The Bishop
Labour
Down With Factionalism!
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Post by The Bishop on Feb 22, 2024 13:41:31 GMT
Daily Telegraph was still doing that into at least the early 90s - another thing they persisted in for much longer than most was referring to Tony Benn as "Mr Wedgwood Benn".
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Feb 22, 2024 18:58:02 GMT
I've checked the remaining counties and you can add: Norfolk: Q 4.85, 6 seats Northumberland: Q 2.35, 3 seats Salop: Q 3.25, 4 seats Surrey: Q 9.26, 10 seats Wilts: Q 4.22, 5 seats Yorks WR: Q 13.05, 14 seats
Yes but the BCE had proposed reductions in some of those counties in 1946 and the proposals had gone down like a lead balloon hence the return to the HoC (upon the Speaker's instigation) for clearer guidance. However, I don't think the guidance was that clear and it certainly seems that the Commission's rural over-representation went beyond what the Government had expected. One elephant in the room is the under-representation of England as a whole. If you use the quota for Great Britain, as quoted in the Welsh report, and the wording of the rules makes it pretty clear that that was the quota that should have been used, then, again using the harmonic mean rule, Durham, Surrey, Essex, Berkshire and Northumberland all disappear from the list of over-represented counties and Lancashire does at least clearly justify 17 (though not the 18 it got); most of the others were not that far short, though Norfolk's sixth seat was still pretty ridiculous. Meanwhile all the Government's extra seats except for the Leeds one are clearly justified, and Plymouth, Hackney & Stoke Newington and East Sussex all justified an extra seat which they didn't get. (And there might have been a case for going a little further down the list of boroughs when granting the second seats.) Of course the problem would have been that that would have given considerably more seats than one of the other rules said England was supposed to have. Norfolk together with Norwich would have justified 7 seats on that basis, but it really should have been either 5 for the county and 2 for the city (which is what the harmonic mean rule gives them as separate units, on either quota) or 5 for the county, 1 for the city and a cross-border seat. Of course it ended up with 8: the Commission's very generous 6 for the county plus 2 for the city after the later changes. My view is that if areas are going to be treated as separate units when the boundaries are drawn then the allocation should already do that: under-represented Plymouth (resp. Norwich) isn't really compensated by the rest of Devon (resp. Norfolk) being over-represented. But the Commission has had a different practice on this much more recently than the 1940s: something very similar is why the Black Country is currently over-represented. |
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Post by hullenedge on Feb 23, 2024 6:57:18 GMT
Yes but the BCE had proposed reductions in some of those counties in 1946 and the proposals had gone down like a lead balloon hence the return to the HoC (upon the Speaker's instigation) for clearer guidance. However, I don't think the guidance was that clear and it certainly seems that the Commission's rural over-representation went beyond what the Government had expected. One elephant in the room is the under-representation of England as a whole. If you use the quota for Great Britain, as quoted in the Welsh report, and the wording of the rules makes it pretty clear that that was the quota that should have been used, then, again using the harmonic mean rule, Durham, Surrey, Essex, Berkshire and Northumberland all disappear from the list of over-represented counties and Lancashire does at least clearly justify 17 (though not the 18 it got); most of the others were not that far short, though Norfolk's sixth seat was still pretty ridiculous. Meanwhile all the Government's extra seats except for the Leeds one are clearly justified, and Plymouth, Hackney & Stoke Newington and East Sussex all justified an extra seat which they didn't get. (And there might have been a case for going a little further down the list of boroughs when granting the second seats.) Of course the problem would have been that that would have given considerably more seats than one of the other rules said England was supposed to have. Norfolk together with Norwich would have justified 7 seats on that basis, but it really should have been either 5 for the county and 2 for the city (which is what the harmonic mean rule gives them as separate units, on either quota) or 5 for the county, 1 for the city and a cross-border seat. Of course it ended up with 8: the Commission's very generous 6 for the county plus 2 for the city after the later changes. My view is that if areas are going to be treated as separate units when the boundaries are drawn then the allocation should already do that: under-represented Plymouth (resp. Norwich) isn't really compensated by the rest of Devon (resp. Norfolk) being over-represented. But the Commission has had a different practice on this much more recently than the 1940s: something very similar is why the Black Country is currently over-represented. Fair points. The BCE was (and still is) composed of honourable men and it would, looking back, have been helpful if they'd laid out their calculations and thoughts more thoroughly unless there's a file languishing in the HO or National Archives. Two snippets from The Spectator, December 1947. The YO was hardly a left-leaning publication.   |
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Post by hullenedge on Feb 23, 2024 7:02:45 GMT
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Feb 23, 2024 8:18:11 GMT
Presumably the redistribution was inevitably going to lead to a considerable shift towards the Tories, given the distribution of electorates going into it, especially with the number of undersized seats in London in particular?
