Westminster, Abbey: covered the core of Westminster, including Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Whitehall and (just about, I think) Buckingham Palace. Also included the West End and a rather seedy area around Covent Garden (which provided the bulk of the non-Tory vote, much of it Communist, hilariously enough. They polled 17% in 1945). There was a massive business vote here; over 2,000 in 1945.

Westminster, St George's: stuffy bourgeois clubland, based around Pimlico and Knightsbridge.

St Marylebone: bourgeois residential area, including St John's Wood and the like.

Paddington North: mostly working class (but not industrial) and (I think) slummish in a few places. The east of the constituency might still have been quite middle class then, but I'm not entirely sure.

Paddington South: another bourgeois residential area. Included Bayswater and Lancaster Gate.

Kensington North: the working class part of Kensington. The north of the constituency was very working class and Labour, further south less so.

Kensington South: the richest and most bourgeois constituency in the country. In one year some members of the Conservative Association got upset with the official candidate and ran one of their own (Rayner Goddard, later to be one of the most infamous judges of the twentieth century) who came nowhere near winning.

Chelsea: the area completed its transformation into the district we know today during this period. Not a lot else to say.

Fulham West and Fulham East: much of muchness, as far as I know. Working class, and increasingly so during this period, but relatively comfortable. There were several famous by-elections in the borough during this period.

Hammersmith North: a working class district and increasingly so. Included Shepherd's Bush. Its MP during the last decade of this period was a Communist in all but name.

Hammersmith South: more like the Fulham seats than Hammersmith North, though a little more working class and a little less comfortable. The setting for part of The Singing Detective.

Battersea North: an industrial area and very working class. Its industrial nature led to an unusual number of skilled workers* for somewhere in the County of London, which led to unusually strong Trade Unions and a radical political tradition. As noted earlier, its MP for most of the 1920s was the Communist Shapurji Saklatvala. A breakdown in relations between Labour and the CPGB led to Labour running a candidate of their own in 1929; Saklatvala came third, polling 18.6%.

Battersea South: a residential area and much more mixed than Battersea North. It was almost certainly majority working class through most of the period, though.

Putney: solidly middle class suburbia back then (and as it would remain until the construction of Roehampton and so on). Not entirely sure why it was included in the County of London in the first place... presumably it was covered by a London Vestry or something. While it was very dull politically, as many as five candidates stood there in 1945 (including Richard Acland for CommonWealth - polled 8% and lost his deposit).

Wandsworth Central: a residential area that became increasingly working class throughout the period. The Labour candidate in 1945 was none other than Ernest Bevin.

Balham and Tooting: for much of the period a middle class residential area with politics to match. I don't know enough about the history of Tooting to be sure of why, but its fairly clear that this was not the case by 1945; a lot of places in London changed a lot in the decade after 1935, and the reasons were usually the middle classes moving further out of the city and the building of estates. I suspect that we're mostly dealing with the former in this case.

Streatham: solid, stolid, middle class suburbia. As it had been since urbanisation and as it would remain until the 1970s.

Clapham: middle class residential area for most of this period, and noted for its dullness. This changed for the usual London reasons (outlined under Balham and Tooting).

Norwood: middle class suburbia. While the area clearly moved downmarket a little during the period, the result in 1945 was probably down to Labour's strong showing with the lower middle classes in that election, rather than a result of social change.

Brixton: this area, however, changed a lot. Brixton was an old suburb and a lower middle class residential area until quite late during this period (as the Liberal win in 1923 shows perfectly). The area was abandoned by the middle classes in the late 30s and early 40s, in part due to the bombing. It is, in other words, comparable to Moss Side in more ways than the obvious one.

Kennington: a largely working class residential area that included significant bourgeois pockets here and there (including Kennington itself).

Lambeth North: the old core of Lambeth; Vauxhall and so on. This was a very working class area, and Labour's early difficulties were entirely down to an entrenched Liberal machine. When that was no longer a problem... well... a double-digit win in 1935 says it all, really. The Labour candidate here was usually George Strauss.

Southwark North: the old core of Southwark. We are, of course, now deep into slumland; that the old borough of Southwark had three parliamentary constituencies during this period says rather a lot. By 1945, this constituency had just 14,108 electors.

Southwark Central: basically Elephant and Castle. Classic slumland.

Southwark South East: Walworth. The northeastern boundary of the constituency was the Old Kent Road. Not sure if there's much point in writing more...

Bermondsey West: indescribably horrific slums. Not only were the houses largely unfit for human habitation, but the area was a traditional home of the so-called 'noxious industries'. Especially important were the tanneries, though IIRC that industry was already in decline by this period. No clue on why it swung back (albeit briefly) to the Liberals in '23.

Rotherhithe: dominanted in all ways by the Surrey Commercial Docks. Voting patterns were a little strange before the interwar period due to some of the specialist riverside trades that were very strong here (Watermen and Lightermen, in particular), but this ceased to be of importance after 1922.

*A term that then had a different (and more accurate) meaning than the lazy use of it that is so depressingly common today.

As noted above, this post will be updated.

The personal political machine of Percy Harris (MP for South West Bethnal Green until his defeat in 1945). They used voluntary organisations, active constituency services and, I think, offered legal services.

Monmouthshire:

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Notes

1. Labour were unopposed in Abertillery in 1918, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1931 and 1935, in Bedwellty in 1924, 1931 and 1935 and in Ebbw Vale in 1918, 1924 and 1931. The Tories were unopposed in Monmouth in 1922.

2. The Labour candidate in Ebbw Vale from 1929 onwards was Nye Bevan. The Labour candidate in Monmouth in 1935 was a promising young man from the West Country; name of Foot.

3. Descriptions of the constituencies...

Monmouth: covered the east of the county, but also the area immediately west of Newport. For the most part agricultural, it was also one of the most Anglican and (in places) least 'Welsh' parts of Wales. The main towns were Abergavenny, Monmouth, Caerleon and Chepstow, the first two being large market towns, while Caerleon was essentially part of Newport and Chepstow was fairly industrial. Probably the bulk of the non-Tory vote came from Abergavenny, Caerleon and Chepstow; Caldicot would remain very small until it was chosen as an ideal place for steelworkers to live in the late 50s.

Newport: the largest town in Monmouthshire, Newport had a broad economic base. Originally a coal port, it had also developed a large manufacturing base and was the main service and administrative centre for the whole of the county. As far as I know, the most working class parts of the town were further south (on both banks of the Usk), while the poshest areas were in the north west. A heavy defeat for the Liberals in a by-election in Newport in 1922 is sometimes cited as contributing to the fall of Lloyd George.

Pontypool: the easternmost Valleys constituency and one with an unusually diverse economic base. While Blaenavon and Abersychan were classic Valleys communities dependent on coal (the iron industry in the area had already collapsed by this point), Pontypool itself was an important railway centre. The area south of Pontypool was then still quite agricultural, I think. Blaenavon and Abersychan were Labour's strongest towns in the constituency, though Pontypool followed in the late 20s. As in much of South Wales, the General Strike seems to have had an important long term impact on electoral patterns.

Abertillery: the constituency immediately west of Pontypool. A classic Valleys constituency, dominated by small towns once dependent on iron and by this period entirely dependent on coal mining. Towns in the constituency included Nantyglo, Blaina, Abertillery and Abercarn.

Bedwellty: the constituency immediately west of Abertillery. Another classic Valleys constituency, this time stretching down from New Tredegar to the outskirts of Newport. Major towns included Risca, Blackwood, Aberbargoed and New Tredegar. Unlike the other Monmouthshire Valleys constituencies, this one never had much of an industrial past before coal. Some of the towns in the area are surprisingly new (late nineteenth century).

Ebbw Vale: basically Ebbw Vale, Tredegar and Rhymney. The area had once been one of the main centres of the iron industry, and although Tredegar and Rhymney were by this point entirely dominated by the coal industry, Ebbw Vale was home to a large steelworks of national importance. Local Labour politics was fractious (Bevan gained his seat after deselecting the previous incumbent) and often somewhat parochial.

It's a good testament to Labour power in the coal mining regions of South Wales that the 1931 map doesn't look that different to other maps. I'm slightly surprised that Labour held Pontypool even in 1931.

Wow, more eye candy. Thanks for the new info + maps, Al, they're really quite interesting :)

And what, I pray, do you mean by "was"? ???

Al, could you do the Cardiff and surrounding areas next?

I'd love to see Mid Wales (and see how you explain Ceredigion because I can't and I live in the constituency!)

Cardiff will be done as part of Glamorgan, all of Mid, West and North Wales will be done in one go. Both will be done fairly soon, though I'm not sure whether anything will come first.


Yeah, the Valleys were one of the main holdouts against the National Government in 1931; political life was dominated by the Fed and the nationalistic appeal of the National Government carried less in Wales than elsewhere. You'll see the same thing on the Glamorgan map. As for Pontypool, its pretty clear from looking at the statistics that the General Strike changed everything; the same was true of the other Valleys constituencies with relatively mixed economies. Solidarity and all that.

;D

Revision to previous statement: I will do Cardiff seperately (and probably very soon), but will also incorporate it into a wider Glamorgan map. I think.

