British Elections 1885-1918

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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

Nice work, obviously.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Which, I guess, takes us back to Liverpool.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Great work. There's a surprisingly close resemblance between the boundaries of the Wellington constituency and the 1983-97 incarnation of the Wrekin.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway, the Wellington division had very different voting patterns to the rest of the county because it was industrial (it included all of the old industrial settlements around-and-north-of Ironbridge Gorge and these would have made up a majority of the population and probably also the electorate) and also because it was less Anglican (i.e. those industrial settlements were also quite strongly Nonconformist).

Oswestry/West Shropshire had a couple of comically bitter elections, with both sides accusing the other of intimidation on a fairly regular basis. The Liberals won it in a by-election in 1904, before losing it back in 1906. There was an ethnic element: the area north of Oswestry was majority Welsh speaking and was known to provide the core of the Liberal vote.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Nice work. And LOL Shropshire.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.