I think the rural over-representation must have helped them a little, though note that sometimes adding an extra seat can help the minority party locally. E.g. in Shropshire Labour won The Wrekin and the Tories won the other three seats; if the county had only had three seats would Labour have had much chance in any of them? Something similar might be true in Cornwall.
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Post by hullenedge on Feb 23, 2024 12:55:32 GMT
Presumably the redistribution was inevitably going to lead to a considerable shift towards the Tories, given the distribution of electorates going into it, especially with the number of undersized seats in London in particular? I think the rural over-representation must have helped them a little, though note that sometimes adding an extra seat can help the minority party locally. E.g. in Shropshire Labour won The Wrekin and the Tories won the other three seats; if the county had only had three seats would Labour have had much chance in any of them? Something similar might be true in Cornwall. The abolition of the 'postage stamp' constituencies (Roy Jenkins' words for Southwark Central) was brutal for Labour. They were down 17 seats in London at the 1950GE. You're right that additional seats can sometimes aid the minority party providing their support is concentrated enough in a particular area. |
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Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 16,044
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Post by Sibboleth on Feb 23, 2024 13:10:33 GMT
E.g. in Shropshire Labour won The Wrekin and the Tories won the other three seats; if the county had only had three seats would Labour have had much chance in any of them? Would have depended on how they were drawn: the new boundaries chosen on for The Wrekin were highly unfavourable for Labour as the area removed for 1950 (i.e. Wenlock MB) was a critical Labour stronghold in parliamentary elections.* If after adding it back the constituency was then extended in the logical direction (to Bridgnorth) you would be left with one with a fairly similar political balance to the actual 1950-74 constituency. *The bulk of the population lived in Madeley and the bulk of the rest in Broseley. |
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Post by islington on Feb 26, 2024 11:43:47 GMT
Yes but the BCE had proposed reductions in some of those counties in 1946 and the proposals had gone down like a lead balloon hence the return to the HoC (upon the Speaker's instigation) for clearer guidance. However, I don't think the guidance was that clear and it certainly seems that the Commission's rural over-representation went beyond what the Government had expected. One elephant in the room is the under-representation of England as a whole. If you use the quota for Great Britain, as quoted in the Welsh report, and the wording of the rules makes it pretty clear that that was the quota that should have been used, then, again using the harmonic mean rule, Durham, Surrey, Essex, Berkshire and Northumberland all disappear from the list of over-represented counties and Lancashire does at least clearly justify 17 (though not the 18 it got); most of the others were not that far short, though Norfolk's sixth seat was still pretty ridiculous. Meanwhile all the Government's extra seats except for the Leeds one are clearly justified, and Plymouth, Hackney & Stoke Newington and East Sussex all justified an extra seat which they didn't get. (And there might have been a case for going a little further down the list of boroughs when granting the second seats.) Of course the problem would have been that that would have given considerably more seats than one of the other rules said England was supposed to have. Norfolk together with Norwich would have justified 7 seats on that basis, but it really should have been either 5 for the county and 2 for the city (which is what the harmonic mean rule gives them as separate units, on either quota) or 5 for the county, 1 for the city and a cross-border seat. Of course it ended up with 8: the Commission's very generous 6 for the county plus 2 for the city after the later changes. My view is that if areas are going to be treated as separate units when the boundaries are drawn then the allocation should already do that: under-represented Plymouth (resp. Norwich) isn't really compensated by the rest of Devon (resp. Norfolk) being over-represented. But the Commission has had a different practice on this much more recently than the 1940s: something very similar is why the Black Country is currently over-represented. You are absolutely right that under the 1944 Rules there was supposed to be a single electoral quota for GB. This was not changed by the 1947 amendments, and it still applied in the 1949 Rules that governed the First Review (i.e. the one that took effect in 1955). It was the 1958 Act that provided for separate quotas for England, Scotland and Wales.
So the GB quota for the Initial Review was 57697 and the BCE had no business in devising, and using, a separate EQ of 59312 for England alone.