I have access to a copy of Craig 1918-1949 again. So... yeah. Lanarkshire less Glasgow:

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Some notes...

1. Much like Wales, the pattern of inter-war Scottish politics was different to the pattern of inter-war politics in England which (inevitably given population issues) tends to dominate our idea of inter-war British politics in general. So some of the patterns here that might look a little strange aren't, actually.

2. Jennie Lee was the Labour candidate in North Lanarkshire in 1929 and the ILP candidate in 1931 and 1935. The Tory candidate in Lanark from 1935 onwards (and also in Coatbridge in 1929) was future Prime Minister Alec Douglas Home, then known as Lord Dunglass.

3. Brief constituency descriptions...

North Lanarkshire: covered the area that you'd expect from the name, basically. An industrial and mining constituency with a significant rural element, the constituency saw its electorate increase to around 70,000 in 1945 (which was a lot back then) due to the expansion of Glasgow's suburbs and estates. The bulk of the Labour vote would presumably have come from the mining communities around Shotts. The result in 1935 is extremely deceptive, btw, and is a consequence of the ILP leaving the Labour fold. Lee ran for the ILP and polled 37%, but an official Labour candidate ran and polled 14%.

Lanark: covered the entire south of the county. This was basically a rural and even agricultural constituency, though there were mining elements in places and other rural industries in others. As in North Lanarkshire, a surprisingly large Tory majority in 1935 is explained by two candidates from the Labour camp (though in this case it was the ILP candidate who polled a low share and didn't actually change the outcome; the Tory poll was 56%).

Coatbridge: of the two smallest constituencies, the one furthest north. This was made up of Coatbridge and Airdrie; two towns united by their dependence on heavy industry and by the devastating collapse of most of it during this period, but divided by religion and ethnicity (although those two things were essentially the same in Lanarkshire back then). Coatbridge was (and is) the most Irish (and most Catholic) large town in Scotland, while Airdrie was predominantly Protestant. Labour did quite a bit better in 1935 than in the early 20s, which is unusual for Scotland; the Labour candidate was the Rev. James Barr (a Presbyterian minister opposed to the merger of the UFC with the CoS) which may explain some of it.

Motherwell: the other small urban constituency. Much like Coatbridge, Motherwell included another large town within its boundaries (Wishaw). There's probably no need to point out that its economy was dominated by the steel industry. While post-war Motherwell has been notable mostly for its political stability, things were somewhat different during the inter-war period; that odd light red colour in 1922 denotes that the constituency was won by a Communist, the amusingly named Walton Newbold who was actually from the same small town in Lancashire as Andy Burnham (read into that whatever you like) and, unlike most of his CPGB comrades, didn't pretend to be just another Labour candidate. After losing his seat in 1923 he moved to the right, first joining Labour and then (hilariously) National Labour. Things get stranger; the Tory who defeated Newbold had stood in 1918 and 1922 as an Independent candidate backed by the Orange Order and was later convicted of receiving stolen goods. He was replaced the Rev. James Barr (see above) who lost narrowly in 1931. And then, of course, there is the famous by-election in which Robert McIntyre became the SNP's first ever MP for about thirty seconds. It tends not be remembered that he lost so badly in the 1945 General Election that the majority of the victorious Labour candidate was only slightly smaller than McIntyre's total vote.

Hamilton: covering the southern end of the Lanarkshire coalfield, Hamilton was one of only a handful of seats in Scotland won by Labour in 1918 and, with the exception of 1923, was always Labour's safest seat in non-Glaswegian Lanarkshire; Labour even managed a pretty respectable majority in 1931. As well as coal, there was a significant textile industrial in Hamilton itself.

Rutherglen: just south of Glasgow, Rutherglen stretched out from the burgh itself (which was already an industrial suburb of Glasgow in all but law and local sentiment) to include a large section of the coalfield at Cambuslang and Blantyre. In the post-war period this constituency was notably for being unusually strong Unionist territory, something not really the case during this period (the narrow hold in 1935 was more than made up for by the big swing to Labour in 1945). Of course that might just be because at this point the constituency included Blantyre.

Bothwell: covering the part of the Monklands between Coatbridge and Motherwell, this was another mining constituency and had very different boundaries to the Bothwell of post-war elections. There was a fairly large increase in the electorate between 1931 and 1945; again because of the physical expansion of Glasgow. First gained in a by-election in 1919, this was a very safe constituency with the obvious exception of 1931.

;D

And now we're back in with Rutherglen again (in both Westminster and Holyrood) Which is better than being in with East Kilbride; without Blantyre the SNP would have won in October 1974 (They controlled the District itself from 1974-1980) Though on the same note, ironically Blantyre (though this is now local hearsay now given the time that has passed) helped Winnie Ewing win in 1967.

Overall the assessments are spot on.

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Cardiff. As I've already written boundaries for borough constituencies won't be quite as accurate as for county seats, but these are about right. Or at least aren't utterly wrong; I think the not-brilliant base maps might have got the boundary between Cathays and Roath wrong, but not by all that much. Such is life, I guess. Forward!

1. There's a mildly interesting paradox to Cardiff boundaries during this period; while these constituencies were for the most part tightly drawn within a set of city boundaries that became increasing obsolete as private suburbia mushroomed and council estates were constructed (more on that in a minute), Penarth was included in a Cardiff seat.

2. Total electorate of the three Cardiff seats in 1918: 95,028. The constituency of Llandaff & Barry at the same point: 34,041. Total electorate of the three Cardiff seats in 1945: 128,833. The constituency of Llandaff & Barry at the same point: 96,106.

3. Future Prime Minister James Callaghan was elected for Cardiff South in 1945 while future Speaker George Thomas was elected for Cardiff Central at the same election. And the victorious Labour candidate in Cardiff East was notable as well; Professor Hilary Marquand. Who defeated the Secretary of State for War (P.J. Grigg). The Labour MP for Cardiff South 1923-1924 and 1929-1931 was Arthur Henderson Jr., who would later a find a more lasting electoral home in the Black Country. And finally (I think) Hugh Dalton's long quest to find a suitable electoral home included Cardiff East; where he lost out by 3.1 in 1923.

4. Brief descriptions of the constituencies...

Cardiff South: described by Kenneth O. Morgan as 'a mixed, sprawling constituency which took in the old decaying dockside community of Bute Town and Tiger Bay as well as the fashionable suburbs of Penarth', this was the most working class - and most Labour - of the three Cardiff constituencies. Which, given the docks, is more or less what you'd expect. It also included Grangetown and Adamsdown/South Roath (then a seriously rough and largely Irish district). Had it not included the bourgeois suburb-cum-resort of Penarth it might have been a fairly safe seat for most of the period. The Liberals remained competitive until 1923, after which they fell away pretty rapidly.

Cardiff East: this was basically the old parish of Roath, minus the Adamsdown area. Which meant that it included the proletarian stronghold of Splott (between the railway and the sea and dominated by the East Moors steelworks), the residential district of Roath proper... and the posh inner suburbs around Roath Park (probably the most affluent part of Wales during this period). The constituency had predictably strange politics and the Liberals remained competitive right up to (and including) 1931; the reason for the unusual swing in 1935 is the fact the constituency saw a tight three-way race in 1931 and a Tory/Labour fight in 1935 (there was a Liberal candidate, but he polled terribly).

Cardiff Central: the other Cardiff constituencies were uneasy mixtures of industry and suburban comfort. Central was a little different; it was basically the parts of Cardiff (as was in 1918) north of GWR and west of the Rhymney Railway and included a diverse mixture of suburbs as well as the city centre. Its two main districts were Cathays (a district dominated by railwaymen back then) and Canton, which was a mixed residential area with perhaps more of a lower middle class feel than might have always been reflected in statistics. At a guess Cathays was Labour's strongest area, though I am probably completely wrong (I don't really know enough about inter-war Canton).

Sorry to be asking what is probably a rather dumb question, but what party is reflected by the purple winning in Cardiff Central in 1931 and 1935? Was it an independent or was it a party, and if so, which party?

The answer is here. (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=111627.msg2382639#msg2382639)

Thanks for that! I should have tried looking for it!

I've finished a boundary map for Nottinghamshire; working out the boundaries for Nottingham itself was hellish and those that I've drawn are probably just impressionistic (at best), but it is done. Pretty stuff soon.

And the first map for quite a while. Zummerzet, because I felt like it:

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1. It is instructive to compare the patterns in Somerset to those in Cornwall; some patterns are clearly related, but some are very different.

2. Bridgwater's slightly odd pink in 1945 denotes that it was won by a left-wing independent.

3. As far as notable candidates are concerned, Taunton played a key role in the saga of Arthur Griffith-Boscawen (a brief summary can be found on his wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Griffith-Boscawen). Read and laugh). It was also one of many constituencies contested for Labour by the seemingly omnipresent Rev. George Woods. Elsewhere, Weston-super-Mud was represented for much of the period by Lord Erskine (Governor of the Madras Presidency 1934-1940), while Violet Bonham Carter ran for the Liberals in Wells in 1945.

