Beaconsfield by-election, 1982
Encyclopedia
The Beaconsfield by-election, 1982 was a parliamentary by-election
held on 27 May 1982 for the British House of Commons
constituency
of Beaconsfield
in Buckinghamshire
. It will always be remembered as the only election Tony Blair
lost in his 25-year political career.
Member of Parliament
(MP), Sir Ronald Bell
, had died at the age of 67. He had been Beaconsfield's MP since the constituency was created for the February 1974 general election
, having previously been MP for South Buckinghamshire since 1950
. Bell had first entered Parliament
at the Newport by-election in 1945
, but lost that seat two months later at the 1945 general election
.
, who had been the surprise winner of the 1977 Ashfield by-election
, where he overturned a Labour Party
majority of nearly 23,000 votes. However, he lost the Ashfield
at the 1979 general election
, and was seeking to return to Parliament.
The SDP-Liberal Alliance
chose Paul Tyler
, who had been Liberal Party
MP for Bodmin
from February 1974
to October 1974
.
The Labour Party
selected as its candidate an unknown and untested young barrister called Tony Blair
, an aspiring politician who had been advised by Labour MP Tom Pendry
to seek the party's nomination to gain political experience.
Three other candidates stood, including Tom Keen, from the Campaign for a More Prosperous Britain
, who held the record for the most candidacies in a single general election, and the by-election veteran Bill Boaks
, an eccentric campaigner for road safety, who usually described himself as "Air, Road, Public Safety, White Resident" or "Democratic Monarchist, Public Safety, White Resident". On this occasion, he chose the latter label.
held by the Conservative Party
, and a Conservative victory was expected. The real fight was for second place; the Liberal candidate had finished a close third in 1979, and the Alliance was seeking to establish itself as the main challenger to the Conservatives, while Labour fought to defends its position as the main opposition party.
On a slightly reduced turnout, the result was a win for the Tim Smith, with a fractional increase in the Conservative share of the vote. Tyler increased the Alliance's share from 17.1% to 26.8%, a significant gain, but still a disappointment when compared with the breakthroughs seen in previous by-elections.
Labour's vote was nearly halved from 20.2% in 1979, down to 10.4%, and Blair lost his deposit
as his vote was below the 12.5% threshold.
The relatively good Conservative showing may be partly attributed to the surge in support for the government due to the on-going Falklands War
.
, when he was forced to stand down at the last minute over the cash-for-questions affair
.
Tyler was a senior campaign organiser for the Alliance at further elections in the 1980s, and returned to Parliament at the 1992 general election
, as MP for North Cornwall
. He stood down in 2005
, and was made a life peer
.
Despite the party's poor showing Blair was regarded as having fought a good campaign, and he was selected as Labour candidate for the newly-created safe seat of Sedgefield
in County Durham
. He won Sedgefield at the 1983 general election
, and after a successful career in opposition he won the Labour Party leadership election in 1994
. He led Labour to a landslide victory at the 1997 general election
, and became Prime Minister
on 2 May 1997, a position he held until June 2007.
By-election
A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....
held on 27 May 1982 for the British House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
constituency
United Kingdom constituencies
In the United Kingdom , each of the electoral areas or divisions called constituencies elects one or more members to a parliament or assembly.Within the United Kingdom there are now five bodies with members elected by constituencies:...
of Beaconsfield
Beaconsfield (UK Parliament constituency)
Beaconsfield is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election. It is among the safest of Conservative seats....
in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
. It will always be remembered as the only election Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
lost in his 25-year political career.
Previous MP
The seat had become vacant on 27 February 1982, when the constituency's ConservativeConservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
(MP), Sir Ronald Bell
Ronald Bell (UK politician)
Sir Ronald McMillan Bell, , QC , Knight Bachelor , was a Conservative Party Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom representing South Buckinghamshire from 1950 to 1974 and Beaconsfield from 1974 to 1982.-Family and education:The younger son of John Bell, Ronald was educated at Cardiff High...
, had died at the age of 67. He had been Beaconsfield's MP since the constituency was created for the February 1974 general election
United Kingdom general election, February 1974
The United Kingdom's general election of February 1974 was held on the 28th of that month. It was the first of two United Kingdom general elections held that year, and the first election since the Second World War not to produce an overall majority in the House of Commons for the winning party,...
