British Elections 1885-1918

[stepney]

I don't think there's a topic for this on here, and probably no-one will be interested, but I thought I'd add a pre-WWI election threads to the other two on post-WWI elections. At the moment I've nothing to add but this map of the English and Welsh constituencies, which may well be worse than nothing at all.



There are so many pointless detached parts I won't even start.

[Sibboleth]

Now you have to explain exactly who did and didn't have the vote during this period!

Nice work, obviously.

[Vasall des Midas]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_Franchise_in_the_United_Kingdom_1885%E2%80%931918

[stepney]

Now you have to explain exactly who did and didn't have the vote during this period!

Done for me by Lewis, so that's OK.

Nice work, obviously.

Ta, but as you know from the other place, twas done many months ago. I have the maps of Ireland from which I should have added Ireland a long time ago, but I was busy gerrymandering helping the Tory Party in its attempts at a fairer Parliamentary redistribution, which would have happened if Labour weren't so keen on retaining malapportionment in its favour (but that's another story).

I hope to use this map first to illustrate the impact of the First Home Rule Bill on the Liberal Party, then the electorate, in 1886, but if anyone has any better suggestions, I can always adopt them earlier. And if anyone has any good maps of Scottish seats from 1885-1918, please point me in their direction.

[Sibboleth]

Oh, no. A link is not enough. You have to explain things.

Which is a gratuitously unfair request. The practical implications of the legislation were forgotten the moment they became obsolete, and weren't properly understood again until the 1980s.

Regarding Scotland, the maps are up on Vision of Britain.

[stepney]

Regarding Scotland, the maps are up on Vision of Britain.

Eh, it'll take me six months to sort Scotland out without degrees of latitude/longitude. By which time you'll have banned me for knocking Ed and malapportionment.

[stepney]

Warwickshire 1885-1910. Bigger map in the gallery. Dots indicate unopposed returns. Descriptions of the seats are in Pelling.

[stepney]

The Illustrated London News maps of the 1885 and 1886 elections, now looking nice framed on my living room wall. Bigger ones in the gallery.

[Sibboleth]

What happened in the West Country in 1886 is always interesting.

[countydurhamboy]

Nice maps.
Interesting, that you can still see some of the modern electoral patterns even 130 years ago. South east very Tory. West and South Ridings, Northumbria, Wales anti Tory. Midlands marginal. Then there's Liverpool... Why is Lancashire so Tory?

[Sibboleth]

Because Protestant Liverpool did not like Catholic Liverpool and voted accordingly. Actually there was other stuff going on - and the Liberal Party was often much weaker in ports than reductive accounts of what the 19th century ought to have been like would suggest - but Orange-ism is a good starting point.

Hilariously, though, the recusant vote in rural Lancashire was very Tory as well!

[Sibboleth]

Of course most voting patterns in 19th century Britain were kind-of sectarian in some way or other; class didn't emerge as a massive factor until the Progressive Alliance and all that at the beginning of the 20th century. The main exception was the Lib-Lab tradition in the coalfields, but even there religious factors were hardly absent given the strength of Nonconformity in most mining areas. So the great rural Tory strongholds during this period were also the greatest strongholds of Anglicanism, and so on.

[Sibboleth]

Which, I guess, takes us back to Liverpool.

[Sibboleth]

A very telling detail: Durham City a loyal little (bourgeois and Anglican) Tory stronghold in the middle of solidly Liberal (and working class and Methodist) County Durham. And Radnor and South Monmouth as lonely longterm Tory seats in Wales (though the southwards expansion of the coal industry did for the latter in short order).

[Sibboleth]

Hereford City turned Tory during this period. Guess that's what happens when you add the industrial manufacture of booze (cider rather than beer, obviously) on a huge scale to Anglicanism.

[countydurhamboy]

Thank you, very much appreciated. I was wondering about Durham. Explains my family voting patterns aswell I recall that Liverpool elected an Irish nationalist too.

[Sibboleth]

Yeah, T.P. O'Connor. Who held said constituency - and always as an Irish Nationalist - until he died in 1929.