4. Descriptions won't be all that detailed as my knowledge of voting patterns in the West Country during this period is less than perfect. But we can all be sure that personal votes were often a big factor. Though the sustained oddness of Somerset politics during this period makes for relatively long notes anyway:

Weston-super-Mare: covered the northern third or so of Somerset's share of the Bristol Channel coast and a big swath of agricultural territory inland. As well as the infamously muddy resort that gave the constituency its name, it also included Clevedon (a smaller and more upmarket version of Weston) and Portishead which was a much more industrial place, based around Portishead Dock. The constituency was greatly altered by the expansion of Bristol suburbia (and of Bristol itself; by the 1930s the city had expanded to include territory in the constituency) which presumably contributed to it turning into a very safe Conservative seat from that decade onwards.

Bath: covered the staid bourgeois city of Bath and nothing else. It's easy to spot on the map; it's the small seat surrounded by Frome. This was normally a safe Conservative seat (as you'd expect), though the Liberals captured it when they swept the West Country in 1923. Somewhat remarkably, it was Labour who came close in 1945, which tells you something.

Frome: had a rather deceptive name as Frome was neither central to nor typical of this remarkably diverse constituency in northern Somerset. It contained the tiny Somerset coalfield around Midsomer Norton and Radstock and this fact alone explains the fact that Labour was consistently competitive here. It also included (obviously) some rather more typical parts of rural Somerset, as well as the expanding dormitory town of Keynsham and an increasingly large share of Bristol suburbia; mostly council estates in this case. Like Weston-super-Mare, by the 1930s a large part of the city was actually in this constituency.

Wells: rural eastern Somerset, and a safe Conservative seat with the usual West Country exceptions. As well as the small city that named the constituency, the main settlements were Glastonbury, the brewing town of Shepton Mallet and the shoe-making town of Street. I suspect that for the early part of the period the rural areas would have been more Liberal voting than the towns (nothing says 'traditionally Tory' like Anglicanism and brewing), though Street would have been an exception.

Yeovil: rural southern Somerset and, remarkably, the only seat in the county that was consistently Tory (though Labour somehow managed to come extremely close in 1945). While most of the constituency was very rural, Yeovil itself was dominated by the armaments industry and the constituency included several important military bases and installations. This seems to explain things, but it doesn't explain that the Liberals sometimes did better in the 1930s than some elections in the 1920s.

Bridgwater: the northern (and so coastal) of the two rural western constituencies. The main towns were Bridgwater itself (a small port and minor industrial centre with a long Radical history), Minehead and Burnham-on-Sea (both of where were small seaside resorts), as well as the wonderfully named Watchet (a very small port). The rural areas were very diverse, as it included a large part of both the Somerset Levels and Exmoor. A very safe Tory seat (despite Bridgwater) by the 1930s, it fell to a left-wing independent (veteran News Chronicle hack Vernon Bartlett (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Bartlett)) who was re-elected in 1945.

Taunton: rural western Somerset. This was such a rural constituency that there were only two large settlements; Taunton itself and the minor industrial centre of Wellington (a rare example of a West Country cloth town that managed to survive the Industrial Revolution). It had an odd electoral history; as we can tell from the 1922 map, Arthur Griffith-Boscawen's parachute only worked once, while the constituency saw one of the most surprising Labour gains in the country in 1945. Taunton itself was traditionally Tory, but I'm not sure if it was in 1945; Wellington was always Radical and would have voted Labour by a large margin. Elsewhere there must have been a substantial rural Labour vote, but I've no idea where it came from. Finally, some trivia (or not?). Ernest Bevin was born in the tiny village of Winston, which was in this constituency.

Writing up stuff for Notts, when I noticed a pretty serious error in the map. Bah. Tomorrow, then.

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1. The Nottinghamshire coalfield is a fascinating place with a very strange political history. Some of its key moments happened during this period, notably the sudden (and quite remarkable) Labour breakthrough in 1918 (previously the Notts miners had stuck solidly with the Liberals and had voted against affiliating the MFGB to the Labour Party), and the emergence of 'company unionism' (also known as 'Spencer unionism') after the failure of the General Strike and the rather weird way in which that internal dispute was eventually resolved. It must also be noted that the coalfield was still expanding during this period.

2. I remember reading a while ago - while researching my BA dissertation as it happens - that the so-called 'Progressive Alliance' (between Labour and the Liberals) lasted for a long time in Nottingham. This might explain why Labour occasionally didn't contest Nottingham Central and Nottingham East in the early 1920s. But I may be remembering wrong.

3. Not a great deal of notable candidates, though one of the few was very notable indeed; Malcolm MacDonald (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_MacDonald) sat for Bassetlaw from 1929 until 1935. Another was Geoffrey de Freitas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_de_Freitas), who's long and winding parliamentary career began when he gained Nottingham Central in 1945.

4. The usual brief descriptions...

Nottingham Central: a very diverse urban constituency that covered (you may be surprised to learn) the centre of Nottingham. It contained an uneasy mixture of slums (including, I think, St Annes. Yeah, St Annes was always thus) and middle class residential districts, including the Park Estate (Nottingham's answer to Edgbaston). It was, in other words, exactly the sort of place that Labour never had a prayer in in the inter-war years but ended up gainly quite easily in 1945.

Nottingham East: not as diverse as Central and characterised by middle class residential areas like Mapperley, though it was not entirely without working class voters. The pre-1918 version of the constituency included St Annes; I don’t think this version did, but the maps I worked off were less than entirely clear. A key Liberal/Tory swing seat throughout the 1920s, the un-noticed remoulding of certain significant parts of the electorate caused Labour moved into second place in 1935. Still, the result in 1945 must have come as a shock to everyone.

Nottingham South: basically a working class urban constituency with some more middle class areas here and there. It included The Meadows and probably most of Lenton; because the maps I was working off were less than entirely reliable, it may have included part of St Annes as well, but I don't think so (this is the sort of thing that I'd like to check at some point. Sorry to keep on whining about that). A safe Conservative seat in most of the 1920s, but then narrowly gained by Labour in 1929. The Labour MP elected that year defected to National Labour during the 1931 crisis, and that 'party' held the seat in both 1931 and 1935, before Labour took it by a large margin in 1945.

Nottingham West: something a little different. A surprisingly large number of miners lived in Nottingham and boundaries were carefully drawn to make sure that almost all of them lived in this constituency. Unsurprisingly, then, it was a safe Labour seat won with a comfortable majority (and usually much more than that) at every election except the disaster of 1931. It was different from the rest of the Nottingham constituencies in a couple of other ways as well, mostly notably being the fact that its electorate kept growing throughout the period as it was the only one with land suitable for new housing (most of which was built by the council).

Rushcliffe: the strangely drawn constituency south of Nottingham. Even at the start of the period this was a very diverse constituency, including a large slice of rural south Nottinghamshire and the affluent suburb of West Bridgford, as well as Beeston (a weaving town that had transformed into a centre of modern light industry) and Carlton (a textile town that included a significant mining element due to the presence of Gedling colliery). This produced a reliable (though not especially safe) Conservative seat, and one in which both Labour and the Liberals were strong. This changed during the 1930s as the suburbs of Nottingham grew at a rapid rate, with much of the growth happening within this constituency and much of it being more than merely physical; the city annexed a huge amount of territory to its west in 1933, much of which was used to build council estates (though there was a significant amount of private building in places). Rushcliffe looked to be a safe seat in the 1930s as the growth of the suburbs and the collapse of middle class Liberalism strengthened the Tory position, but the continued construction of new council estates undermined this and Labour gained it on a massive swing in 1945.

Newark: initially a very rural constituency (even Newark itself was not large and its industrial base was largely concerned with servicing agriculture) utterly dominated by powerful landowners, Newark was a safe Conservative constituency with a considerable Liberal minority vote. This changed as the collieries of the so-called Dukeries Coalfield (Ollerton, Clipstone and so on) were sunk during the 1920s and as new communities sprang up around them. This radical change had, at first, relatively little political impact on the area as the new communities were company towns through and through and became secretive and closed societies in which neither the MFGB nor the Labour Party were at all welcome; Labour displaced the Liberals locally, but then that happened just about everywhere. This was changed by the War, as old local orders crumbled in the face of national pressures and as secretive local employment cultures were swept away by Ernest Bevin’s powerful Ministry of Labour, as you can probably tell from the close call in 1945.

Bassetlaw: covered the entire northern third of the county. Like Newark, this was a constituency in transition as a result of the expansion of the Notts coalfield, though here the process started earlier and was on a much larger scale. The main town was Worksop with smaller population centres around Warsop, Retford and (as the coal industry expanded) in a narrow strip south of the Yorkshire border. Initially a rural constituency with a mining element, by the end of the 1930s Bassetlaw was a mining constituency with a rural element, expanding the number of naturally safe Labour mining constituencies in Notts to four. Its first Labour MP was Malcolm MacDonald who, like his father, was re-elected in 1931 for National Labour but defeated in 1935 on a huge swing. The Labour MP elected that year, Fred Bellenger, went on to hold the seat until his death in 1968.