, having previously been MP for South Buckinghamshire since 1950
United Kingdom general election, 1950
The 1950 United Kingdom general election was the first general election ever after a full term of a Labour government. Despite polling over one and a half million votes more than the Conservatives, the election, held on 23 February 1950 resulted in Labour receiving a slim majority of just five...
. Bell had first entered Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
at the Newport by-election in 1945
Newport by-election, 1945
The Newport by-election, 1945 was a parliamentary by-election held on 17 May 1945 for the British House of Commons constituency of Newport in Monmouthshire. It was the last by-election of the 1935-1945 Parliament....
, but lost that seat two months later at the 1945 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1945
The United Kingdom general election of 1945 was a general election held on 5 July 1945, with polls in some constituencies delayed until 12 July and in Nelson and Colne until 19 July, due to local wakes weeks. The results were counted and declared on 26 July, due in part to the time it took to...
.
Candidates
The Conservative candidate was Tim SmithTim Smith (UK politician)
Timothy John Smith, known as Tim Smith, is a former British Conservative politician.-Politics:...
, who had been the surprise winner of the 1977 Ashfield by-election
Ashfield by-election, 1977
The Ashfield by-election was held on 28 April 1977 in the Ashfield constituency in the coal mining area of Nottinghamshire, following the resignation of Labour Member of Parliament David Marquand...
, where he overturned a Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
majority of nearly 23,000 votes. However, he lost the Ashfield
Ashfield (UK Parliament constituency)
Ashfield is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first-past-the-post voting system....
at the 1979 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1979
The United Kingdom general election of 1979 was held on 3 May 1979 to elect 635 members to the British House of Commons. The Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher ousted the incumbent Labour government of James Callaghan with a parliamentary majority of 43 seats...
, and was seeking to return to Parliament.
The SDP-Liberal Alliance
SDP-Liberal Alliance
The SDP–Liberal Alliance was an electoral pact formed by the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party in the United Kingdom which was in existence from 1981 to 1988, when the bulk of the two parties merged to form the Social and Liberal Democrats, later referred to as simply the Liberal...
chose Paul Tyler
Paul Tyler, Baron Tyler
Paul Archer Tyler, Baron Tyler, CBE, DL is a Liberal Democrat politician in the United Kingdom. He was a Member of Parliament from February to October 1974 and from 1992 to 2005, and now sits in the House of Lords as a life peer....
, who had been Liberal Party
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
MP for Bodmin
Bodmin (UK Parliament constituency)
Bodmin was the name of a parliamentary constituency in Cornwall from 1295 until 1983. Initially, it was a parliamentary borough, which returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons of England and later the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom until the 1868 general...
from February 1974
United Kingdom general election, February 1974
The United Kingdom's general election of February 1974 was held on the 28th of that month. It was the first of two United Kingdom general elections held that year, and the first election since the Second World War not to produce an overall majority in the House of Commons for the winning party,...
to October 1974
United Kingdom general election, October 1974
The United Kingdom general election of October 1974 took place on 10 October 1974 to elect 635 members to the British House of Commons. It was the second general election of that year and resulted in the Labour Party led by Harold Wilson, winning by a tiny majority of 3 seats.The election of...
.
The Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
selected as its candidate an unknown and untested young barrister called Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
, an aspiring politician who had been advised by Labour MP Tom Pendry
Tom Pendry, Baron Pendry
Thomas Pendry, Baron Pendry PC is a Labour politician and member of the House of Lords. He was previously the Labour member of parliament for Stalybridge and Hyde from 1970 to 2001. In 2000, prior to his retirement as an MP he was made a member of the Privy council on the recommendation of Tony...
to seek the party's nomination to gain political experience.
Three other candidates stood, including Tom Keen, from the Campaign for a More Prosperous Britain
Campaign for a More Prosperous Britain
The Campaign for a More Prosperous Britain was a political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded prior to the February 1974 general election by Tom Keen and Harold Smith, both business owners in Manchester....
, who held the record for the most candidacies in a single general election, and the by-election veteran Bill Boaks
Bill Boaks
Lieutenant Commander William George Boaks DSC was a British Royal Navy officer who became an eccentric political campaigner for road safety. He died at the age of 81 as a result of a road traffic accident...
, an eccentric campaigner for road safety, who usually described himself as "Air, Road, Public Safety, White Resident" or "Democratic Monarchist, Public Safety, White Resident". On this occasion, he chose the latter label.
