The Bishop
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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
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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
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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
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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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islington
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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.'
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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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