BRITISH PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION RESULTS

Transcription

1 BRITISH PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION RESULTS

2 OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES Compiled and Edited by F.W.S. Craig British Parliamentary Election Results 1B British Parliamentary Election Results British Parliamentary Election Results British Electoral Facts Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies Minor Parties at British Parliamentary Elections British General Election Manifestos The Most Gracious Speeches to Parliament

3 BRITISH PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION RESULTS Compiled and Edited by F.WS.CRAIG M

4 F.W.S. Craig 1977 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1977 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First published 1977 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New York Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras ISBN DOI / ISBN (ebook) Typeset by LITHOSET Chichester

5 To the pioneers in the compilation of parliamentary election results this book is dedicated: Charles Roger Phipps Dodd (later Dod), Henry Stooks Smith, James Acland,

6 CONTENTS PREFACE ABBREVIATIONS and SYMBOLS INTRODUCTORY NOTES ix xi xiii ENGLAND London Boroughs Provincial Boroughs Counties WALES and MONMOUTHSHIRE: Boroughs Counties SCOTLAND: Burghs Counties UN I VE RSITI ES TABLES 1 Candidates at General Elections 2 Members Elected at General Elections 3 Electorate 4 Uncontested Constituencies 5 The Illiterate Vote 6 Spoilt Ballot Papers 7 Seats in the House of Commons 8 General Election Time-Table 9 Contested and Uncontested By-Elections 10 Reasons for By-Elections 11 Analysis of Constituencies 12 Election Petitions vii

7 CONTENTS APPENDICES 1 Representation of Irish Constituencies Boroughs Disfranchised for Corruption 3 Double and Treble Elections 4 Double and Treble Returns 5 British Governments and Prime Ministers, Reasons for Holding General Elections 7 Select Bibliography INDEX to CANDIDATES INDEX to CONSTITUENCIES INDEX to PLACES of ELECTION viii

8 PREFACE This fourth and final volume of parliamentary election results follows the layout and presentation adopted in the earlier volumes but omits percentage figures and majorities. To have included such figures for the period would have been pointless for reasons which are explained in the Introductory Notes. As with the earlier volumes in this series, I have received the most willing help and co-operation of very many people and I would especially like to thank John Palmer, an Assistant Librarian, House of Commons Library; David Johnson, Assistant Clerk of the Records, House of Lords Record Office; Frank Simmons, Royal Courts of Justice; Dr. James Kellas of the Department of Politics, University of Glasgow; Geoffrey Block of the Conservative Research Department; George Awdry, formerly Librarian of the Gladstone Library; Dr. Brian Walker of Queen's University, Belfast, and the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. The research work was principally carried out at the British Library (Reference Division), Bloomsbury and Colindale; the Public Record Office; the Gladstone Library of the National Liberal Club; Westminster Central Reference Library; the Guildhall Library; the House of Lords Record Office; Chichester Public Library. The helpfulness and co-operation of librarians and staff was gratifying and it was heartening to note a very considerable improvement in the service provided by the British Library. Gone for good, I hope, are the days of frequent delays and incivility. Although the typescript and proof-pages were subjected to very thorough checking, it is inevitable that some errors will have gone undetected and I must again ask readers to bring these to my attention so that future reprints can be corrected. This volume brings to a close a series which was commenced some eight years ago and now provides a unique reference source to parliamentary election results during the past 140 years. Parliamentary Research Services 18 Lincoln Green Chichester West Sussex F.W.S. CRAIG Compiler and Editor March 1977 ix

9 ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS c 0 Ch Conf HR lnd lnd Op L. L/Lab R. PARTIES Conservative or Tory Chartist Irish Confederate Home Ruler (Ireland) Independent Independent (Irish) Opposition Liberal or Radical or Whig Liberal/Labour (see Introductory Notes) Irish Repealer MISCELLANEOUS Bt. H.M. Hon. Junr. MP Senr.. Unopp. Baronet His/Her Majesty Honourable Junior Member of Parliament Senior Unopposed SYMBOLS t before the name of a candidate in 1832 indicates a member of the previous t * * ** Parliament at the time of Dissolution. following an electorate indicates a boundary change. following an electorate indicates that no figure was available for that election and the total shown represents the number of electors on an earlier register. before the name of a candidate indicates that he was elected as the result of an election petition. before the name of a candidate indicates that he was found not to have been elected as the result of an election petition. xi