Result
Beaconsfield has always been one of the safest seatsSafe seat
A safe seat is a seat in a legislative body which is regarded as fully secured, either by a certain political party, the incumbent representative personally or a combination of both...
held by the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
, and a Conservative victory was expected. The real fight was for second place; the Liberal candidate had finished a close third in 1979, and the Alliance was seeking to establish itself as the main challenger to the Conservatives, while Labour fought to defends its position as the main opposition party.
On a slightly reduced turnout, the result was a win for the Tim Smith, with a fractional increase in the Conservative share of the vote. Tyler increased the Alliance's share from 17.1% to 26.8%, a significant gain, but still a disappointment when compared with the breakthroughs seen in previous by-elections.
Labour's vote was nearly halved from 20.2% in 1979, down to 10.4%, and Blair lost his deposit
Deposit (politics)
A deposit is a sum of money that a candidate must pay in return for the right to stand for election to certain political offices, particularly seats in legislatures.-United Kingdom:...
as his vote was below the 12.5% threshold.
The relatively good Conservative showing may be partly attributed to the surge in support for the government due to the on-going Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
.
Aftermath
Smith held the seat until the 1997 general electionUnited Kingdom general election, 1997
The United Kingdom general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997, more than five years after the previous election on 9 April 1992, to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party ended its 18 years in opposition under the leadership of Tony Blair, and won the general...
, when he was forced to stand down at the last minute over the cash-for-questions affair
Cash-for-questions affair
The "Cash-for-questions affair" was one of the biggest political scandals of the 1990s in the United Kingdom.It began in October 1994 when The Guardian newspaper alleged that London's most successful parliamentary lobbyist, Ian Greer of Ian Greer Associates, had bribed two Conservative Members of...
.
Tyler was a senior campaign organiser for the Alliance at further elections in the 1980s, and returned to Parliament at the 1992 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1992
The United Kingdom general election of 1992 was held on 9 April 1992, and was the fourth consecutive victory for the Conservative Party. This election result was one of the biggest surprises in 20th Century politics, as polling leading up to the day of the election showed Labour under leader Neil...
, as MP for North Cornwall
North Cornwall (UK Parliament constituency)
North Cornwall is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.- Boundaries :...
. He stood down in 2005
United Kingdom general election, 2005
The United Kingdom general election of 2005 was held on Thursday, 5 May 2005 to elect 646 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party under Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, but with a majority of 66, reduced from 160....
, and was made a life peer
Life peer
In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the Peerage whose titles cannot be inherited. Nowadays life peerages, always of baronial rank, are created under the Life Peerages Act 1958 and entitle the holders to seats in the House of Lords, presuming they meet qualifications such as...
.
Despite the party's poor showing Blair was regarded as having fought a good campaign, and he was selected as Labour candidate for the newly-created safe seat of Sedgefield
Sedgefield (UK Parliament constituency)
Sedgefield is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election...
in County Durham
County Durham
County Durham is a ceremonial county and unitary district in north east England. The county town is Durham. The largest settlement in the ceremonial county is the town of Darlington...
. He won Sedgefield at the 1983 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1983
The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of Labour in 1945...
, and after a successful career in opposition he won the Labour Party leadership election in 1994
Labour Party (UK) leadership election, 1994
A leadership election was held on 21 July 1994 for the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, after the sudden death of incumbent leader John Smith. The 1994 election would ultimately decide not only Labour's new leader, but also the next Prime Minister...
. He led Labour to a landslide victory at the 1997 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1997
The United Kingdom general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997, more than five years after the previous election on 9 April 1992, to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party ended its 18 years in opposition under the leadership of Tony Blair, and won the general...
, and became Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
on 2 May 1997, a position he held until June 2007.
Votes
See also
- Beaconsfield constituencyBeaconsfield (UK Parliament constituency)Beaconsfield is a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election. It is among the safest of Conservative seats....
- BeaconsfieldBeaconsfieldBeaconsfield is a market town and civil parish operating as a town council within the South Bucks district in Buckinghamshire, England. It lies northwest of Charing Cross in Central London, and south-east of the county town of Aylesbury...
- List of United Kingdom by-elections
- United Kingdom by-election recordsUnited Kingdom by-election recordsUK by-election records is an annotated list of notable records from UK Parliamentary by-elections. A by-election occurs when a Member of Parliament resigns, dies, or is disqualified or expelled, and an election is held to fill the vacant seat...