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Post by yellowperil on Apr 5, 2018 19:13:07 GMT
Ashford Borough Council wards by county division : Ashford Rural East
The county division to the east of Ashford town,filling the countryside between Ashford town and the Folkestone & Hythe district (known throughout this period as Shepway) was more deeply rural and sparsely populated than Rural West, including a sizeable chunk on top of the North Downs on one side and a slab of land on the fringes of Romney Marsh on the other, though the main communication corridor lies between those two low-density areas, connecting Ashford to the channel ports and Eurotunnel. There are seven single-member wards and most of these are formed from several small parishes. A lot of the downland area was in Boughton Aluph ward, also including Eastwell,Challock and Molash. Wye,the little University village tucked under the Downs escarpment, also included extensive downland, and then travelling northwards the Chilham ward took you to the very edge of the city of Canterbury and also included Godmersham and Crundale. The two wards covering the communication corridor were Brabourne including Hastingleigh and Brook, and Mersham ,which included Sevington and Smeeth, and it was obvious that there was a substantial out-migration from Willesborough towards these much more upmarket villages. Then on the southern fringe of the division bordering on the Marsh, were Hamstreet including the parishes of Orlestone, Warehorne and Ruckinge, and Aldington which included Bilsington and Bonnington.
Politically this was pretty solid Conservative territory - 6 out of the 7 seats returned Conservatives very comfortably, including an unopposed return in Boughton Aluph - that was a retreat for the Tories who had had 3 of the 7 returned unopposed in 1976, and 6 out of 7 in the new- authority elections of 1973! And in 1979 the Tories had suffered their first actual defeat in Rural East when Pearl Worrall, the wife of Spearpoint Residents councillor George Worrall, managed to snatch Wye ward. Wye and Spearpoint were adjacent wards and the Worralls actually lived in Wye, which was always a bit different to the rest of Rural East.
Borough election results 1979: Ashford Rural East
Aldington
P Boulden (Con) 705 86.1%
E Crook (Lab) 114 13.9%
Boughton Aluph
J Nicholson (Con) unopp
Brabourne
T Jeanes (Con) 750 79.4%
H Pollin (Lib) 194 20.6%
Chilham
J Smith (Con) 842 69.4%
P Hearn (Ind) 209 17.2%
D Madgett (Lab) 163 13.4%
Hamstreet
M Tucker (Con) 944 77.1%
M Bruckner (Lab) 280 22.9%
Mersham
G Fortescue (Con) 929 73.8%
E Martin (Lab) 329 26.2%
Wye
A Pearl Worrall (Res) 601 44.9%
A Law (Con) 542 40.4%
N Onslow (Lab) 197 14.7%
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 6, 2018 8:01:47 GMT
Ashford Borough Council wards by county division- Tenterden
The final electoral division to examine is the biggest of the lot- 10 single member wards of which 4 were in the Tenterden urban area and 6 out in the rural area. The 4 urban ones were Tenterden East, Tenterden West and Tenterden South East, together with Tenterden St Michaels which some might regard as a separate village in its own right, but had been part of the old Borough. The 6 rural ones sometimes marry up villages to get the right numbers, but the villages in this area are a lot bigger so more of them make the ideal size for one-village wards. The latter cases are the three villages north of Tenterden: Biddenden, High Halden and Woodchurch. The three more southerly villages each have to include another smaller village: Rolvenden adds Newenden, Wittersham adds Stone-cm-Ebony ( to include all of the Isle of Oxney, surounded today by marsh rather than sea), and Appledore adds Kenardington. Rolvenden parish had the added delights of two polling districts , one for the village centre (Rolvenden Strete) and one for the outliers (Rolvenden Layne)
The political domination of the area by the Tories was every bit as strong as in the other two rural divisions. They held nine out of ten of the seats, one unopposed and the others with massive majorities- Tenterden South East, which did include quite a big council estate, was the only one of these where the majority fell (just) under the 50% of total votes mark. The only ward which did not conform to this pattern was Biddenden. The Tories failed to win there because they didn't put up a candidate, against Tom Richards, a determinedly independent councillor who nevertheless conformed absolutely to the Tory councillor stereotype- a farmer , active in the NFU, most of his friends were Tory councillors in other wards...
