West Derbyshire was a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. From 1885, until it was replaced by the Derbyshire Dales constituency in the 2010 general election, it elected one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post voting system. It was a safe Conservative seat for most of its existence.
Boundaries This was the only really safe Conservative seat in Derbyshire, consisting mostly of rural villages and tourist towns like Bakewell and Matlock; Labour's only strengths were in Wirksworth and Masson, not enough to end the long-standing Conservative representation of this seat.
Boundary review Following their review of parliamentary representation in Derbyshire, the Boundary Commission for England created a new constituency of Derbyshire Dales based on the existing West Derbyshire constituency.
History
Historically associated with the Cavendish family, the seat and its predecessors were usually represented by one of the future Dukes of Devonshire or their relatives from 1580 until the Second World War. When the Cavendish family left the Liberals over Irish Home Rule the seat stayed loyal to them as they sat first as Liberal Unionists then as Conservatives. In 1918 the hold on the constituency was briefly broken by Charles Frederick White standing for the Liberals, but the seat was regained in 1923. In a by-election in 1944, White's son, also called Charles Frederick White resigned as the official Labour nominee in order to stand against the wartime party truce. He defeated the Conservative candidate, William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, and subsequently took the Labour whip in the Commons, holding the seat in the 1945 general election for Labour. The Conservatives regained the seat in the 1950 general election and held it with mostly safe majorities thereafter, with Liberal-affiliated candidates being their main challengers from 1974 onwards, with the closest they came to losing being in the 1986 by-election when they held it by only 100 votes in a period of heavy unpopularity for the government of Margaret Thatcher. The seat changed its name (with minor boundary changes) to Derbyshire Dales in 2010.
Members of Parliament Year Member Whip 1885 Lord Edward Cavendish Liberal 1886 Liberal Unionist 1891 Victor Cavendish Liberal Unionist 1908 Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Earl of Kerry Liberal Unionist 1918 Charles White Liberal 1923 Edward Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington Unionist 1938 Henry Hunloke Conservative 1944 Charles White Jr. Independent Labour 1945 Labour 1950 Edward Wakefield Conservative 1962 Aidan Crawley Conservative 1967 James Scott-Hopkins Conservative 1979 Matthew Parris Conservative 1986 Patrick McLoughlin Conservative 2010 constituency abolished
Elections Elections in the 1880s
Elections in the 1890s
Elections in the 1900s
Elections in the 1910s
General Election 1914–15:
Another General Election was required to take place before the end of 1915. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to take place and by July 1914, the following candidates had been selected; Unionist:Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Earl of Kerry Liberal: Charles White
Elections in the 1920s
Elections in the 1930s
General Election 1939–40
Another General Election was required to take place before the end of 1940. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to take place from 1939 and by the end of this year, the following candidates had been selected; Conservative: Henry Hunloke Labour: Charles White Jr Liberal: James Ivor WaddingtonDerby Daily Telegraph, 10 Jan 1938
Elections in the 1940s
Elections in the 1950s
Elections in the 1960s
Elections in the 1970s
Elections in the 1980s
Elections in the 1990s
Elections in the 2000s
See also Parliamentary constituencies in Derbyshire
Notes and references Craig, F. W. S. (1983). British parliamentary election results 1918–1949 (3 ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. .
Sources Guardian Unlimited Politics (Election results from 1992 to the present) http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/ (Election results from 1951 to the present)
External links West Derbyshire UK Parliament constituency (boundaries April 1997 – April 2010) at MapIt UK