Cambridge by-election, 1976
Encyclopedia
The Cambridge
by-election
of 2 December 1976 was held after Conservative
Member of Parliament
(MP) David Lane
resigned his seat to take up the position of Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality
.: The seat was retained by the Tories in a result that cut the government majority to one seat.
Cambridge (UK Parliament constituency)
Cambridge is a parliamentary 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....
by-election
By-election
A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....
of 2 December 1976 was held after Conservative
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...
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) David Lane
David Lane (politician)
David William Stennis Stuart Lane was a British Conservative Party politician.Lane was educated at Eton College, Trinity College, Cambridge and Yale University. He became a barrister, called to the bar by Middle Temple in 1955. From 1956 to 1959 he was secretary of the British Iron and Steel...
resigned his seat to take up the position of Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality
Commission for Racial Equality
The Commission for Racial Equality was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom which aimed to tackle racial discrimination and promote racial equality. Its work has been merged into the new Equality and Human Rights Commission.-History:...
.: The seat was retained by the Tories in a result that cut the government majority to one seat.
Candidates
- Michael O'Loughlin had been the LiberalLiberal 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...
candidate for the same seat in the general elections of 1964United Kingdom general election, 1964The United Kingdom general election of 1964 was held on 15 October 1964, more than five years after the preceding election, and thirteen years after the Conservative Party had retaken power...
, 1966United Kingdom general election, 1966The 1966 United Kingdom general election on 31 March 1966 was called by sitting Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Wilson's decision to call an election turned on the fact that his government, elected a mere 17 months previously in 1964 had an unworkably small majority of only 4 MPs...
, February 1974United Kingdom general election, February 1974The 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,...
and October 1974United Kingdom general election, October 1974The 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...
. He had not contested the seat at either the 1967 Cambridge by-electionCambridge by-election, 1967The Cambridge by-election of 21 September 1967 was held after the premature death of Cambridge's Labour MP Robert Davies in June 1967.:The seat was highly marginal, having only been won by Labour during the previous year's Labour landslide by 439 votes, and it had only been the second time Labour...
, or the 1970 general electionUnited Kingdom general election, 1970The United Kingdom general election of 1970 was held on 18 June 1970, and resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, who defeated the Labour Party under Harold Wilson. The election also saw the Liberal Party and its new leader Jeremy Thorpe lose half their...
. This was his fifth and last candidature for the seat. - Robert Rhodes James was a noted historian and a former winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys PrizeJohn Llewellyn Rhys PrizeThe John Llewellyn Rhys Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of literature by an author from the Commonwealth aged 35 or under, written in English and published in the United Kingdom...
. - Philip Sargent stood under the title "Science Fiction Looney" in what was probably the first use of the word 'looney' by a prospective Parliamentary candidate, in a move which in part inspired the naming of the Official Monster Raving Loony PartyOfficial Monster Raving Loony PartyThe Official Monster Raving Loony Party is a registered political party established in the United Kingdom in 1983 by musician and politician David Sutch , better known as Screaming Lord Sutch.-History:...
. - Jeremy Wotherspoon was an estate agentEstate agentAn estate agent is a person or business that arranges the selling, renting or management of properties, and other buildings, in the United Kingdom and Ireland. An agent that specialises in renting is often called a letting or management agent...
and former shop steward for the Transport and General Workers' UnionTransport and General Workers' UnionThe Transport and General Workers' Union, also known as the TGWU and the T&G, was one of the largest general trade unions in the United Kingdom and Ireland - where it was known as the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union - with 900,000 members...
. He had contested WatfordWatford (UK Parliament constituency)Watford is a parliamentary 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...
for the National FrontBritish National FrontThe National Front is a far right, white-only political party whose major political activities took place during the 1970s and 1980s. Its popularity peaked in the 1979 general election, when it received 191,719 votes ....
in the two general elections of 1974. He was a candidate for the British National PartyBritish National PartyThe British National Party is a British far-right political party formed as a splinter group from the National Front by John Tyndall in 1982...
in the 2009 European electionEuropean Parliament election, 2009 (United Kingdom)The European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's component of the 2009 European Parliament election, the voting for which was held on Thursday 4 June 2009, coinciding with the 2009 local elections in England. Most of the results of the election were announced on Sunday 7 June, after...
in the South West England constituencySouth West England (European Parliament constituency)South West England is a constituency of the European Parliament. For 2009 it elects 6 MEPs using the d'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation, reduced from 7 in 2004.-Boundaries:...
.