It might be noted that the general pattern was for the Tory to win against fairly token Labour opposition, but except for Woodchurch which therefore went unopposed, the Labour party at least managed to field a candidate everywhere, and other parties, notably the Liberals , were entirely absent.
Borough Council election results 1979: Tenterden division
Appledore
R Moseley (Con) 495 81.1%
M Tidd (Lab) 115 18.9%
Biddenden
T Richards (Ind) 1011 77.9%
S Turner (Lab) 287 22.1%
High Halden
H Apps (Con) 623 87.7%
A Coombes (Lab) 87 12.3%
Rolvenden
N Sumner (Con) 756 76.6%
D Crane (Lab) 231 23.4%
Tenterden St Michaels
H Watts (Con) 920 81.1%
W Tugwell (Lab) 214 18.9%
Tenterden East
B Kingston (Con) 824 84.1%
M Cahill ( Lab) 156 15.9%
Tenterden South East
G Mills (Con) 680 74.3%
C Reeves (Lab) 218 25.7%
Tenterden West
C Rosson (Con) 543 77.6%
B Turner (Lab) 157 22.4%
Wittersham
E Sweatman (Con) 640 77.5%
J Howlett (Lab) 186 22.5%
Woodchurch
A Hamilton (Con) unopposed
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 6, 2018 18:09:44 GMT
In summary- where we were in 1981 on Ashford Borough
The overall state of the parties between 1979 and 1981 was that the Conservatives were just short of an overall majority, with 24 seats out of 49, though in practice with a pretty divided opposition they were able to take control quite easily. It was something of a setback for them nevertheless- they had held 31 seats in 1976. There were a number of other weaknesses in their position -only four seats in Ashford town out of 24 meant that they really had very little clue about the most dynamic part of the Borough. This sort of problem was I think quite common and maybe still is in some areas- the shotgun marriage of town and country areas as a result of the local government changes in 1974 meant that country people found themselves grappling with urban problems, and vice versa, and maybe there are some good examples out there people know about? There is very little sign of an ideological approach-Thatcherism hadn't really yet established itself much in sleepy backwaters like this. The typical Tory councillor was fairly elderly, many were farmers or rural businessmen of some sort, and trying to do the best they could from what might be seen as a sense of duty, or if you were less sympathetic might appear a sense of entitlement.
Labour had advanced, were very dominant in their South stronghold, with 10 seats overall compare with 7 three years earlier, and had had sufficient strength in numbers to put out candidates in most rural seats as well. That may have been the effect in part of fighting a general election alongside, and there is little sign they had been doing anything more than seeking to hold their existing vote together in rural patches- easy to spot the main concentrations in those days- look to the village council estates! But in 1979 Labour had just lost a general election and the party nationally was starting to pull in two very different directions, and there was plenty of evidence that this was happening on the ground locally too.
The Liberals had also advanced, in the one sense that they had gone up from 3 to 6 in the three years from 1976, but that really just means that recovered some of the ground they had lost when the ward system had changed from big multi-member wards, which had given them 10 members as recently as 1973 to single member wards, and they took a while to find out how to work that. They also were very localised: good at the pavement politics which gave them their raison d'etre, but slow to see a wider picture. They had begun to work Kennington and Singleton and were just getting the message there was a world out there beyond Willesborough, but they showed no sign of getting to grips with the rural majority of the whole borough. Clive Dennis, Borough councillor, County councillor and parliamentary candidate twice in 1974, was the dominant figure,probably more dominant than any councillor in any other party ( widely referred to in some circles as Dennis the Menace..). But it is worth pointing out he was so focussed on Willesborough that he was a 2-headed councillor there even though he lived in Kennington, and made little effort to work his own area ( when Tony Edwards won Kennington Lees it was felt that was in spite of Clive rather than because of him). Living in Willesborough until 1976, we saw a lot of Clive and the other major figure of the Willesborough liberalism, Deryck Weatherall, but when we moved to Pluckley we saw no more signs of Liberals! And this had not always been the case -we later discovered the Liberals had been active in the villages in the sixties under Gavin Peck. Some of the people we encountered then were very nostalgic for the liberals of the Peck era as one might say the Grimond era, and were just waiting for the liberals to come back. I appreciate that the Dennis liberals were husbanding limited resources with care but to many of it seemed they took that too far.
