United Kingdom Historical Election Maps 1918-50

[YL]

It always seems amazing that Belfast was once considered worthy of having nine constituencies of its own.  Today it struggles to find enough territory outside the expanded city boundary for four.

I wonder how many of the nine would have been carried by a Unionist candidate in 2019.

[YL]

Interesting that there is a constituency called "Belfast Victoria".

It was also used for a Stormont constituency from 1929 (FPTP in those days) and remained the name of a local government electoral area until 2011.  One of the successors is now called Titanic: yes, the name refers to that Titanic.

[YL]

Are the white shading representing seats where there was no candidate standings for an party or got less than x% of votes?

Sinn Féin stood everywhere.

Either an official Unionist or a "Labour Unionist" stood everywhere except Falls, which was an Irish Parliamentary Party/Sinn Féin only contest.

The Irish Parliamentary Party only stood in Falls and Duncairn.

Belfast Labour stood in Cromac, Pottinger, Shankill and Victoria.

In addition there were Independent Unionist candidates in Ormeau and St. Anne's, and an Independent Labour candidate in Pottinger.

[YL]

Why did Victoria constituency (in 1918, not the Stormont one) do that?  Was Elbridge Gerry involved in any way?

[YL]

The process for drawing boundaries in 1917 was different to the regular reviews from the 1950s onwards and there was more room for consciously political decisions: one we can confirm for definite would be the curious decision to go against the general policy of abolishing all District of Boroughs constituencies outside of Scotland in the case of the constituency in North Wales that just so happened to be represented by the Prime Minister. My suspicion (and it can only be a suspicion) is that if the boundaries had been drawn before the Conservative entered the Wartime Coalition, then the boundaries in certain parts of Ireland would have been drawn rather differently.

If Caernarfonshire had instead been given the more obvious division into an eastern constituency based on Conwy, Llandudno and Bangor and a western one based on Caernarfon, Porthmadog and the Llŷn (i.e. basically the 1950 to 1983 arrangement), would that have given Lloyd George any problems?

[YL]

Quite striking that N Wales still returned just two Labour MPs even in *1945*.

This actually takes us back to earlier discussions about the boundaries used in the region at the time: a more reasonably drawn set in Caernarvonshire would have elected two Labour MPs, and had Flintshire (which was oversized even in 1918 and was quite grossly so by 1945) been divided into two seats, the division included Deeside would have been comfortably Labour in 1945. The other issue, of course, is that 1945 was the election at which Liberal resilience in North Wales finally broke: had this occurred earlier, as it did in most of the rest of Britain, then Anglesey and Merioneth would have been swept up in the general tide and the Conservatives wouldn't have held Flintshire on a split vote as there would have been no confusion as to which party was best place to oust them there. And the final issue is that, well, Lady Megan was the only Liberal would could have held Anglesey against Labour in 1945.

Indeed Labour won both Conwy and Caernarfon as well as East Flintshire in 1950, so presumably would have won all of those in 1945 if they'd existed.  (I assume the inclusion of the Bethesda area helped make Conwy more Labour than Caernarfon Boroughs had been.)  They also gained Merioneth and Anglesey from the Liberals in 1951, though they lost Conwy to the Tories.