In terms of the urban/rural issue, the BCE at the First Periodic Review still stubbornly argued that 'in general, urban constituencies could more conveniently support large electorates than rural constituencies' (even though there was nothing in the 1949 Rules to justify such an approach); but in practice, the BCE seemed to recognize that a warning shot had been fired across its bows by the addition of 17 urban seats in the Act implementing the Initial Review, so that in the First Periodic the average electorate of borough and county seats in England differed by only a relatively modest amount at 57883 and 56093 respectively. Only at the Second Periodic did the BCE finally conclude that 'there was no obvious case for deliberately seeking to create constituencies with smaller electorates in the rural areas' (other than, exceptionally, where Rule 6 (special geographical considerations) applied).
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Post by hullenedge on Feb 26, 2024 16:55:43 GMT
E.g. in Shropshire Labour won The Wrekin and the Tories won the other three seats; if the county had only had three seats would Labour have had much chance in any of them? Would have depended on how they were drawn: the new boundaries chosen on for The Wrekin were highly unfavourable for Labour as the area removed for 1950 (i.e. Wenlock MB) was a critical Labour stronghold in parliamentary elections.* If after adding it back the constituency was then extended in the logical direction (to Bridgnorth) you would be left with one with a fairly similar political balance to the actual 1950-74 constituency. *The bulk of the population lived in Madeley and the bulk of the rest in Broseley.A brief report, August 1946, about the proposed Shropshire boundaries:-  Labour were very much opposed to the scheme and demanded the return of a fourth seat for Shropshire (Birmingham Daily Gazette, 13 August 1946). |
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Post by hullenedge on Feb 26, 2024 17:01:40 GMT
A 1946 article about the proposed reduction of Norfolk's represention:-   |
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Sibboleth
Labour
'Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.'
Posts: 16,044
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Post by Sibboleth on Feb 26, 2024 17:12:30 GMT
Would have depended on how they were drawn: the new boundaries chosen on for The Wrekin were highly unfavourable for Labour as the area removed for 1950 (i.e. Wenlock MB) was a critical Labour stronghold in parliamentary elections.* If after adding it back the constituency was then extended in the logical direction (to Bridgnorth) you would be left with one with a fairly similar political balance to the actual 1950-74 constituency. *The bulk of the population lived in Madeley and the bulk of the rest in Broseley.A brief report, August 1946, about the proposed Shropshire boundaries:- Labour were very much opposed to the scheme and demanded the return of a fourth seat for Shropshire (Birmingham Daily Gazette, 13 August 1946). That remarkably insane proposal would have actually created a competitive Ludlow. Amazing. |
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Post by hullenedge on May 19, 2024 6:43:49 GMT
Decent article from 1967 about the partisan effects of the ongoing boundary review:-  |
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Post by hullenedge on May 21, 2024 8:14:28 GMT
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Post by islington on Jul 16, 2024 16:34:25 GMT
Further to recent discussions regarding Norwich on the St Neots thread, here's a map from 1908 that nicely shows the difference between the boundary of Norwich CB as it existed at that time, which became the Parliamentary boundary in 1918, and the ancient boundary of the county corporate, which was still the constituency boundary when the map was published. I'm tagging parlconst because this means his 1885-1918 map is incorrect. The CB boundary is shown as a none-too-obvious dotted line, labelled 'Co.Boro. & Union By', running roughly along the line of the later ring road (not in existence in 1908) and including the New Sprowston area within Norwich CB. The ancient boundary is more clearly shown as a dashed line labelled as a Parliamentary boundary, and excluding New Sprowston. The two boundaries diverge near the left of the map extract a short way south of Milecross Lane and they reunite near the right of the extract on Mousehold Lane.  |
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Post by parlconst on Jul 16, 2024 21:57:41 GMT
Further to recent discussions regarding Norwich on the St Neots thread, here's a map from 1908 that nicely shows the difference between the boundary of Norwich CB as it existed at that time, which became the Parliamentary boundary in 1918, and the ancient boundary of the county corporate, which was still the constituency boundary when the map was published. I'm tagging parlconst because this means his 1885-1918 map is incorrect. The CB boundary is shown as a none-too-obvious dotted line, labelled 'Co.Boro. & Union By', running roughly along the line of the later ring road (not in existence in 1908) and including the New Sprowston area within Norwich CB. The ancient boundary is more clearly shown as a dashed line labelled as a Parliamentary boundary, and excluding New Sprowston. The two boundaries diverge near the left of the map extract a short way south of Milecross Lane and they reunite near the right of the extract on Mousehold Lane. Thanks for spotting this error in the 1885-1918 boundary. All should now be corrected on the parlconst website - both the 1885 boundary map and the Constituency Chart, Area Map and Area table for Norfolk. (You may need to do a hard refresh to see the latest changes.) |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 17, 2024 8:52:03 GMT
