British Elections 1885-1918
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Author Topic: British Elections 1885-1918  (Read 18051 times)
Lachi
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« Reply #50 on: March 27, 2018, 11:10:57 PM »

God, why were the boundaries so weird back then?
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EPG
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« Reply #51 on: March 28, 2018, 01:42:44 PM »

Population or voter equality was still a new concept, and not really prioritised. Most parliamentary boroughs still had their own constituencies, particularly in Scotland, and there were still very few suburbs, so you get lots of tiny urban constituencies (this is also true in 1918-35). The redistricters were mandated to separate urban and rural areas as much as possible, as part of the Liberal-Conservative compromise to pass the Act. County and borough boundaries were very strictly respected. Many ancient county boundaries were still in place, particularly around Worcestershire (Wiki).
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #52 on: March 28, 2018, 01:47:00 PM »

God, why were the boundaries so weird back then?

Because a very strict division between Borough and County constituencies - a legacy of pre-1832 parliaments - was still in place. The strangest constituencies were those made up of a group of small boroughs. Another issue is that the boundaries were drawn with an unusual set of priorities in mind - it was intended that parliamentary constituencies should reflect economic interests. So, for instance, the unusual boundaries in the southern half of Gloucestershire reflected a desire to place the county's cloth manufacturing towns in one seat.
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EPG
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« Reply #53 on: March 28, 2018, 02:19:12 PM »

Even as late as the Labour-SDP split, you still had a couple of constituencies with detached enclaves. Wiki suggests Stirling and Falkirk was the last one, but from a brief consultation of "Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885-1972", you can add Clackmannan, Monmouth and East Flint.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #54 on: March 28, 2018, 02:29:59 PM »

Even as late as the Labour-SDP split, you still had a couple of constituencies with detached enclaves. Wiki suggests Stirling and Falkirk was the last one, but from a brief consultation of "Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885-1972", you can add Clackmannan, Monmouth and East Flint.

As were Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy, and East Dunbartonshire. East Flint was particularly fun as it was actually in three parts, though one was tiny. There were also little detached parts in a few other constituencies here and there - Don Valley and North Lanarkshire are both examples.
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Statilius the Epicurean
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« Reply #55 on: March 28, 2018, 03:31:42 PM »

Remarkable the Tory strength in the south-east compared to the rest of rural southern England.
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EPG
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« Reply #56 on: March 28, 2018, 03:37:07 PM »

Excellent spot on Don Valley, not an insignificant exclave but the civil parish of Denaby. But apologies for derailing the thread. Yes, the pattern of concentrated Tory support is evident as late as 1923 and evidences the part of the non-Conservative coalition that was lost in the move to Labour. The counter-acting gains in city cores are, of course, harder to see.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #57 on: March 28, 2018, 06:43:04 PM »

Remarkable the Tory strength in the south-east compared to the rest of rural southern England.

Anglicanism - note that rural East Sussex where they were a bit weaker had substantial Nonconformist strength, which translated into Liberal votes.
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EPG
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« Reply #58 on: March 29, 2018, 02:49:53 PM »

Remarkable the Tory strength in the south-east compared to the rest of rural southern England.

Anglicanism - note that rural East Sussex where they were a bit weaker had substantial Nonconformist strength, which translated into Liberal votes.

Sussex overall being one of the most observant Church of England counties. If "intense" was ever an appropriate description of sentiment toward the Established church, then it certainly applied to Lewes. There's no point saying it's a strange little town, because every town is in its own way... But visiting Lewes, I felt like it was!
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joevsimp
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« Reply #59 on: March 29, 2018, 02:58:49 PM »

THat's definately a pattern that is still there in the background, especially around Lewes and Ditchling,

I'm also struggling with the idea of Romford being a Liberal seat, and stretching as far as East Ham
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parochial boy
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« Reply #60 on: March 29, 2018, 03:51:52 PM »

Remarkable the Tory strength in the south-east compared to the rest of rural southern England.