Mansfield: the West Notts constituency just south of Bassetlaw. Mansfield was a mining constituency dominated by the large colliery town it was named for, though it included some other coalfield towns, the largest of which was Sutton in Ashfield. Previously a rock-solid Liberal seat, Mansfield fell to Labour in 1918 as the Notts miners suddenly changed their political loyalties in a move about as revolutionary as has ever happened in an area noted (even then) for its moderation. The Liberals struck back in 1922, but this proved to be a last hurrah rather than a lasting revival as Labour regained Mansfield on a large swing in 1923 and went on to hold the seat throughout the rest of the period, winning by a comfortable margin even in the disaster year of 1931.

Broxtowe: the large constituency between Mansfield and Nottingham. Broxtowe, one of a small group of constituencies to be won by Labour at every election during the period, was another mining constituency, though unlike other parts of the Notts coalfield its industrial and mining history stretched back for centuries. Unlike Mansfield it was not dominated by a single large town, but by a patchwork of smaller urban centres, some of which were themselves made up of yet smaller settlements. The most important of these were Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Eastwood, Hucknall and Arnold. Its political history was similar to Mansfield's, though in the case of Broxtowe the Liberal fightback in 1922 failed to dislodge Labour, and subsequent Labour majorities were rarely quite as towering as those in Mansfield.

Ah yes, I remember that agricultural-to-mining transformation in (what is now the Sherwood constituency) described as "within living memory" in some guide to the 2001 election.

Re Nottingham West - yeah, Wollaton Colliery was right in Nottingham. Whereabouts in the city were(/are?) the Raleigh works?

Lenton.

Can I request the southern West Riding?

Do you mean current South Yorkshire (roughly) or everything south of the Wharfe or so?

(but yes, of course)

The former, essentially, maybe north to about the Calder.  But I'm not going to complain if you do the latter!

What I might do - though I'll have to check the maps I'd be working off - would be to draw an outline map for all of the West Riding south of the Wharfe and split it up when posting. I suppose I should look after my sanity occasionally.

Excellent stuff Al, an area about which I know much more now than I did at the start of this week.


FWIW the Nottingham seats included the following wards in 1918:

NOTTINGHAM CENTRAL: The Forest, Market, Robin Hood, St Ann's and Sherwood wards of the county borough of Nottingham.

NOTTINGHAM EAST: The Byron, Manvers, Mapperley and St Mary's wards of the county borough of Nottingham.

NOTTINGHAM SOUTH: The Bridge, Castle, Meadows and Trent wards of the county borough of Nottingham.

NOTTINGHAM WEST: The Broxtowe, St Albans and Wollaton wards of the county borough of Nottingham.

http://www.archive.org/stream/representationof00frasrich#page/448/mode/2up

Of course, you then have to have a ward map for that period to answer your question :)

There is that drawback, yeah. But at least I can know for sure which areas were included within borough constituencies, which is better for descriptions, so thanks for the link :)

If you're going to do that, why not make the outline map the entire West Riding?

Since I actually thought of demanding that next! :D (Derbyshire was the other place I thought of.)

Bump!

Actually nothing to show for the present. But something that will lead to other things is about two-thirds done or so.

Rereading Notts just now, and I need to state my amazement at the age of the "Rushcliffe" and "Broxtowe" names - especially as that version of Broxtowe is a direct predecessor to the modern Ashfield, not the modern Broxtowe.

They're the names of Wapentakes, as is Bassetlaw. And, actually, Newark.

Can I see a UK map of 1945 with inserts?

You can see that when my team wins the Premiership. I support Sunderland.


...actually... well... maybe you'll see it sooner. But quite a few steps away for now, even if the general direction of travel is very positive.

Bookmarked for use in the summer of of 2014.

Al, you may have seen my Leicestershire map in the other place; if it can help you finish a 1945 map off, feel free to use it - or indeed as I have too few posts here to upload images, if you want to post it here and do the seat descriptions, feel free.

I did see it, and here it is:

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Nice work.

I don't have a copy of Craig 1918-49 on hand at the moment, so can't really add much, but people should note that the (very heavily) defeated Labour candidate in Leicester West in 1918 was Ramsay MacDonald, an incumbent for the old two-member Leicester division and at the time a hate figure because of his opposition to the recently ended war. The National Labour member elected for the same seat in 1935 was Harold Nicolson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Nicolson), while the successful Labour candidate in 1945 was Barnett Janner, previously a Liberal MP in the East End and an important figure in the Jewish community (he was President of the Board of Deputies in the 50s and 60s) who represented the area until 1970 when he was succeeded by his son.

Thanks for putting that up.

As soon as I get home in the New Year and dig out my copy of the 1945 boundary changes, I'll get Warwickshire done. Including solidly Tory Unionist Brummagem -(until the 1945 deluge).

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Think of this as some sort of New Year present or other.

What's with the unlabelled constituency east of Pollok?

The unlabelled constituency is the Cathcart division of Glasgow.

That's so; error corrected.

Well now that's pretty :)

Unfortunately I don’t have enough posts on here to put either images or links up, but if anyone is interested in this particular thread, in addition to Leicestershire which Al has kindly posted I have put maps of the inter-war elections for Warwickshire (inc. Birmingham), Worcestershire, Wiltshire, Sheffield, and Manchester and Salford on the Pretty Maps thread of the Vote-2012 Proboards forum. What I haven’t done is run down the electoral history or demographic make-up of each seat – a task for someone else, I think.

I'm looking forward to you clocking up another 8 posts or so and posting links and images!

It does seem a rather odd rule, does it not? I'll try to get round to it as soon as I can.

(BTW this is rather obviously a gratuitous post just to count towards my 20, while trying not to be completely off topic. I wonder if there's a special thread one can work out the 20 posts on?)

There's an entire board for that, baby. "Off Topic".

The rule's just to prevent bots posting ad links, I think.

Here are links to Stepney's maps.  I couldn't get the actual images to work for some reason.

Worcestershire 1918-24 (http://postimage.org/image/cin1itnwf/full/)
Worcestershire 1929-45 (http://postimage.org/image/xgt7gwnr3/full/)

Warwickshire 1918-35 (http://postimage.org/image/vw0wlswfz/full/)

Wiltshire 1918-24 (http://postimage.org/image/rj2d3dnpb/full/)
Wiltshire 1929-45 (http://postimage.org/image/ick2g3igv/full/)

Sheffield 1918-45 (http://postimage.org/image/d53kpdr9b/)

Manchester & Salford 1918-45 (http://postimage.org/image/l2xzr14jj/)

Staffordshire 1918-45 (http://postimage.org/image/9conne14v/full/)

Swindon went Labour in 1929? I know it has a railroad history, but that surprised me.

Also, lol at Manchester 23 vs Manchester 31!

Bless you: not only have you put up the pretty maps for everyone, you give me an excuse to get to 20 posts.

Postimage is a pain in the backside for changing the URLs of images one uploads; Al, I think, uploads them direct to here, I'll see if I'm able to do that.

So, yeah, those are the pretty maps so far. Nowhere near as good quality as Al's because I'm basically converting a series of 1930s Ordnance Survey maps straight into blank maps (not quite as easy) and, of course, I'm not adding descriptions. If anyone has any requests for more pretty maps, just say.

My request would be to change the policy regarding descriptions. Or else to badger Al to do it (and IIRC he did Somerset at one point, or was that for the postwar era?)

Al's inter-war Somerset is here (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=111627.msg2926338#msg2926338).

Descriptions mean doing research and stuff. Whereas drawing maps, consulting FWS Craig, and colouring them in is fun, like an internet version of playing with finger paints.

Well, 1923 was the best Liberal year since 1910 while it was the worst Conservative year in the inter-war period. 1931 was rather better for the Tories (weak sarcasm alert).

Part of that came from local Conservative Associations brooking no quarter with Samuelite Liberals even if it was meant to be National Government, unity, all pulling at the bit, etc. Where there were Liberals arguing for free trade the local Tory parties (having just been convulsed for two years by the protectionist crusade, although this was more a southern thing) generally fought them and generally won, including in this case against a sitting MP in Blackley and a new Liberal candidate in Withington.

I think - by which I mean 'I read somewhere that' - the Tories actually won the most votes in Manchester in 1923 (finishing second everywhere syndrome). Though the best part of Manchester '23 was that the lone Tory seat was Hulme. Manchester Labour had real trouble breaking into the slums for various reasons. Platting was generally weaker than the other East Manchester seats, and that's despite a high profile candidate (J.R. Clynes).

Over in Salford, Ben Tillett was a notoriously lousy candidate; an agents nightmare.

Labour's early strength in Manchester is in the mining parts and not in the textiles dominated slummy city centre. As a very broad summary.

Loco works, engineering, chemicals and other heavy industrial delights as well as mining, but, yeah. Bradford - which had a large colliery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Colliery) until the 1960s - was one of Labour's first proper strongholds in the city. Similar patterns in some other large cities, of course; in Birmingham in 20s the Labour councillors were generally elected from wards dominated by heavy industry rather than the properly slummy areas, even if most of the latter were certainly capable of going Labour from a fairly early date (you get an echo of this in 1929 when Austen Chamberlain hung on in Birmingham West, despite said constituency being basically Hockley). Oh, and Selly Oak, an odd case that I think I've mentioned before.

