Items22The creator’s order
- 1
1962 Orpington by-electionThe Liberals took a Conservative seat in suburban Kent on March 14, 1962, turning a Tory majority of 14,760 into a Liberal one of 7,855 for Eric Lubbock. The result is often described as the start of the Liberal revival, and the press conjured up "Orpington man," the commuter voter who had drifted…0 - 2
1965 Leyton by-electionLabour lost a supposedly safe east London seat on January 21, 1965, and with it a Foreign Secretary. Patrick Gordon Walker had been beaten at Smethwick in the 1964 general election, and Leyton was meant to carry him back into the Commons. Instead the Conservative Ronald Buxton won by 205 votes, and…0 - 3
1966 Carmarthen by-electionGwynfor Evans became the first Plaid Cymru member of parliament on July 14, 1966, winning by 2,436 votes in the contest that followed the death of Labour MP Megan Lloyd George.
One seat in west Wales did not change the arithmetic at Westminster, but it changed what Welsh nationalism believed was…0 - 4
1967 Hamilton by-electionWinnie Ewing took Hamilton for the SNP on November 2, 1967, in a seat where Labour had won more than two-thirds of the vote at every general election since 1945. Her majority was 1,799, and her line to the crowd after the declaration, "Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on," became the night's…0 - 5
1981 Crosby by-electionShirley Williams became the first MP elected under the SDP label on November 26, 1981, overturning a Conservative majority of 19,272 in a safe seat on Merseyside. She took almost half the vote, and both the Conservatives and Labour fell by more than 15 points.
Her verdict that night, that there…0 - 6
1982 Glasgow Hillhead by-electionRoy Jenkins won Glasgow Hillhead for the SDP on March 25, 1982, taking a Conservative seat with 33.4% of the vote and a majority of 2,038 after the death of Tam Galbraith.
The win put the SDP's best-known founder back in the Commons, and he narrowly won the party's leadership that July. It is the…0 - 7
1983 Bermondsey by-electionSimon Hughes won this south London seat for the Liberals on February 24, 1983, on a swing of 44.2%, described as the largest by-election swing in British political history. Labour had held Bermondsey since 1946 and took 63.6% there in 1979; this time it fell to 26.1%.
The campaign is remembered as…0 - 8
1990 Eastbourne by-electionThe vacancy came from tragedy: Conservative MP Ian Gow was killed by a Provisional IRA car bomb in July 1990. The Conservatives had held Eastbourne by more than 16,000 votes in 1987, yet on October 18, 1990, the Liberal Democrat David Bellotti took it with 50.8%.
The shock is credited with…0 - 9
1991 Ribble Valley by-electionRibble Valley in Lancashire had a Conservative majority of 19,528 when David Waddington went to the House of Lords. On March 7, 1991, the Liberal Democrat Michael Carr won it at his third attempt, with the opposition parties campaigning hard against the poll tax.
The tax was abolished soon…0 - 10
1993 Christchurch by-electionDiana Maddock won Christchurch for the Liberal Democrats on July 29, 1993, with 62.2% of the vote after the death of Conservative MP Robert Adley. The swing of about 35% was the largest against any British government since 1918.
It arrived little more than a year after John Major's surprise…0