Further to recent discussions regarding Norwich on the St Neots thread, here's a map from 1908 that nicely shows the difference between the boundary of Norwich CB as it existed at that time, which became the Parliamentary boundary in 1918, and the ancient boundary of the county corporate, which was still the constituency boundary when the map was published. I'm tagging parlconst because this means his 1885-1918 map is incorrect. The CB boundary is shown as a none-too-obvious dotted line, labelled 'Co.Boro. & Union By', running roughly along the line of the later ring road (not in existence in 1908) and including the New Sprowston area within Norwich CB. The ancient boundary is more clearly shown as a dashed line labelled as a Parliamentary boundary, and excluding New Sprowston. The two boundaries diverge near the left of the map extract a short way south of Milecross Lane and they reunite near the right of the extract on Mousehold Lane. It's interesting that the boundary precedes the creation of the ring road. Can anybody think of any other examples of cases where it wasn't a road being used as a boundary, but a boundary used as the location for a new road? |
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Post by minionofmidas on Jul 18, 2024 17:07:40 GMT
Further to recent discussions regarding Norwich on the St Neots thread, here's a map from 1908 that nicely shows the difference between the boundary of Norwich CB as it existed at that time, which became the Parliamentary boundary in 1918, and the ancient boundary of the county corporate, which was still the constituency boundary when the map was published. I'm tagging parlconst because this means his 1885-1918 map is incorrect. The CB boundary is shown as a none-too-obvious dotted line, labelled 'Co.Boro. & Union By', running roughly along the line of the later ring road (not in existence in 1908) and including the New Sprowston area within Norwich CB. The ancient boundary is more clearly shown as a dashed line labelled as a Parliamentary boundary, and excluding New Sprowston. The two boundaries diverge near the left of the map extract a short way south of Milecross Lane and they reunite near the right of the extract on Mousehold Lane. It's interesting that the boundary precedes the creation of the ring road. Can anybody think of any other examples of cases where it wasn't a road being used as a boundary, but a boundary used as the location for a new road? la Périph comes to mind (except not really since before the boundary, there was a wall there) |
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,808 
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Post by J.G.Harston on Jul 18, 2024 18:54:39 GMT
It's interesting that the boundary precedes the creation of the ring road. Can anybody think of any other examples of cases where it wasn't a road being used as a boundary, but a boundary used as the location for a new road? la Périph comes to mind (except not really since before the boundary, there was a wall there) A6102 Norton Bypass on the southern edge of Sheffield. The land was bought and the city boundary extended along a line to build a road along. |
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Post by islington on Aug 1, 2024 11:59:08 GMT
I knew that the 1885-1918 version of Bootle, although officially a county division, comprised territory that, with the exception of Bootle itself, is now incorporated into Liverpool.  But what I've only recently spotted is the uncanny precision with which its eastern boundary, and its northern boundary except the part north of Bootle proper, foreshadow the modern municipal boundary of Liverpool. Apart from the omission of Croxteth, the alignment is virtually exact all the way round to the Belle Vale area (but not beyond that, because the southern part of what is now Liverpool was in the Widnes seat 1885-1918).
It's another example of the way that political and administrative boundaries can exhibit astonishing persistence, even at a granular level, over long periods of time.
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Aug 1, 2024 17:11:50 GMT
Part of that is that the Liverpool city boundary itself has been unchanged for so long. If you look at this 1936 map you can see the then boundary of the city and the boundary of the Parliamentary Borough as it had been in 1918. I think the only significant area added to the city since then is an area of eastern Speke, area 36 on the relevant parlconst map, and even that was added by 1955. Everywhere within that Bootle constituency had been added to Liverpool by 1918 except for Bootle itself (of course) and what in 1923 was the parish of West Derby Rural. Both West Derby Rural and Croxteth Park were in the city by 1928; the addition of the latter explains the Croxteth exception. Indeed except for Speke the Liverpool city boundary seems to be the same now as in 1928. |
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