...but if I haven't, the ward included the Bournville works (and village), and one of the Labour councillor for the ward in the 20s went by the name of George Cadbury Junior.

You say West Birmingham was basically Hockley, true enough: the seat was actually called the Hockley Division by the 1917 Commission and was renamed West Birmingham by the House (in memory of Old Joe and all that). It's worth remembering Austen got a swing against him in 1929 of 17%, and if I remember right in Jenkins' book on Chancellors he attributed it to "poor sods, how the other half must live, and how they suffer, I can hardly blame them voting Socialist" (I paraphrase); but next door (literally) in Ladywood Neville did a runner and Geoffrey Lloyd as the new Tory Unionist candidate suffered a 0.1% swing (which nonetheless was enough to turn a Tory Unionist majority of 77 into a Labour majority of 11).

Part of me wants to put the difference down to Geoffrey Lloyd's excellent campaigning (he was described somewhere as "an exquisite homosexual who inherited the Chamberlain machine in Birmingham"). Then again, part wants to put it down to Austen not really being part of the whole Chamberlain Brummagem machine, never having served on the Council, never having been Mayor (unlike practically the entirety of his male extended family), and naturally spending the last five years as Foreign Secretary travelling the world and not Brummagem.

Selly Oak (I say using a mixture of Davies-Morley and intuition) had the Bournville Estate (Cadbury Quaker influence?), the "Selly Oak-Stirchley metal-working district" and, presumably, a lot of workers at Longbridge - the workers' trains from New Street to Longbridge via Selly Oak started in 1915, and of course the Bristol Road was always there, though I don't know about the trams.

EDIT: Correction. The trams did run down the Bristol Road to Longbridge (http://www.tundria.com/trams/GBR/Birmingham-1930.shtml). Three routes, in fact.

By the 1920s none of the Chamberlain's were really part of the machine; they'd abdicated in favour of a bunch of Edgbaston lawyers, though did remain its ceremonial head(s). This might be slightly unfair, but I think Austen basically turned up in the city at election time (whether he was needed or not) and drove around like some sort of seigneur, while other people did the actual work. Of course similar things were said about Roy Jenkins in the 60s!

Huh, I remember at some point looking through historical constituency names in Birmingham and spotting that odd survival of a single cardinal point. So that has been cleared up for me now. :D

Oh, I'm not disagreeing one iota re. Austen, but it might not be fair with regard to Neville, who of course followed in his old man's footsteps by being three times Mayor. Austen though cleared out of Highbury as soon as he could and took up residence at the unhappily-named Twitt's Ghyll (in deepest Sussex, not far from Uckfield). I don't know where Neville would have been listed on the ballot paper as living, but I think he would have had more pull and more interaction with Brum than Austen.


The Hansard account of it is mangled on the Millbank website, but here it is (http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1917/nov/29/redistribution-of-seats#S5CV0099P0_19171129_HOC_702). Austen had of course by now done his seat hop and was sitting for Da's old seat. There was no discussion; must have taken ninety seconds, if that. Might be easier if I render it in full:

"Inner East Birmingham" would make a cracking constituency.name

Helpfully I have a copy of the 1939 (and probably final) edition of the Constitutional Yearbook, which has profiles of all the MPs in 1939 complete with home addresses.  Unhelpfully this is the 1939 edition and therefore gives Neville's address as "10, Downing Street, S.W.1."

Oh sure; up until the 1920s he was very much an active part of the machine (unlike Austen), and presumably kept up his contacts with it a little better than his brother. Of course the machine predated the Chamberlains; you can probably date it back to the Birmingham Political Union, which would mean domination over the city's politics for well over a century, which isn't so far off Tammany Hall in terms of longevity.

Sneak preview:

I'm somewhat deviating from the initial purpose of the thread, but I suppose I should disprove my own incorrect argument:

	Austen	Neville
Constitutional Year Book, 1906 (http://archive.org/stream/constitutionaly05unkngoog#page/n155/mode/2up)	11, Downing Street, S.W.	-
Popular Guide to the House of Commons, 1906 (http://archive.org/stream/popularguidetoh00unkngoog#page/n165/mode/1up)	40, Prince’s-gardens, S.W.; Highbury, Moor Green, Birmingham	-
Constitutional Year Book, 1919 (http://archive.org/stream/constitutional1919londuoft#page/166/mode/2up)	9, Egerton Place, S.W.3.	Westbourne, Edgbaston, Birmingham
Debrett’s Guide to the House of Commons, 1922 (http://archive.org/stream/debrettshouseo1922londuoft#page/30/mode/2up)	11, Downing Street, S.W.1.	35, Egerton Crescent, S.W.3; Westbourne, Edgbaston, Birmingham
Constitutional Year Book, 1932	58, Rutland Gate, S.W.7	37, Eaton Square, S.W.1
Constitutional Year Book, 1937	House of Commons, S.W.1	11, Downing Street, S.W.1
Constitutional Year Book, 1939	-	10, Downing Street, S.W.1

I am looking at doing some descriptions of the Wiltshire seats, at which point I’ll get the thread back on track.

Here are brief descriptions of the Sheffield constituencies.  Names in brackets are the wards they included.   I've started with Central, then clockwise starting with Ecclesall (the darkest blue seat on most of Stepney's maps).

Sheffield Central (St Peter's, St Philip's, part of Broomhall): This consituency was tightly drawn around the city centre, extending west to cover Netherthorpe (in the modern Walkley ward) and south to include part of Highfield.  Most of the housing in this area would have been slums or little better, with not a lot surviving the various slum clearance programmes since 1918.  Presumably because of that, its electorate was distinctly low by 1945.  It seems surprising to me that it was so relatively Tory given the slums (though it was very close in both 1924 and 1935); I suppose this is related to the Manchester discussion.  All this area is now in the revived Sheffield Central.

Sheffield Ecclesall (Ecclesall, Sharrow): This was named after Ecclesall Bierlow, one of the six divisions of the old parish of Sheffield.  In 1918 much of the housing in this constituency would have been middle class villas in areas like Nether Edge, with some areas of by-law terraces and a few areas of genuine slums in the east of Sharrow ward.  Between the wars there was a lot of private middle class housing built in areas undeveloped before the war.  The outer areas are now in Sheffield Hallam, the inner areas in Sheffield Central.

Sheffield Hallam (Crookesmoor, Hallam, part of Broomhall): Nether Hallam and Upper Hallam were two more of the six divisions of the old parish.  This constituency was similar to Sheffield Ecclesall, though perhaps contained more slums (the areas close to the border with Central have seen a lot of slum clearance) but it also contained some very rich areas such as Ranmoor.  The outer areas are still in Hallam, while the inner areas have been removed over various boundary reviews and are now in Central.

Sheffield Hillsborough (Hillsborough, Neepsend, Walkley): This was north-west Sheffield, with Hillsborough having been added to the city at the beginning of the 20th century.  In 1918 the housing would have been a mix of by-law terraces and back-to-backs (mainly in the inner areas) with a few posher pockets.  Inter-war development would have included the western part of the large string of 1930s council estates which now dominate northern Sheffield, and some private development on the fringes of Walkley and Hillsborough.  Walkley is now in Sheffield Central, most of the rest in Brightside & Hillsborough, and a very small part in Hallam.

Sheffield Brightside (Brightside, Burngreave): Brightside Bierlow was another of the divisions of the old parish.  As with Hillsborough we're looking at terraces and back-to-backs in 1918, together with some larger Victorian villas on the top of the hill in Burngreave, with some pretty bad slums in other parts of Burngreave.  There was a lot of council housing built in this constituency between the wards, though the estates extend outside the 1918 city boundaries.  Almost all this area is in the successor seat, Brightside & Hillsborough.

Sheffield Attercliffe (Attercliffe, Darnall): Attercliffe-cum-Darnall was another division of the old parish.  The core of the steel-making area of the Lower Don Valley was split between this and Burngreave.  In 1918 this would have been similar to Brightside, but there wouldn't have been as much council development here, and after the Second World War most of the housing, especially in Attercliffe, was demolished in slum clearance programmes.  This constituency evolved into the present Sheffield South-East (unnecessarily renamed in 2010) but much of the current area of that constituency was outside the city boundary in 1918.

Sheffield Park (Heeley, Park): This was named after the old deer park of Sheffield Manor, most of which had large council estates built on it during this period.  In 1918 there was a slum area (known as Little Chicago) around Park Hill (now the site of the famous/infamous listed 1950s flats) and more mixed areas (by-law terraces and larger villas) further south around Norfolk Park, Heeley, Meersbrook and Woodseats.  The southern part of the constituency was annexed from Derbyshire around 1901.  The northern parts are now in Sheffield Central, the rest in Sheffield Heeley.

The Map is finished. I'll post a prettified version of it tomorrow (with colours and all that). Modifications for 1945 will follow soon after, I think. They won't be quite so accurate, but, meh.

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Bigger picture. (http://postimage.org/image/qz17a90zx/full/)

That is a thing of beauty and a joy forever!