Anglicanism - note that rural East Sussex where they were a bit weaker had substantial Nonconformist strength, which translated into Liberal votes.

Sussex overall being one of the most observant Church of England counties. If "intense" was ever an appropriate description of sentiment toward the Established church, then it certainly applied to Lewes. There's no point saying it's a strange little town, because every town is in its own way... But visiting Lewes, I felt like it was!

It must have had the strongest swing towards the Conservatives of any remain voting constituency in 2017 by a mile. Even despite proximity to Brighton etc, etc...

Not wanting to go all #analysis either, but there is an interesting similarity between CoE/non-conformism on voting habits in England and Catholic v Laïc voting traditions in France (and on industrialisation) - except Anglican England was far less peripheral than Catholic France.
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EPG
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« Reply #61 on: March 29, 2018, 04:04:33 PM »

This is a rough approximation of religious observance by county from the 1851 Census. Red areas are more Established Church (Church of England) than average, or about average in the lighter cases. Blue areas are more nonconformist. Please disregard the Isle of Man.

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ObserverIE
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« Reply #62 on: March 30, 2018, 12:39:56 AM »

Even as late as the Labour-SDP split, you still had a couple of constituencies with detached enclaves. Wiki suggests Stirling and Falkirk was the last one, but from a brief consultation of "Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885-1972", you can add Clackmannan, Monmouth and East Flint.

Bath had a small detached portion between 1997 and 2010 - the parish of Freshford formed a detached portion of the Freshford ward of the then Wansdyke council which was added to the Bath constituency.

https://boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/5th-Periodical-Report-Vol-4.pdf
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DistingFlyer
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« Reply #63 on: March 30, 2018, 03:22:25 AM »
« Edited: March 30, 2018, 10:25:39 AM by DistingFlyer »

Here is a shaded map for 1895 (Cons 411, Lib 177, INF 70, INL 12):




And here are maps showing the seat changes at the 1900 election (Cons +32/-41, Lib +38/-32, IPP +13/-6, HN +4/-12, Lab +2, Other +2, Total 91):



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IceAgeComing
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« Reply #64 on: April 02, 2018, 08:00:39 PM »

Seats like Stirling and Falkirk Burghs in Scotland were a legacy of the Act of Union and having to adapt the way that Scotland elected its MPs to the new British Parliament.  Basically what they did was rather than have every Scottish Burgh electing an MP they were merged into fourteen District of Burghs seats which were non-contiguous with the other shire areas not in a Burgh elected a County MP (unless you lived in the six smallest counties which were seen to be too small to deserve to elect an MP in their own right so rather than merge them for Parliamentary purposes they made it so that they paired them up and have them elect MPs for alternate parliaments; with each being unrepresented half the time).  Prior to the Great Reform Act these were... dodgy even considering the state of Parliamentary elections; the Burghs elected Commissioners who'd meet to decide who the MP for the District should be so it wasn't really a proper election.  The Great Reform Act fixed a few things (direct elections for all MPs the main one) but the basic system of pairing small burghs together into a non-contiguous seat continued on in Scotland until 1950 with it spreading to Wales with the Caernarfon Boroughs seat (I think; could have the County wrong) which was basically the same thing as the Scottish seats.  The 1885 and 1918 Reform Acts created more modern constituencies in some areas but the District of Burghs survived in lots of Scotland until 1950 with the Dunfermline Burghs and Kirkcaldy Burghs (abolished 1974) and the Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (abolished 1983) lasting a little longer.

The old East Dunbartonshire was because the old boundaries of the county of Dunbartonshire weren't contiguous; you had a section which contained Kirkintilloch and Cumbernauld cut off from the rest of Dunbartonshire by Stirlingshire and Lanarkshire and because the rules at the time emphasised following county boundaries and the Boundary Commission weren't going to consider cross-border County Constituencies unless they absolutely had to they just drew a non-contiguous seat.  Honestly the 1973 Local Government Reforms were probably needed in Scotland, as much as the old ones are nice and historic and good for basic things they were a bit awful at what they were meant to do plus having councils that represent disconnected areas strikes me as being dumb.