Then there were the Others. They went by various names at various times, but in practice they were a collection of very individual independents. They mostly were high profile and very active compared to the average Tory, Labour and even Liberal councillors where the backbenchers could be all but invisible voting fodder. At this time there were 9 of them and they were often fizzing with ideas, unpredictable, fun and sometimes just plain silly, but I have to say at this stage my sympathies were rather with them - Gordon Turner, George and Pearl Worrall, Harry Lavender, Jo Winnifrith,Tom Richards, Reg Harrington were among the foremost personalities of this council. You may notice I have named 7- even they had their own backbenchers.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 7, 2018 14:36:29 GMT
The arrival of the SDP -1981-3
I am looking at the early months of the SDP as it worked out locally. There are endless details and mythologies about this process nationally, all that Limehouse stuff, but relatively little about the process on the ground. Eileen and I were members from the first few weeks of the Limehouse Declaration and though it took a little while ( nearly a year I guess) to go from membership to activism, we were observing all those birth pangs.We were not involved much in the earliest discussions but I do have access to the minute books of the Ashford party from the earliest handwritten notes, the AGM minutes throughout its history and notes relating to the East Kent party- the earliest formal structures were built around the European Parliamentary constituency, of course! The area party was East Kent, including the six constituencies of Ashford, Folkestone & Hythe, Dover, Canterbury and the two Thanets- the chairman being Dr John Cox, who had been a Liberal. Ashford at this stage was merely a constituency group. At this stage I was very much an ordinary new member but I remember attending big meetings, more in the way of rallies, in Canterbury and Margate. I think at this stage East Kent had about 600 members and each constituency averaged about 100 - the first time I saw a membership count for Ashford it was 105, and with lots of new recruits being offset by departures it didn't vary much from that.
The membership of the Ashford SDP in these opening months was dominated by two very distinct groups. The urban members were mostly concentrated in South and very much focused on the borough councillors, hostile to both the Tory group and the Labour group- some of it reflecting internal dissensions in the Labour party. They formed a little knot of groupies sitting in the gallery at council meetings glowering at any idiocy they perceived, and quite sure they would soon be replacing the people sitting in their padded seats in front of them. The leading lights of this group were Brian Lovett-White, the first chairman, Ian Pritchard the first secretary and Tom Clabby the first treasurer. Within the first year all were gone and I sense there was a coup. There had also came the news, round about Christmas 1981/New Year 1982 that the two Singleton councillors Ian McMurchie and Jim Tugwell , had defected from Labour to the SDP- Ian apparently had gone into Cowley Street to sign up. I think this would have been met with dismay both among the Lovett-White faction who had been campaigning against the two, and by the Liberals who already had two candidates in place for the ward- Bob Smith , the Liberal who had been just behind in 1979, and Babs Holloway a charismatic and energetic potential candidate. Indeed it later emerged that early negotiations between Lovett-White and the Liberals had already agreed to Singleton being a Liberal pick. Singleton was to prove to be the explosive issue between the two Alliance parties through 1982.