For the 1945 elections, they split all those constituencies that had grown to over half the average size in two, but didn't do anything about the very undersized constituencies. (As it happens, both these groups were somewhat Labour-favorable that year. To a degree we're talking about the cleared slums and the places they had been cleared to.)

Oh, and obviously this map now needs to be colored in by result.

Sort of, although in the case of the undersized seats this was massively accelerated by wartime displacement. Postage stamp-size constituencies like Southwark North or Limehouse didn't have their inevitable scrubbing off the map by pre-war slum clearance but by the Luftwaffe.

Of course the 1945 mini-redistribution used the 1939 electorates to decide which seats needed splitting, so to that extent it was pre-war population movement which defined the redistribution. By the way, it was a figure of 190% of the average that was needed to split, not 150%. Detail of the redistribution is here (http://vote-2012.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=boundaries&action=display&thread=1254).

I have often wondered why the opportunity wasn't taken to merge some of the very small seats at the same time; I think the upshot was that these places had had their populations massively reduced through bombing and evacuation, and that it wouldn't have been fair to remove Parliamentary representation at that point (particularly as some of the expectation was the population would move back after the war). There may have been Labour self-interest in it in arguing that, too.

I don't know if Al wants to do these for himself; I am happy to make a start on 1923 (if only to see the mildly amusing Liberal gain of a shed load of English seats that had been safe Tory since 1885).

It's not my fault, my relatives were all in the army or the navy!
I actually misspoke... but still would have been wrong, strictly speaking. I meant "twice", ie 200%, when I wrote "half".
No idea how that happened.

I suppose maps of electorate change in London 1918-45 aren’t off topic. My interest was piqued by the discussion above about slum clearance v. wartime displacement.

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Electorate growth, 1918 election to 1935 election

Not clear what’s going on here. Every electorate in London grew in this period. Partly this was a function of granting the vote to under-30 women in 1928. The electorate in England grew by 59.9% in the same period.

The growth in London did not keep pace with this, particularly inner south London. In fact apart from Chelsea, Hackney, Hampstead, Kensington and Lewisham, the growth in none of London kept pace with the English average. Middlesex and west Essex clearly did and then some.

The lowest growth in this period was Kennington (16.8%), the highest Romford (353.2%).

NB. This is the growth in electorate, not population. The City would have obviously been massively skewed by the business vote, some of the surrounding seats a little too.

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Electorate growth, 1935 election to 1945 election

A little more clear what happened here, isn’t it? The electorate in England grew by 5.6% in these ten years.

There were boundary changes in Essex, Kent, Middlesex and Surrey in 1945. Some were very minor (e.g. in Croydon, Finchley) so I’ve treated them as unchanged. Epping and Ilford were simply split directly in two, so comparison was easy. Romford was split in four (with some minor adjustments), so ditto. Middlesex was more complicated, so I’ve compared like with like. Bromley, Dartford and Mitcham were too complicated to compare.

The heaviest fall was in the City (73.3%) followed by Silvertown (62.9%). The highest growth was in Enfield (44.8%)

They are very much the opposite of off topic!

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Anyways;

It should be possible to make the changes for '45 without much bother: which is excellent news.

I'll be doing maps of all the elections in this period (maybe with some informative text or other pretty stuff; dunno), but quite randomly and to no particular timescale, so absolutely no objections to anyone doing stuff in the meantime. After all, the point of the map is for it to be used, so feel free to do so. I can also upload a properly blank one (without county colouring) if that's easier to work from.

The colouring helps, especially with that Gloucestershire border... :)

One of my three - massively churlish - criticisms would be that that border is actually too simplified: most of the Worcestershire exclaves have been excised. (The other two are that Lincolnshire and Rutland were three parliamentary counties, not one, and that Epsom seems to have been shown as two seats).

Epsom is an error, yeah (caused by a confusing source map; an unusually thick link for a local government boundary). I'll correct it on future maps based on the map, but probably not on the map itself. I think wrt Worcestershire I gave up. There are limits. ;D

Kids these days. No dedication. ;) Here:

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This will probably get wiped off PostImage as soon as I put it up, but here's 1923:

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I only have generic colours for four seats: Harrow (Ind majority 19.8%), Mossley (Ind majority 1.6%), Cardiganshire (Ind L majority 19.2%) and Liverpool Scotland (Irish Nationalist unopposed). Scrymgeour at Dundee has been coloured in using "ILP, etc" colours. Some fudging has been done for two-member seats.

Apologies for not adding back the universities, and in advance for any errors.

Also apologies to Al for doctoring his map to include a larger London, and for spotting an extra error in the map: the Eccles and Stretford seats had been merged.

Nice. That was a seriously bizarre election, even for the period.

Anyways, it's not a bad thing to spot errors!

Ah Edwin Scrymgeour. My father owns some personal effects of the family. Long story. The liquor trade loved him and many in Dundee voted for him, because he essentially 'out spoke' the temperance movement, which some people had sympathy for, and pushed for prohibition whch was of course a step too far. He was of course seen as more 'socialist' than the Dundee contingent of the I.L.P, which piqued interest in him. He also went down with their ship come 1931.

A lot of deeply weird candidates were successful during this period, but he was probably one of the funnier ones.

Something that probably needs pointing out on that map is Holland with Boston; the Labour candidate (and MP!) in 1918, 1922 and 1923 was William Royce, a most unlikely Labour MP^* who had actually been the Tory candidate in the predecessor constituency in 1910. He died in 1924, Labour lost the by-election (one of Hugh Dalton's many pre-Bishop Auckland contests) and never got the seat back. Ten point Tory margin in 1945.

_{*Before heading home and entering politics he was a railway construction magnate in South Africa!}

Anyways, I've been working on the changes for '45. About halfway through, or so, in terms of material. Who knows in terms of time.

Fascinating map! What explains the Liberal support in Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and those parts of Lancashire and the West Riding? Not knowing anything about the time period or elections/politics back then, I'm also surprised to see Birmingham so solidly Tory.

By this point mostly Tradition (one heading for an almighty crash in 1924, obviously), with the roots of that mostly being sectarian. The West Country, the West Riding and East Lancs all had strong Nonconformist traditions; this was also true of some other 'surprising' areas of Liberal strength, like Lindsey, Bedfordshire and Hull. Note that most of the really, really strong Tory rural areas were Anglican strongholds.

Though '23 was weird; the Liberals won some rural constituencies (like the new Shrewsbury seat) that were certainly not traditionally Liberal.


Birmingham during this period was still dominated by the political machine associated with Joseph Chamberlain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Chamberlain); note that in the city the Tories always ran as Unionists during this period. This machine dominated political life in Birmingham from the middle of the 19th century until the city's strange democratic revolution in 1945.

Doesn't show up (on the atlas) for me, but when I quote your post and copy and paste the image url into a new tab it's there. And it's a work of beauty.

Apologies!? Wtf is wrong with you, man? That map needed a London inset!

Absolutely, yes. I'm toying with (maybe) doing some for Glasgow, Brum, Liverpool and Manchester as well. Toying.

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Inadvertently edited, damn it. I did have some wittering on here, along the lines of:

a) Jos Wedgwood at Newcastle is down in Labour colours even though he was unendorsed. All the other unendorsed Independent Labour winners are in "ILP etc" colours.
b) The "National" and "National Independent" (Hopkinson at Mossley) winners are down in Simonite sea-green, not Tory blue.
c) I think there was something else I can't now remember. It's late.

If you post the link, doesn't the link still tend to work?

"Tend to". Not always. Here it is (http://postimage.org/image/jxfmqcwu7/full).

Out of interest, where do you get the boundaries for the Scottish divided burghs from? Also, any plans to add Northern Ireland to this map?

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Bradford and Leeds, 1918-1945.

Idea: do shrunken versions of the big maps, post them here. And also add links to the full size thing.

Regarding the burghs, they can be found here (http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/) if you poke around.

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Bucks. Bigger map in the gallery.

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Just further to the maps up top about the causes of electorate decline in London in the inter-war period, here's a similar map indicating population change between 1914 and 1961. A bit of late inter-war clearance, but nothing compared to the post-1940 flight.

Well there were no large scale slum clearance programmes in Britain until the Luftwaffe decided to embark on an unnecessarily and excessively brutal one, so this is very much the pattern you'd expect.

This is what a lot of people get wrong about council housing; the early estates and even the 1930s estates weren't actually built for the slummies, but for the respectable workers in by-law houses. The thinking - more accurately hope - was that market forces would somehow do most of the rest. You don't get big intentional slum clearance programmes until the 1950s and 1960s.

Can anyone upload a map of results for Plymouth for the 1922 GE?

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This should cover it, but the outline map's a little rough I'm afraid.

Here's a shaded map for 1935 - the outline comes from an Alternate History forum but is obviously based on the Boothroyd drawing. I've removed most of the urban insets but have kept London, which has so many tiny seats that it can't be illustrated very well on the larger map.

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Excellent work :)

Apart from the SNP, Plaid,and the decline of Orangery in Liverpool and Glasgow, that 1935 map has not changed at all in 80 years. If the Tories won a landslide 420 seats tomorrow, that's what it'd look like. Compared with all the re-alignments in other nations, that's quite something.