As for Durham City, the incumbent for the old City constituency actually held on by about two hundred votes in 1918, but was easily beaten in 1922 and that was the end of that. Btw, if you ever stumble across it, Beynon and Austrin's Masters and Servants: Class and Patronage in the Making of a Labour Organisation is excellent on that general period in County Durham's political history.

[Vasall des Midas]

From 1918 on, O'Connor was unopposed (before then, the Tories always stood against him, their vote shares ranging from the high 20s into the low 40s). Which may have something to do not just with Sinn Fein and then independence rendering him an effective Independent, but also with the fact that he was the Father of the House by then.

The by-election to succeed him was also unopposed, though his successor was Labour. (quote wikipedia: Logan was a longtime associate of the previous MP T.P. O'Connor as well as himself having a strong involvement in the Irish Nationalist movement prior to joining the Labour Party, serving on Liverpool city council as a nationalist councillor.) He had another unopposed election in 1945.

[countydurhamboy]

Yeah, T.P. O'Connor. Who held said constituency - and always as an Irish Nationalist - until he died in 1929.

As for Durham City, the incumbent for the old City constituency actually held on by about two hundred votes in 1918, but was easily beaten in 1922 and that was the end of that. Btw, if you ever stumble across it, Beynon and Austrin's Masters and Servants: Class and Patronage in the Making of a Labour Organisation is excellent on that general period in County Durham's political history.

Thanks, I will look out for it.

[stepney]

Because Protestant Liverpool did not like Catholic Liverpool and voted accordingly.

This, basically, leading to a neat twist: Pelling had a theory that in Lancashire seats there was a correlation between Catholicism and Toryism, i.e. that the more Catholic/Irish a seat was, the higher the average Tory/Unionist vote.

A bit counter-intuitive until one thinks of the greater incentive in more Irish seats to play the Orange card and whip up the majority Protestant population on that. Hence elections in Liverpool, even in 1906, involving the religious question and resulting in heavy Tory victories, while elections in Manchester (eventually...) turn on Free Trade.

[stepney]

As for Durham City, the incumbent for the old City constituency actually held on by about two hundred votes in 1918, but was easily beaten in 1922 and that was the end of that. Btw, if you ever stumble across it, Beynon and Austrin's Masters and Servants: Class and Patronage in the Making of a Labour Organisation is excellent on that general period in County Durham's political history.

The seat pre-1918 only included the city itself (one of the little rotten boroughs with a population just over 15,000 that were allowed to keep their seats in 1885). The sitting Liberal Unionist member, having become a Free Fooder, lost to a Protectionist in 1906, which should show how Unionist it was. After 1918 most of the surrounding "countryside", up to Hetton-le-Hole, were put into it - and as Al says that was the end of that.

[Sibboleth]

The seat pre-1918 only included the city itself (one of the little rotten boroughs with a population just over 15,000 that were allowed to keep their seats in 1885). The sitting Liberal Unionist member, having become a Free Fooder, lost to a Protectionist in 1906, which should show how Unionist it was. After 1918 most of the surrounding "countryside", up to Hetton-le-Hole, were put into it - and as Al says that was the end of that.

Though not on its western side; the Deerness Valley, Brandon and so on were in the Spennymoor constituency.

Yeah, the existence of the Spennymoor constituency (aforementioned area, plus Tow Law, Crook, Willington and Spennymoor. And that's it) does highlight subsequent depopulation a tad...

[Vasall des Midas]

Because Protestant Liverpool did not like Catholic Liverpool and voted accordingly.

This, basically, leading to a neat twist: Pelling had a theory that in Lancashire seats there was a correlation between Catholicism and Toryism, i.e. that the more Catholic/Irish a seat was, the higher the average Tory/Unionist vote.

A bit counter-intuitive until one thinks of the greater incentive in more Irish seats to play the Orange card and whip up the majority Protestant population on that. Hence elections in Liverpool, even in 1906, involving the religious question and resulting in heavy Tory victories, while elections in Manchester (eventually...) turn on Free Trade.

A big part of the picture is, of course, that Liverpool and Glasgow also had very large Irish Protestant populations.