The other group was very different. It was largely made up of rural professional people many of whom might have been in the Liberals had their ever been any attempt to recruit them ,or Labour but wary of Labour's leftwards shift, while some may have been liberal-ish Conservatives unhappy with the way Thatcher was heading. They included a number of doctors and teachers and media people, they were much more interested in the parliamentary scene. I would put Eileen and myself in the latter group. So the negotiations between these two groups was every bit as interesting as the one between both lots and the Liberals, and the result was the total victory of the latter group.They were a lot more businesslike than the urban group and the quality of record keeping improved considerably after they came to the fore,but they were totally inexperienced politically, had to learn from scratch, and at first had little interest in the nitty gritty of electoral campaigning. It was to be a steep learning curve. I was keeping a low profile at this stage but my work with the Labour party in local elections which had stopped in the late 50's made me one of the more politically experienced members! They included Drs Graham-Brown,Towers and Dove (the first two the next two party chairmen), Jo and Nigel Hawkes (Nigel a journalist writing for theTimes and Observer), Josephine O'Connor Howe (an editor working for Readers Digest) , and John and Joan Sherwood, recently retired BBC executives- John was also a well known writer of detective fiction and Joan under her professional name of Joan Yorke had been for many years responsible for Woman's Hour. Before long was added Grace Thomson - her husband George, former cabinet minister, former European Commissioner and now chair of the IBA being of course in a politically restricted post!
As 1982 progressed attention had to focus on two issues -selections for the May 1983 local elections and for an as yet unspecified general election -1984 at latest but of course actually to come in June 1983 because Maggie decided to call a snap June election- sound familiar ,anybody? By the summer of 1982 we knew that Ashford was to be a Lib Dem constituency in the Alliance negotiations- not terribly surprising as Liberal attention was definitely on Folkestone, and before long we had been through hustings and selected one of our own number as PPC - Jo Hawkes, by now the local party secretary. And Jo needed candidates in place for the Borough elections to up her credibility and effectiveness on the ground. But the Singleton thing was proving intractable -it went to arbitration which opted for the Liberals, and that was still being challenged by Ian McMurchie for whom it was " Singleton or nothing"- Jim Tugwell was much more easy-going, but an attempt to compromise on one candidate each in Singleton was flatly rejected by the Liberals who were much harder-ball negotiators, while the SDP were hamstrung by two things - that agreement made by the early stage SDP to give Singleton to the Liberals, made before the two councillors defected, and the need to keep the Liberals on board because of the upcoming general election.
While the arguments rumbled on about this one ward, the news of candidate selection elsewhere was alarming. At one point the Liberals came back to say they were sorry they couldn't fill their 22 allocated places- they had only selected 17 candidates and were proposing to put the others back "in the pool." How many had the SDP got- and the news was... 4! Oh dear!
Eventually, however the numbers on the SDP side grew and I think eventually 30 Alliance candidates were put forward-17 Liberals and 13 SDP. I know something of that frantic search. The phone rang late in 1982 and it was Jo Hawkes pleading with us - one of us- to agree to stand as a paper candidate in Pluckley . We talked it over, then rang her back saying Eileen would stand,and I would run her campaign, and if we were we wanted to have a proper go at it. No resources taken from anywhere else - we two would try and have some fun. The offer was accepted and life would never be quite the same again.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Apr 7, 2018 15:29:29 GMT
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 7, 2018 16:16:32 GMT
Well done ,Pete - I had looked at your maps and liked them and would have got round to sorting them for inclusion eventually but kept getting distracted by other things. The best thing on this thread so far and the maps do illustrate so nicely the points I was trying to make , like the wide but thin spread of Labour outside its heartland of South Ashford and the tight limitation of the Libs to the confines of South East.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 8, 2018 13:08:47 GMT
Ashford Borough Council ward results 1983 by county division- Ashford North:
Bockhanger
R Hall (Con) 388 43.2%
R Ansell (Lab) 260 28.9%
C Riddell (SDP All) 251 27.9%
Bybrook
P Smith (Con) 402 58.6%
D Berrie (Lib All) 166 24.2%
E Crook (Lab) 118 17.2%
Central (2)
C Wheal (Con) 407 45.7%
S Ford (Con) 407
M Nunn (SDP All) 242 27.2 %
H Nunn (SDP All) 200
F Norton (Lab) 182 20.4%
A Shaw (Lab) 165
J Dienst (Ind) 60 6.7%
Kennington Lees
A Edwards (Lib All) 483 78.2%
A Reeves (Con) 135 21.8%
Queens
H Lavender (Res) unopp
Spearpoint
G Worrall (Ind) 338 53.6%
C Goodall (Con) 293 46.4%
Warren
B Moorman (Con) 407 68.1%
C Paul Burnham (Lib All) 191 31.9%
At the end of the day, not much changed in North-Con gain from Residents in Bybrook where the Res group didn't defend the ward, George Worrall now officially Independent rather than Res but hardly much change in practice. The Lib candidates did marginally better than before including Tony Edwards comfortable hold, while the three SDP candidates standing where no Liberal had stood last time did respectably but nowhere near winning.The one extra Lib candidate(the Liberal party chair) performed much the same as the SDP. 6 Alliance candidates out of 8 though was a much better show than 1979, especially as it could be claimed that not opposing Harry Lavender and George Worrall was tactical.