Almost every detail has changed, but the basic pattern is much the same. 1935 is a much underrated election.

I'd say that the biggest change from then to now is that the Labour Party's base was in the industrial (mining, shipbuilding, steel etc.) areas while it's now in the urban areas - a great deal of overlap, obviously, but just compare Birmingham (or Bristol, Manchester, suburban London etc.) in 1935 to now.

It seems to have happened in a few stages: first, 1945 brought a lot of inner-city seats firmly to the Labour fold, while 1964/6 brought in some more middle-class areas like Hampstead & Stretford. 1997 completed things, as well-off suburban areas like Enfield, Crosby & Harrow jumped to Labour and have stayed there - in fact, all three of those seats saw increased Labour majorities in 2001. This brought us the 2001 electoral map, which saw Tory wins in places like Newark & Romford (with a fat majority), slim Labour majorities in places like Hornchurch, and big Labour majorities in Harrow East/West & Brent North! Unthinkable even twenty years before.

Simultaneous to this last development, however, was the weakening of Labour support in those poor urban areas that had always done them so well; the party's drift to the middle, as well as Afghanistan/Iraq and tuition fees, saw some votes shaken loose but only in a few instances were seats actually lost - for the most part, it just meant majorities of 5-10,000 as opposed to 15-20,000, so it's not a major shift like the 1960s & 1990s. The decline in Liberal support over the last few years - very much based on policies like tuition which drove Labour voters to them in the first place - will probably reverse things altogether and bring Labour's standing in these areas back to where it was before.

Yes.  Freefair mentioned Liverpool and Glasgow, with the "Orange" Tory vote, but other cities are striking too.  The Tories won every seat in Birmingham in 1935; that wouldn't happen in a comparable scale landslide today.  They won six out of ten in Manchester; they'd need a bigger landslide than that to come close in any today.  (Of course, today Manchester has only three seats of its own, plus two which are mostly in the city but which cross the borders and have names which don't include the city name.)  They won three out of seven in Sheffield, three out of four in Newcastle (and the other was a Liberal National), and so on.

Is a lot of that not due to demographic change in that part of north-west London and the Tories not being particularly attractive to South Asian voters?

Good grief, I hadn't even noticed, that, even though I knew the Midlands urban area as a whole was very historically Conservative. Wow. Surely that had something to do with Neville, Joseph & Austin Chamberlain, or Stanley Baldwin being relatively local?
Another striking feature for me is that the then very industrialsed, mining based constituency corresponding to modern day uber-bourgoise South Staffordshire is slightly Labour during this Tory landslide, when since 1970 it has been, no word of a lie, one of the Conservatives 10 safest seats (they got 51% in 1997 and 57% in 2010)

Is a lot of that not due to demographic change in that part of north-west London and the Tories not being particularly attractive to South Asian voters?
[/quote]

I'd say that the rise of immigrant populations in the cities is one of the biggest reasons for Labour's success in those areas over the last fifty years. However, unlike Birmingham/Bradford/Leicester, which saw steady improvement for Labour over many years, these northwest London seats stayed heavily Tory until 1997, when they swung massively to Labour (and swung strongly again four years later). Harrow West was the safest seat gained by Labour in 1997 (a 33% majority overturned), Southgate the second safest (32%) and Brent North ranked pretty high too (27%) before polling day.

That's Cannock, and presumably the Labour vote came from there rather than from what is now South Staffordshire.

Except that many of those urban areas mentioned were actually very industrial in 1935. Birmingham was dominated by metal bashing of one sort or another (historically guns and cheap consumer crap, but increasingly also cars and related industries), while Manchester was still a major centre of heavy industry and of lighter industries relating to textiles.

Or to point out the really obvious: Labour underperformed in most larger urban areas (compared to how they'd polled in the 20s) quite badly in 1935. In 1929 (for instance) Labour dominated the representation of Manchester/Salford and Newcastle/Gateshead, while there was a large clutch of Labour MPs from Birmingham. On the other hand, Labour recovered very strongly in the various coalfields and in some more rural textile districts as these places had been particularly devastated by the later stages of the depression. That, and the power of the MFGB. The reason why 1935 is (to me at least) important isn't because it was some kind of perfect baseline election or whatever, but because it basically set patterns that had been emerging since 1918 as permanent.


Newark was redrawn in 1983 as a basically safe Conservative seat (though the old Newark would have drifted Torywards anyway as the pit villages in the Dukeries depopulated and as more Nottingham commuters moved into the prosperously rural end of the constituency), and Romford is a middle class suburban constituency of the sort that Labour has only ever been able to win in extremely good years.* The issue in the Harrows and Brent North is their transformation from middle class suburbia to ethnic banlieues (for lack of a good English word for this).

And with regards to many long term changes, that's the issue in general: people move, industries die, and lifestyles change. The functional metropolitan areas of most British cities in 1935 were much smaller (geographically) than is the case now. My mum grew up in a carpet weaving town on the distant outskirts of Wolverhampton that is now, effectively, a middle class commuter town.

_{*In the interests of clarity however... it should be noted that the Romford constituency that existed in the 1930s included both Barking and Dagenham, while the Romford constituency that existed prior to 1974 combined the middle class 'burbs of Romford proper with the Harold Hill estate.}

Quite so. At the time the area that is now South Staffs was still very rural and had a low population. Almost all of the settlements in the area are almost entirely post-war (and frequently post-1960 at that).

Birmingham was still dominated by the political machine that had run it (more or less) since the middle of the 19th century (note that Conservative candidates in the city were still officially described as Unionists), and which was in practice the political wing of local business and professional interests (a hell of a lot of Edgbaston lawyers were senior Aldermen). It was strongly associated with the Chamberlain family, though by the interwar period they didn't have much to do with the actual operation of things. It had been given a few scares in the 20s, but was very much in full control by '35. Then the city had what amounted to a democratic revolution in 1945, and that was the end of that.

The composition (and boundaries) of Cannock were really quite impressively bizarre:

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I wasn't so much referring to the Tories winning those seats as doing much better in them than in the more posh north London areas that had always been strongholds.

But the people who had made those formerly posh - though really we're talking more humdrum suburban boring middle class actually* - parts of North London Tory strongholds no longer (at least for the most part) lived there by then.

_{*And not always that safe: in 1966, Labour won Harrow East, came close in Harrow Central, and only very narrowly failed to gain Hendon North. Even in '74, Labour managed to vaguely menace in Harrow Central and came close in Hendon North. At the same time, Battersea North was a Labour stronghold and Fulham was a reliable Labour seat.}

Precisely - I wasn't simply referring to Labour doing better among middle-class voters (although that was true) but also the changes in population. Even Keith Hill, the first Labour MP for Streatham, admitted that it was demographic changes that were responsible for his victory rather than any great damning rejection of the Tory member.
The slow expansion of what might crudely be called 'inner-city' areas outward, as well as a greater willingness of middle-class voters to go Labour, combined to produce some results that would have been unimaginable decades earlier. Going in the reverse direction, seats like Battersea, Fulham & Hornchurch - that had been blue-collar Labour country - saw the reverse happening (though this seems to have been much rarer, and has faded a bit from the glory days of the 1980s when even seats like Dagenham or Barking looked like potential Tory gains).

Ah, so mostly a - productive! - misunderstanding then.

Any idea why it was drawn like that?

A good point.  In my area, Penistone & Stocksbridge, Rother Valley and North East Derbyshire (the northern arm anyway) are much more suburban in nature than the equivalent seats were in 1935; their relatively small Labour majorities shouldn't really be surprising.  (Of course you have to take account of boundary changes)  In fact I think there are seats in other parts of the country which look demographically similar which are Tory-held.

Alcohol?

It was actually slightly less insane when it was first drawn (the bits in Wolves weren't then and so on: these were areas of major growth), but still bats. I suspect it may have come about from the rules used to draw up the boundaries: you have that bizarre dip into the Black Country because points west of that were in one set of designated borough constituencies, and points east were in another. Though its possible that they were consciously trying to draw a barrier between the Black Country and designated agricultural constituencies further north in Staffs.

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A very safe Labour seat in Yorkshire - held at all elections during the period - seemingly made up of leftovers from other constituencies. Note that the part in Morley was not Morley town but the Ardsley area, while the bits that were (by 1940) in Denby Dale and Kirkburton were basically just the villages of Emley and Flockton.

Presumably the "hole" is the Wakefield parliamentary borough?

In 1918 Rothwell was defined as "The rural districts of Hunslet and Wakefield, and
the urban districts of Ardsley East and West, Emley, Flockton, Horbury, Rothwell, and Stanley."  So some of the weirdness is due to local government changes, but even so it would have been an odd seat -- a sort of badly deformed Wakefield doughnut -- in 1918.

Indeed it is.

As well as being a leftovers constituency, it was also pretty clearly an attempt to draw another mining seat: Emley and Flockton are/were pit villages (with their own UDCs until the 30s!), and Hunslet RD had an important mining element at Middleton (later annexed to Leeds and the site of a huge council estate). Those that drew the boundaries in 1917 seem to have often prioritised economic similarities to geographical links.

