U.K election maps

[Serenity Now]

Thanks! That's great, but it's being shown as smaller on my computer... Still I can make it out.

Interesting to see how safe Tory Brighton Pavilion was, especially with that West Sussex seat (which i presume contains Horsham and Crawley) being fairly marginal. Also, I wouldn't have expected there to be a Labour MP from the Medway area in such a close election. I would've assumed the Home counties to be even more a no-go-area for Labour back in those days/

[Serenity Now]

Argh the 1983 is horribly depressing! Is it possible to do a %vote map? It would be interesting to see how it maps the "spoiler effect" of the SDP.

[Serenity Now]

Where was patrick Gordon Walkers seat?

I believe Wilson's "presige seat" of Brighton Kemptown (little light pink one on the coast directly south of London, for anyone who doesn't know) was the most marginal in the country? Labour won it by only around something like 7 votes. Apparently many senior members of the local Tory party didn't vote as they were so confident of victory that they decided to celebrate instead... gutted!

[Serenity Now]

'66! '66!

[Serenity Now]

One interesting thing in this election was the different kinds of people who became Labour MPs: In Sheffield Brightside there was Britain's first blind MP(?) and a certain former home secretary. A handful of ethnic minority MPs entered the commons for Labour, including Keith Vaz in Leicester East and Britains joint first black MPs (Paul Boetang, Bernie Grant and Diane Abbot), all elected from London constituencies (Brent South, Tottenham and Hackney North respectively.

[Serenity Now]

Although there was some very obvious racist voting in Tottenham (which turned marginal!) and in the other two London seats as well IIRC (but less obvious). Vaz got rid of another sh*t of an M.P o/c...

Bernie Grant was also a controversial candidate after remarking that a police officer (who was killed, or maybe just badly injured in a riot) as having gotten "a damn good hiding" remark." However, I only know that from when i watched some of the old coverage on BBC parliament. When I looked at the map I really was surprised by Tottenham's marginality.

Who was the MP for Leicester East that Vaz unseated?

[Serenity Now]

Peter Bruinvels

from Wikipedia:

"A contorversial figure on the farther fringe of the Conservative right, Bruinvels volunteered on the floor of parliament to become the public hangman if the government restored capital punishment, and was scathing of what he regarded as the left-wing bias of the BBC, which he referred to as the "Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation". Bruinvels was also a fierce critic of sex education in schools which he regarded as libertine propaganda. "

Not hard to see what you meant!