Before Con 4, Res 3 Lib1, New Con 5 Res1,Ind 1, Lib 1.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 8, 2018 13:53:13 GMT
Ashford Borough wards 1983 by county division: Ashford South
Brookfield
L Lawrie (Lab) 412 63.6%
N Wilkins (Con) 158 24.4%
Wendy Tugwell ( SDP All) 78 12.0 %
Hampden
K Roberts (True Ashfordian) 208 47.5%
D Crawley (Lab) 92 21.0%
J Gill (Con) 80 18.3%
J Pike (SDP All) 58 13.2%
Musgrove
D Madgett (Lab) 584 54.2%
D Horn(Con) 143 27.3%
P Vago(SDP All) 97 18.5%
Singleton (2)
B Holloway (Lib All) 273 43.6%
R Smith (Lib All) 255
J Burrows (Con ) 248 39.6%
I McMurchie (Con) 236
A Coomes (Lab) 105 16.8 %
S Attridge (Lab) 104
Stanhope (2)
P Constable (Lab) 544 88.9%
J Ackersley (Lab) 530
K Taylor (Nat Lab) 68 11.1%
J King (Nat Lab) 68
Victoria Park
J Hawkes (SDP All) 258 52.1%
J Foster (Con) 126 25.5%
M Merrick ( Lab) 111 22.4%
Woolreeds
M Wiggins (Lab) 261 50.3%
A Coleman (Lib All) 164 31.6%
J Rymer-Jones (Con) 94 18.1%
By comparison with calm in Ashford North, South Ashford was where the fireworks were. Jo Hawkes ran exactly the campaign she needed in Victoria Park to establish her credibility as PCC . She took advice from Clive Dennis as to how to campaign and followed it to the letter- Clive told her to aim to canvass every house, going back again and again if nobody was in , so she did. This was one very thorough campaign, and it paid off.
In Singleton, Babs Holloway and Bob Smith demonstrated why it was right to back them rather than the sitting SDP councillors, and Ian "Singleton or nothing" showed he meant it by changing his party once more and stood for Singleton in blue colours -and the result was indeed nothing.
It was interesting to see what had happened to that original early SDP group- while Ian was going from Labour to SDP to Tory in a few months, Mercy Merrick, who was very much part of that set and Brian Lovett-White's partner, was back in Labour fighting Jo Hawkes in Victoria Park, and doing very badly. Ken Roberts the taxi driver who was also in that set, was winning in Hampden as an independent, self-styled True Ashfordian-a bit of Gordon Turner influence I think. Jim Tugwell had gone off to fight in Tenterden, of all places, and his daughter Wendy who had fought there last time stood in Brookfield making little impression.
