TY - CONF

T1 - Immigrants or the Old Folks

T2 - Boundaries and Jurisdictions:

AU - Collinson, Marc

PY - 2017/3/31

Y1 - 2017/3/31

N2 - In January 1965, Labour Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon Walker was defeated in his attempt to secure election at the Leyton constituency in London. The media assumed his defeat, only weeks after that in the Smethwick constituency, was due to what Saggar has called an ‘electoral penalty’ brought on by racialized politics. In a report written for Harold Wilson in the aftermath of Patrick’s defeat, the former MP Reginal Sorensen suggested that Gordon Walker had ‘dragged it (the race issue) in on his boots’. Yet the demography of the constituency, and the issues present in the election have never been fully explored. Among other factors, twenty-five percent of the population of Leyton were pensioners in 1965. The impact of other government policies, including a freeze onpensions, may therefore have had a larger impact on the election than previouslyassumed.Utilizing a variety of underused archival sources related to the by-election, thispaper will explore how local issues, and more importantly the demography of aconstituency, can help explain why Labour lost the seat. It will examine how local issues, specific to this suburb of London, and not supposed ‘national’ problems imported from a different constituency, were to blame for the election result. Finally, this paper will argue that simplifying an understanding of such a result to ‘national’ issues, leads to false assumptions on which the analysis of electoral politics are based.

AB - In January 1965, Labour Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon Walker was defeated in his attempt to secure election at the Leyton constituency in London. The media assumed his defeat, only weeks after that in the Smethwick constituency, was due to what Saggar has called an ‘electoral penalty’ brought on by racialized politics. In a report written for Harold Wilson in the aftermath of Patrick’s defeat, the former MP Reginal Sorensen suggested that Gordon Walker had ‘dragged it (the race issue) in on his boots’. Yet the demography of the constituency, and the issues present in the election have never been fully explored. Among other factors, twenty-five percent of the population of Leyton were pensioners in 1965. The impact of other government policies, including a freeze onpensions, may therefore have had a larger impact on the election than previouslyassumed.Utilizing a variety of underused archival sources related to the by-election, thispaper will explore how local issues, and more importantly the demography of aconstituency, can help explain why Labour lost the seat. It will examine how local issues, specific to this suburb of London, and not supposed ‘national’ problems imported from a different constituency, were to blame for the election result. Finally, this paper will argue that simplifying an understanding of such a result to ‘national’ issues, leads to false assumptions on which the analysis of electoral politics are based.

M3 - Paper

Y2 - 30 March 2017 through 31 March 2017

ER -