10 INTRODUCTORY NOTES General Note The name of the constituency at the top of each page is followed, within square brackets, by a constituency reference number which is used in the indexes to candidates and constituencies. This number should not be confused with the folio number which appears in small type at the foot of each page. Under the name of each constituency are five columns with the follow ing headings: Election Electors The year of each General Election and the date of any intervening by-election. The number of electors on the Register in force at the time of the election. Candidate The initials and surname of the candidate 1 Party Votes The party affiliation of the candidate. The number of votes polled by the candidate. BY -ELECTIONS These are denoted by the year followed by the date (day/month) within round brackets. The dates are those given in the official Return of Members of Parliament (House of Commons Papers, 1878 (69-1). lxii and (169), lxii, 281). This Return was compiled from the indentures and writs preserved in the Public Record Office and refer to (prior to the Ballot Act of 1872) the date of the indenture which was normally the day on which the Returning Officer declared the result. From July 1872 the date given was that on which the endorsed writ was received at the Crown Office which could be a few days (or in rare cases several days) after polling had taken place. The cause of the by-election is shown within square brackets above the year, and if tile MP was elevated or succeeded to the Peerage, his new title is given. Under the provisions of the Succession to the Crown Act, 1707 and a number of subsequent Acts, MPs appointed to certain ministerial and legal offices were required to seek re-election. For a list of offices which if accepted by an MP were held to vacate his seat but did not debar him from seeking re-election see A Complete Dictionary of the Law and Practice of Elections by J.D. Chambers (pp , London, 1837). Apart from by-elections caused through ministerial or legal appointments, vacancies could only occur for one of the following reasons: (1) death; (2) elevation or succession to the Peerage; (3) acceptance of an office of profit under the Crown (including certain nominal offices to which MPs who wish to resign are appointed); (4) bankruptcy; (5) lunacy; (6) election petition; (7) expulsion from the House of Commons; (8) sitting or voting in the House of Commons without taking the oath or affirmation of allegiance; (9) disqualification from having been elected to the House of Commons. CONSTITUENCY BOUNDARIES Details of the area included within constituency boundaries in England and Wales will be found in the Parliamentary Boundary Act, 1832, the Representation of the People Act, 1867 and the Parliamentary Boundary Act, For constituencies in Scotland the relative Acts are the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act, 1832 and the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act, xiii