The key Labour councillors -Mike Wiggins, Les Lawrie, Derek Madgett- all came through unscathed, and with only far right opposition in Stanhope Labour was able to hold those two seats as well, So in the end from holding all 9 last time, Labour were left with 5, the Alliance had 3 , and 1 Independent.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 9, 2018 7:59:56 GMT
Ashford Borough wards results 1983 by county division:Ashford South East
Eastmead
J Powell (Lab) 244 35.6%
A Perrin (Con) 240 35.0%
S Whawell (Lib All) 202 29.4%
Henwood
D Blain (Lib All) 206 36.3%
R Shearer (Con) 170 29.9%
R Burton (Ind Lib) 118 20.8%
F Laughton (Lab) 60 10.6%
M Collins (Ecol) 14 2.5%
South Willesborough
G Turner (True Lib) 645 75.7%
S Turner (Lab) 126 14.8%
C Malton (Con) 81 9.5%
Twelve Acres
D Weatherall (Lib All) 672 92.4%
J Constable (Lab) 55 7.6%
Waterside
T Golding (Lib All) 388 67.6%
R Speight (Con) 186 32.4%
Willesborough Lees
J Simpson (Con) 626 64.0%
F Winslade (Lib All) 301 30.8%
Windmill
C Dennis (LibAll) 440 53.3%
P Reeves (Res) 204 24.7%
A Brown(Con) 181 21.9%
The South East results were somewhat distorted by disputes over candidacies in particular wards - notably Willesborough Lees where the sitting Liberal councillor John Simpson defected to the Conservatives just before the election and comfortably held it in his new colours- an illustration that in these sorts of elections personal votes were often more significant than party. It was less true in Henwood where the sitting Liberal Richard Burton was deselected - actually I think he had decided to stand down, then too late changed his mind- and stood unsuccessfully as an independent against the new Liberal candidate David Blain (who was a colleague of mine). The other wards produced the expected results, though Labour only just squeaked home in Eastmead which was a three-way nail-biter of the kind relatively rare in Ashford In the end then Libs went down from 5 to 4 in their new Alliance colours, 1 each for Labour and Conservatives and of course the True Liberal.
Two other stand out names on the candidates lists- Fred Winslade, the former finance officer of the old East Ashford RDC stood for election for the first time and duly lost Willesborough Lees, but this was to be the start of a career as both Borough and County Councillor - he was always to be a very good councillor once elected but an indifferent candidate/campaigner! Frank Laughton made a tiny appearance as the Labour candidate in Henwood- we were to see a lot more of the Laughtons, but mainly his wife Palma, of whom much more anon.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 9, 2018 11:20:19 GMT
Ashford Borough Ward results 1983 by county division -Ashford Rural West
Bethersden
B Finn (Con) 399 70.9%
K Brannan (Ind) 129 22.9%
A Howlett (Lab) 35 6.2%
Charing (2)
J Winnifrith (Ind ) unopp
J Williams (Con) unopp
Great Chart
W Swaffer (Ind) 191 51.1%
B Judges (Con) 183 48.9%
Hothfield
C Oliver (Con) 337 70.4%
D Clifton ( Lab) 112 23.4%
G Knight (Ecol) 30 6.3%
Kingsnorth
R Harrington (Ind) 881 89.4 %
H Yeo (Lab) 64 6.5%
A King (Nat Lab) 40 4.1%
Pluckley
M Carr (Con) 282 56.1%
E English (SDP All) 221 43.9%
Smarden
H Hilder (Con) 557 86.5%
J Smith (Lab) 87 13.5%
In a sense these results were as you were, the established Conservative and Independent councillors looking pretty immovable and seemingly accepting each other, as the Charing situation demonstrated. Into that cosy duopoly the other players like Labour and Ecology made only token
opposition. That is what the SDP campaign in Pluckley set to break, and while the mould failed quite to break this time we were in new territory for the future. But for the present 5 Conservatives and 3 Indies retained the status quo. One other candidate note - Harriet Yeo another former student of mine, later to to be on Labour's National Executive before defecting to UKIP.