   I've often wondered what an election held in the late 30's, but before WW 2 started would have looked like, say some time between the Munich conference and the start of the war.  Based on all the by-elections held, I'd guess a narrower Tory victory with serious losses but comfortable enough margin to retain power. 

I can't link, but in a lecture titled "Britain in the Twentieth Century: The Road to War", Vernon Bogdanor writes:

In a later lecture, he notes:


Oh - As for Rothwell, it's the old Normanton constituency from 1885, minus the expanded boroughs of Normanton and Wakefield, with those parts replaced by Ardsley and Hunslet to the north. Ardsley was associated with the Wakefield poor law union. The only alternative constituency for Hunslet was Barkston Ash, given the integrity of the Leeds borough boundary, and Rothwell was much more socially similar. In the modern era, we'd probably have "Rothwell and Wakefield North", and "Emley and Wakefield South", but that's the borough boundary question again!

Here's a map for 1945, minus the new & changed seats. The orange in Chelmsford is Common Wealth and, like in the 1935, the purple in Glasgow are ILP and the brown (in Fife & London) are Communist.

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It's curious, given modern patterns, that West Derbyshire was Labour while High Peak was Tory.  Both seem to have covered basically similar areas to the modern constituencies (West Derbyshire having been renamed Derbyshire Dales in 2010).

In West Derbyshire's case an Independent Labour candidate, Charles White, had won a 1944 by-election and stood as an official Labour candidate in 1945, when he held on narrowly.

Charles White (Labour MP from 1944 until he retired in 1950 - the seat immediately reverted to type) was the son of Charles White (Liberal MP from 1918 until his death in 1923 - in that case the seat also immediately reverted to type). Both were popular local government figures in Matlock.

Regarding High Peak, it seems to have included about half of Marple UD in 1945. Might that have made some difference? There's also the issue that most of the population was (is) on the eastern fringes of Manchester, where in '45 Labour performances were generally less stunning than in Derbyshire.

Ah, so more an attempt (a successful one, obviously) to preserve a mining constituency, rather than to create one. Makes sense.

Though Hunslet Rural (which may win the coverted prize for most absurd sounding local government area name) didn't actually include Hunslet, which was in Leeds South.

The Conservatives won a bigger percentage vote in Western Derbyshire than High Peak in 1945, as in every election since 1923, I think. However, High Peak had a Liberal who won 16%. As was mentioned by Ippikin earlier, Charles White in Western Derbyshire was the son of a Liberal MP. He faced no Liberal opposition.


Yes - the bias towards continuity of constituency arrangements, where possible.

A phenomenon that also saw the highly questionable retention of the Caernarvon Boroughs constituency, of course.

One of the most remarkable results of the election, given that the Tories hadn't won it in nearly sixty years, but a close three-way contest (only 807 votes separating first from third) allowed them to squeak in.
The same thing happened in Caithness & Sutherland - another Tory gain - where only 59 votes separated first from third.

In Carnarvon DoB, Conservatives kept their 1935 support while many Lloyd George voters (as well as new voters, I presume) chose Labour, who stood their first candidate since 1929.

The 1917 boundary changes are the key to that result: in order to make the seat even vaguely excusable, they added the upmarket coastal resort of Llandudno (a much larger town than any of the Boroughs the constituency was named for) and also a couple of granite quarrying towns (Llanfairfechan and Penmaenmawr) which boosted the population nicely. Llandudno would normally have been a Tory stronghold and the quarrying towns would likely have leaned towards Labour, but this wasn't an issue so long as Lloyd George was the Liberal candidate, because otherwise staunchly Labour working class people in North Wales loved him. Once removed from the picture, the seat was always going to be highly vulnerable. I think the Liberals blamed the loss of the seat (a loss they'd expected) on 'wartime changes' to the constituency (i.e. BBC people in Bangor and so on), which remains one of the worst excuses for a lost seat I've ever come across.

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Report of the Boundary Commission (England & Wales), Volume 1, 1917 (Cd. 8756)

;D

Gosh - but, then again, this was a parliament that included extra seats for certain university graduates...

I love these strength of seat electoral maps. Brilliant :D

The striking thing about this 1935 map is how similar the pattern is to most post 1945 maps. This looks very similar to the 1979 map when Maggie Thatcher luckily defeated Jim Callaghan mainly due to the Winter Of Discontent and winning the subsequent vote of no confidence by 311 votes to 310.

That's despite Labour winning only 154 seats in 1935 compared to 269 in 1979.

So I finally got round to taking Al's map and added in the boundary review for 1945:

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Bigger map here (http://postimg.org/image/ckj6gq0cf/full/).

I also spotted a few tiny errors with Al's 1918-35 map in Herts, Surrey and Warwicks, so I'm taking the liberty of posting a revised version so that the boundaries that didn't change match up with the 1945 map.

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Bigger map here (http://postimg.org/image/rm3ugyclb/full/).

E&OE, of course. And all kudos to Al whose map it is.

(EDIT: Worcestershire exclaves)
(EDIT: Amending Warks/Leics border)

It's not so easy to see the 1935-79 changes because 1935 was a very good election for the Conservatives and allies in the urban constituencies.

The main changes between 1935 and 1979 were in the Scottish Central Belt and south Lancashire. They picked up about 50 seats in those two regions by gaining strength in, or taking over completely, cities like Liverpool, Glasgow and Salford, and the nearby towns. Birmingham, Newcastle, Nottingham and Leicester, outside those two regions, behaved similarly, as did those parts of London outside the inner-city areas that stayed strongly Conservative or Labour.

That's great.

Comparing them to my own map, the only major difference is that the Evesham/Cirencester boundary mess isn't quite perfect in the amended 1918-35 map, though it's right in the 1945 map.

Damn it, I thought I'd put them in. And now, thanks to the power of ninja editing, I have!

Most excellent.

If only to tread on Al's toes: another mining seat.

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I would go one stage further and add the Coventry wards, but my computer's not playing ball with Davies and Morley.

Electorate of 90,000 by 1935!

I suppose it was overpopulated? What was the size of an electorate, at that moment?

Normal would have been about half that.

I have a map of the 1945 result by 1950 boundaries kicking about somewhere.

Stretford. Almost certainly done wrong.

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Looks right to me. Classic example of a constituency of leftover parts that didn't end up in the parli boroughs to the north. It started out with the three towns named at the bottom, and a couple of detached parts of non-contiguous rural districts.

Well, it made sense in 1917, when it was drew. Stretford UD, Irlam UD, the Barton Moss, Flixton and Davyhulme parish of Barton-upon-Irwell RD and Astley parish of Leigh RD.

The changes on local goverments complicated things.

The interesting thing is that the changes in local government areas were generally driven by population changes: this is the area of ribbon development, 'metroland' and the first big suburban council estates.

I want to rename that so hard...

Bump

1923 was a Liberal false dawn, with scores of 2- and 3-digit majorities. A year later in this region, they held two seats, gained and lost two against Labour, lost one to the Communists (really unofficial Labour) and lost all the rest to the Conservatives. Mosley would soon join Labour and move seat from Harrow to Birmingham, Ladywood, barely losing to Neville Chamberlain. Labour made progress in east London and the Thames estuary, stronger than their gains in other urban areas in 1923.

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Really a gorgeous map! :D I'm going to save it on my computer to avoid losing it.

It appears that there used to be non-contiguous constituencies back in these days? That's weird.

Plenty of red in East Anglia; those were the days.

not to mention the good old Common Wealth Party in Chelmesford, I've got Earnest Millington's autobiography on my Christmas list

</geek>

In various counties in Scotland and Wales you had constituencies called "Districts of Boroughs" (or "Burghs" in Scotland) which contained the major towns but not the rural bits between them.  Caernarfon Boroughs (which probably wasn't spelt that way back then) would be a particularly well known example because it was represented by Lloyd George for many years; in this election it's those disjointed bits of pale blue on the north-west Wales coast between the yellow of Anglesey and the deepish red of the rest of Caernarfonshire.  Most of the others had gone by this time.

Other examples will be because constituencies didn't generally contain parts of more than one county and some counties were themselves non-contiguous.  Flintshire is probably the best known example, but it looks like the bizarre boundaries of Worcestershire with Gloucestershire and Warwickshire were still reflected in the constituency map at this point.

BTW is there a reason for the three northern Highlands seats all being National Liberal?

Actually Caithness & Sutherland wasn't; just an extremely close (six votes) Tory win.* And oddly there's confusion over the labelling of the winner in Ross & Cromarty: he was not actually a member of either Liberal party. I've coloured the seat National Liberal because that's where he ended up.

_{*Con 33.5, Labour 33.4, Liberal 33.1. The defeated Liberal incumbent was the party's leader, Archibald Sinclair.}

And that one was only preserved because the incumbent at the time of the 1917 boundary review happened to be the Prime Minister...

One of the constituencies divided for the 1945 election, though in this case into not one, not two, not three, but four seats:

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By the time of the 1935 election this monster of a seat had an electorate of 168,000...

Maps showing the number of times a given party won each constituency in the period with notes. Enjoy. (https://ippikin.wordpress.com/britain-1918-45/)

I'd say they're all three - useful, interesting and pretty.