In Scotland the parliamentary map was basically transformed in 1983: unlike English which retained lots of its old County boundaries (which are the building block of seats) in Scotland and Wales the change was total; the old Counties and Burghs were gone and the new Regions and Districts eliminated all of the weird inconsistencies (like the Dunbartonshire thing) and were entirely different and the Boundary Commission used the opportunity to just rip things up and start anew especially in the Central Belt.  The same thing also happened in 2005 after the second (and totally not needed and very harmful) local government reform; although that's mainly because they were eliminating 15 seats so they had to start from scratch in the very majority of places since the old seats were far too small.
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YL
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« Reply #65 on: April 03, 2018, 02:07:56 AM »

Seats like Stirling and Falkirk Burghs in Scotland were a legacy of the Act of Union and having to adapt the way that Scotland elected its MPs to the new British Parliament.  Basically what they did was rather than have every Scottish Burgh electing an MP they were merged into fourteen District of Burghs seats which were non-contiguous with the other shire areas not in a Burgh elected a County MP (unless you lived in the six smallest counties which were seen to be too small to deserve to elect an MP in their own right so rather than merge them for Parliamentary purposes they made it so that they paired them up and have them elect MPs for alternate parliaments; with each being unrepresented half the time).  Prior to the Great Reform Act these were... dodgy even considering the state of Parliamentary elections; the Burghs elected Commissioners who'd meet to decide who the MP for the District should be so it wasn't really a proper election.  The Great Reform Act fixed a few things (direct elections for all MPs the main one) but the basic system of pairing small burghs together into a non-contiguous seat continued on in Scotland until 1950 with it spreading to Wales with the Caernarfon Boroughs seat (I think; could have the County wrong) which was basically the same thing as the Scottish seats.  The 1885 and 1918 Reform Acts created more modern constituencies in some areas but the District of Burghs survived in lots of Scotland until 1950 with the Dunfermline Burghs and Kirkcaldy Burghs (abolished 1974) and the Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (abolished 1983) lasting a little longer.

Most Welsh counties had them.  The odd thing about Caernarfon Boroughs is that it survived until 1950, whereas the other Welsh ones were abolished in 1885 or 1918.  IIRC it has been suggested that it survived because of who its MP was.

As I understand it, the areas of boroughs were technically included in county constituencies as well, and that under some circumstances people who lived in the borough could vote in the county.  So where I live now was, from 1885 to 1918, part of both the Hallam Division of the Borough of Sheffield and the Hallamshire Division of Yorkshire.  This is obviously rather hard to show on a map.

(According to Wikipedia, "The Municipal Borough of Sheffield was also a Parliamentary Borough and so the only electors from that area entitled to vote in Hallamshire were those who were freeholders. They could, of course, also exercise their vote in the appropriate division of the Parliamentary Borough of Sheffield. However, there were always considerable numbers of Sheffield freeholders who voted at elections for Hallamshire according to Henry Pelling in his Social Geography of British Elections 1885-1910.")
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DistingFlyer
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« Reply #66 on: December 31, 2019, 10:32:46 PM »
« Edited: December 31, 2019, 11:44:18 PM by DistingFlyer »

(Blows dust off again)

Here are maps for 1900, 1906 & Jan 1910, indicating the winners' percentage of the vote. (Have also changed the Tory acclamation color from earlier.)

1900


1906


Jan 1910



Additionally, here are regional swings for 1886 through December 1910; these were calculated solely based on constituencies that were contested in both the 'before' and 'after' elections.

1886


1892


1895


1900


1906


Jan 1910


Dec 1910
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DistingFlyer
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« Reply #67 on: January 03, 2020, 03:44:33 PM »

Here's one for December 1910:
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DistingFlyer
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« Reply #68 on: January 04, 2020, 12:27:22 AM »

And here's 1895:
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