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Post by lennon on Apr 9, 2018 11:36:02 GMT
I am finding this fascinating reading - so please do continue, and don't let the (relative) lack of response be any discouragement. I suspect that it would be a 'footnote' to the real writing, but I would be interested to read more about your campaign in Pluckley and what you did that was different / gave you more than a token result in due course.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 9, 2018 12:42:23 GMT
I am finding this fascinating reading - so please do continue, and don't let the (relative) lack of response be any discouragement. I suspect that it would be a 'footnote' to the real writing, but I would be interested to read more about your campaign in Pluckley and what you did that was different / gave you more than a token result in due course. Thank you. Yes I had thought to put in a note about Pluckley ward -a pen portrait of the ward as well as saying something of the campaign, as soon as I've finished the 1983 results and before heading in to the June general election and the Counties of 1985. |
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k9
Non-Aligned
Posts: 126 
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Post by k9 on Apr 9, 2018 13:57:59 GMT
A pen portrait would be interesting as Pluckley was in the Guinness Book of Records as the most haunted village in the country.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 9, 2018 14:01:17 GMT
A pen portrait would be interesting as Pluckley was in the Guinness Book of Records as the most haunted village in the country. Among other things we have to live down ( I have gone on television trying to debunk that - more anon) |
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 9, 2018 15:15:03 GMT
Ashford Borough Wards results 1983 by county divisions : Ashford Rural East
Aldington
P Boulden (Con) 409 70.2%
S Griggs (Ind) 93 16.0%
R Peacock (SDP All) 81 13.9%
Boughton Aluph
J Nicholson (Con) 416 66.3%
C Andrew Porter (Ecol) 211 33.7%
Brabourne
T Jeanes (Con) 439 59.6%
E Nunn (Lib All) 297 40.4%
Chilham
J Smith (Con) 600 76.2%
R Evans (Lib All) 100 12.7%
C Barden (Lab) 87 11.1%
Hamstreet
P Stutchbury (Con) 596 69.2%
J Hallett ((SDP All) 265 30.8%
Mersham
G Fortescue ( Con) 457 53.1%
E Stickells (Ind) 318 37.0%
A Vaughan ( SDP All) 85 9.9%
Wye
P Worrall (Ind) 427 45.6%
T Fitzgerald-Moore (Con) 397 42.4%
P Munday (Lab) 113 12.1%
Like Rural West, Rural East showed no real change in seats, but there were several wards here where opposition parties (Liberals, SDP and Ecology)polled quite respectably, though none as good in percentage terms as Pluckley, and maybe after this the Liberal reluctance to think outside Willesborough was beginning to crack, and the belief that you could only win in rural Ashford as a Tory or an Indy began to change.
Nevertheless, for the moment we remained 6 Conservatives and one Independent.
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Post by andrewp on Apr 9, 2018 18:16:23 GMT
Please keep going, this is fascinating. I wish we could do this for some other Districts!
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Post by tonyhill on Apr 9, 2018 21:07:20 GMT
Your record keeping and memory must be a lot better than mine! I published a booklet of the old Winchester City Council election results between 1960 and the creation of the new district council in 1973, but I'd struggle to put a history together after that even though I was a participant. On the advent of the SDP though, Winchester's experience seems quite similar to yours. The Liberal Party had probably been weaker in Winchester than in Ashford - we did not contest the parliamentary seat between 1929 and the 1964 by-election, and it was not until 1969 that we got our first councillor elected. Although as a radical Liberal I was vehemently opposed to the SDP (the "SOGS" as we called them) it is undeniable that Winchester's subsequent Liberal Democrat success owes a huge amount to the people who became active in the SDP: Harvey Cole (economist, planning consultant, former Labour parliamentary candidate); Pamela Peskett (ran Winchester consumer group and became a County Councillor, along with Harvey); Jock McDonald (teacher at Winchester College, environmentalist, became the Alliance parliamentary candidate); Professor Terence Morris (criminologist); Mike Simpson (fought several parliamentary elections); as well as the usual selection of nutters who clamber on to the latest bandwagon but (mostly) don't hang around too long. All the important figures joined the Liberal Democrats after the merger and were mostly still active when Mark Oaten won the seat in 1997.