11 INTRODUCTORY NOTES Other than changes caused through the disfranchisement of certain boroughs (see Appendix 2) the only boundary changes during the period took place at the General Election of Maps showing constituency boundaries in detail were included with the Boundary Commission report published in ELECTION PETITIONS These are briefly recorded in footnotes to the constituency pages and are summarised in Table 12, p For a list of reports on election petitions, see Select List of British Parliamentary Papers by P. & G. Ford, pp (0xford,1953). ELECTORATE STATISTICS The figures of electors at General Elections and byelections have been taken from official Returns wherever possible. In the relatively few cases where I was unable to obtain official figures, I have relied upon the reference books of Charles Dod and Henry Stooks Smith. At the General Election of 1865, no electorate figures, either official or unofficial were available (except for county constituencies) and for the boroughs I have used the figures of the Register instead of Due to the system of registration during the period, it was common for some electors to have their names recorded more than once in the same electoral register. They were however only entitled to vote once in the same constituency and many of the official Returns published during the period gave no indication as to the number of duplicates. The electorate figures must therefore be regarded as only approximate and, especially in Scotland, the registers published in the 1830's and 1840's were not subject to revision and contained a large number of names of electors who had died or moved from the constituency. A rise or fall in the electorate of a constituency may merely indicate that duplicate entries had been included or excluded from a particular set of figures_ For the above reasons it is not possible to calculate turnout with any degree of accuracy and prior to the Ballot Act of 1872, it was possible for a candidate to withdraw and the poll to be closed before the normal time. follows: The date on which the annual electoral registers came into effect were as ENGLAND and WALES: SCOTLAND: 1 November 1832 to 31 October 1833 and annually 1 December 1843 to 30 November 1844 and annually 1 January 1868 to 31 October November 1868 to 31 December January 1870 to 31 December 1870 and annually 1 January 1885 to 18 November October 1832 to 14 September September 1833 to 14 September 1834 and annually 15 September 1855 to 31 October 1856 (burghs only) 1 November 1856 to 31 October 1857 (burghs only) and annually 15 September 1861 to 31 October 1862 (counties only) 1 November 1862 to 31 October 1863 and annually GENERAL ELECTION POLLING DATES For a detailed time-table of each General Election see Table 8, p IRELAND As in previous volumes in this series, detailed constituency results in Ireland (prior to the creation of Northern Ireland in 1921) are not included. However, the statistics of elections in Ireland have been included in the Tables and Appendices, and Appendix 1 (pp ) summarises the party representation in the House of Commons xiv

12 INTRODUCTORY NOTES after each General Election. I am grateful to Dr. Brian M. Walker and the editors of a New History of Ireland for permitting me to make use of a typescript of the first volume of a definitive reference work on Irish elections Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland which will be published later this year by the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. LIBERAL CONSERVATIVES This was the name given to the followers of Sir Robert Peel after he broke with the Conservative Party in 1846 over the repeal of the Corn Laws. Some of these free-trade Conservatives returned to the official wing of the Conservative Party after a period of independence while others became Liberals. The problems in defining Liberal Conservatives at the General Elections from 1847 to 1859 are immense and no two sources of reference agree. The term more or less went out of use just after the General Election of 1859 when many of the Liberal Conservatives joined with the Whigs and Radicals to defeat the minority Conservative Government. From then on it was fairly simple to decide whether an MP should be classed as a Conservative or a Liberal. Throughout the book Liberal Conservatives have been classed as Conservatives until such time as they appear to have severed all links with that party and become Liberals. For a detailed study of the Peelites or Liberal Conservatives see J.B. Conacher's The Aberdeen Coalition (Cambridge, 1968) and The Peelites and the Party System (Newton Abbot, 1972), LIBERAL/LABOUR CANDIDATES These candidates were in most cases nominees of local Liberal and Radical associations but campaigned mainly on trade union and labour issues. A number of them were sponsored by trade unions and at the General Election of 1874 thirteen candidates were supported by the Labour Representation League. MULTIPLE CANDIDATURES With polling at General Elections spread over several weeks it was possible for candidates to contest more than one constituency at the same election and there were a number of cases of candidates being returned for more than one constituency. See Appendix 3, p PARTY DESIGNATIONS The party designations of candidates have been extensively cross-<:hecked against numerous contemporary reference books and discrepancies subjected to further research. The party designation of each MP was verified by checking the biographical entry in Dod's Parliamentary Companion. During a period when party ties were often tenuous and changes of party allegiance after election were frequent and rarely reported in the national press, there is no doubt that some errors will have occurred, but these are unavoidable. There were always a number of candidates who could equally well have been classed as Liberal or Conservative. POLLING ENGLISH and WELSH BOROUGHS: The number of days and the hours of polling were as follows: From 1832 until 24 August, 1835, polling was held on two consecutive days, the poll being open from 9.0 a.m. to 4.0 p.m. on the first day and from 8.0 a.m. to 4.0 p.m. on the second day. From 25 August, 1835 polling was restricted to one day between the hours of 8.0.a.m. and 4.0.p.m. From 25 February, 1878 polling in the London boroughs was altered to 8.0 a.m. to 8.0 p.m. and from 28 July, 1884 this later closing of the poll was extended to other boroughs in the United Kingdom with an electorate of over 3,000. XV

13 INTRODUCTORY NOTES ENGLISH and WELSH COUNTIES. SCOTTISH BURGHS: SCOTTISH COUNTIES: UNIVERSITIES: From 1832 until 1 October, 1853 polling was held on two consecutive days the poll being open from 9.0 a.m. to 4.0 p.m. on the first day and from 8.0 a.m. to 4.0 p.m. on the second day. From 2 October, 1853 polling was restricted to one day between the hours of 8.0 a.m. and 5.0 p.m. From 1832 until 8 September, 1835 polling was held on two consecutive days the poll being open from 9.0 a.m. to 4.0 p.m. on the first day and from 8.0 a.m. to 4.0 p.m. on the second day. From 9 September, 1835 polling was restricted to one day between the hours of 8.0 a.m. and 4.0 p.m. From 1832 until 13 June, 1853 polling was held on two consecutive days the poll being open from 9.0 a.m. to 4.0 p.m. on the first day and from 8.0 a.m. to 4.0 p.m. on the second day. From 14 June, 1853 polling was restricted to one day (except in Orkney and Shetland) between the hours of 8.0 a.m. and 4.0 p.m. Prior to 1853 the Universities polled over a period of between 8 and 15 days. From 15 August, 1853 polling was restricted to a maximum of 5 days. SURNAMES and INITIALS The surname and initials of candidates have been crosschecked against various contemporary reference books and local histories. It is impossible to be certain of complete accuracy, especially with unsuccessful candiates, but every effort has been made to verify the numerous discrepancies which came to light. VOTING STATISTICS The number ot votes cast for candidates have been taken from official Returns wherever possible and in other cases the figures have been crosschecked against the principal contemporary reference books. Numerous discrepancies were noted and these were further researched in local newspaper files. Prior to the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872 it must be remembered that it was perfectly possible for discrepancies to occur in subsequently published figures. At the close of polling, figures were normally issued by the candidates' agents (and these often varied slightly) before the official declaration, which might not take place until the following day or even later. The unofficial figures were used by the nat1onal press who frequently did not wait until the Returning Officer had counted the votes recorded in the pollbooks. The subsequent publication of privately printed pollbooks sometimes produced yet another set of figures. During the checking, a number of polls were found which are not recorded in the contemporary reference books and I feel fairly confident that all the elections recorded as unopposed were in fact uncontested. It was not infrequent for a candidate to withdraw on the eve of a poll and sometimes the Returning Officer insisted on formally opening the poll and then closing it after a few electors had voted. This explains some of the polls recorded in this book which show a contest with only a few votes recorded. A candidate could (and often did) withdraw after polling commenced and the poll would then close early. Although candidates were nominated on the hustings prior to 1872 when written nomination was introduced, it was possible for a person to become a candidate during the actual poll if he was nominated at a polling station by some electors. There was also no requirement that a candidate proposed on the hustings had to consent to his nomination or be present and there were several cases of an absent candidate being proposed without his knowledge or consent. All these circumstances and the large number of two-member seats make the study of voting figures hazardous and turnout impossible to accurately calculate. I have therefore not included percentage figures either for turnout or votes cast for candidates. These figures have little value prior to xvi

14 INTRODUCTORY NOTES It should be noted that from the General Election of 1868, electors in constituencies returning three MPs were only allowed to vote for two candidates. In the City of London constituency which returned four MPs, electors were only allowed to vote for three candidates. WRITS SUSPENDED A form of punishment for corrupt constituencies was the suspension of the writ which should have been issued when a vacancy occurred. This was used fairly frequently during the period and all instances of writs being suspended for a considerable time are recorded in the footnotes on petitions. There were numerous other cases of writs being suspended for short peiods or subject to divisions in the House of Commons. Where a candidate changed his surname or acquired a courtesy title after being elected this is shown in italic type within brackets. xvii