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 10, 2018 6:50:08 GMT
Your record keeping and memory must be a lot better than mine! I published a booklet of the old Winchester City Council election results between 1960 and the creation of the new district council in 1973, but I'd struggle to put a history together after that even though I was a participant. On the advent of the SDP though, Winchester's experience seems quite similar to yours. The Liberal Party had probably been weaker in Winchester than in Ashford - we did not contest the parliamentary seat between 1929 and the 1964 by-election, and it was not until 1969 that we got our first councillor elected. Although as a radical Liberal I was vehemently opposed to the SDP (the "SOGS" as we called them) it is undeniable that Winchester's subsequent Liberal Democrat success owes a huge amount to the people who became active in the SDP: Harvey Cole (economist, planning consultant, former Labour parliamentary candidate); Pamela Peskett (ran Winchester consumer group and became a County Councillor, along with Harvey); Jock McDonald (teacher at Winchester College, environmentalist, became the Alliance parliamentary candidate); Professor Terence Morris (criminologist); Mike Simpson (fought several parliamentary elections); as well as the usual selection of nutters who clamber on to the latest bandwagon but (mostly) don't hang around too long. All the important figures joined the Liberal Democrats after the merger and were mostly still active when Mark Oaten won the seat in 1997. thank you Tony- that is exactly the sort of cross referencing that I hoped this might spark off and I would encourage more people to dig up their own memories of this era. I actually wouldn't claim perfect memory /recording -I am relying for the results mainly on Elections Centre while correcting a few obvious mistakes there, but may have missed a few,and I may in a while find a few holes in the record when it comes to local by-elections- I seem to have lost both my electronic and paper records for some of those. I have tried to indicate with the Alliance candidates which party they came from, which EC and other sources often don't do -they just get lumped down as Alliance. Hope I've got those all correct- one or two of the more obscure ones left me trying desperately to remember! As you will have noticed we had our usual share of the "selected nutters" and I have given them the prominence they wold have craved. |
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Post by yellowperil on Apr 10, 2018 7:57:01 GMT
Ashford Borough Wards elections 1983 by county division-Tenterden
Appledore
C Harper (Con) 295 61.5%
A Green (Ind) 80 16.7%
J Howlett (Lab) 67 14. 0%
T Webber (Lib All) 38 7.9%
Biddenden
T Richards (Ind) 410 70.2%
J Robinson (Lab) 91 15.6%
R Lockwod (BNP) 83 14.2%
High Halden
H Apps (Con) 596 89.2%
L Smith (SDP All) 72 10.8%
Rolvenden
J Hoad (Con) 562 71.6%
B Dewdney (Lab) 223 28.4%
Tenterden St Michaels
E Barrows (Con) 488 80.9%
K Thornton (Lab) 115 19.1%
Tenterden East
H Blake (Con) 569 84.4%
H Saunders (Lab) 105 15.6%
Tenterden South East
R Greenfield (Con) 346 65.4%
A Pickett (SDP All ) 128 24.2%
V Johns (Lab) 55 10.4%
Tenterden West
C Rosson (Con) 272 69.7%
J Tugwell (SDP All) 71 18.2%
M Saunders (Lab) 47 12.1%
Wittersham
E Sweatman(Con) 408 72.2%
M Honeysett (Lab) 157 27.8%
Woodchurch
G Weller (Con) 598 87.3%
M Honeysett (Lib All) 87 12.7%
The Tenterden division remained a Tory fortress and afterwards you could see the Tenterden Tories full of glee and joshing each other as to who had the biggest majority.More or less all that had changed was that the responsibility for being the token lamb to the slaughter was being shared out almost equally between Labour, SDP and Liberals. The four-way contest in Appledore was probably the result of Tony Harper having taken over from Peter Boulden as Tory leader. In the end 9 Conservative 1 Independent, no change.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Apr 10, 2018 8:35:04 GMT
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