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The Abbey division of Westminster was a parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom, named for Westminster Abbey.
[edit] Boundaries and History
The City of Westminster is a district of Inner London. Its southern boundary is on the north bank of the River Thames. In 1918 it was to the west of the City of London, to the south of Holborn and St. Pancras and to the east of Kensington and Chelsea.
Before 1918 the area which became the Abbey division comprised the single-member constituencies of Strand and Westminster.
In 1918 the eastern part of the Metropolitan Borough of Westminster, comprising the then wards of Covent Garden, Great Marlborough, Pall Mall, Regent, St. Anne, St. John, St. Margaret, Strand and part of Charing Cross, became this new constituency.
This was a very Conservative area of central London, which was sometimes attracted by non-major party candidates. The Labour and Liberal parties had little support in the area.
The first MP for this constituency, William Burdett-Coutts, was connected with a family prominent in City of Westminster politics since the eighteenth century. He himself was born in the United States in 1851, his grandparents on both sides having been British subjects. After he married Baroness Burdett-Coutts in 1881 he changed his surname from Bartlett to Burdett-Coutts. He was Member of Parliament for Westminster from 1885 until 1918.
After Burdett-Coutts died in 1921 there was a slightly surreal by-election where all three candidates claimed to be anti-waste. At the time the Anti-Waste League was active. It was formed to advance the political ambitions of the newspaper owner Viscount Rothermere. The objects of the League were to insist upon measures being taken to restore the country to solvency, urge a wholesale reduction of expenditure, fight the battle of local rates and oppose sham Anti-Waste candidates. The Conservative anti-waste candidate (Brigadier General John Nicholson) won the election, but the Anti-Waste League (whose candidate eventually became a Conservative MP) polled respectably and the Liberal anti-waste candidate (a former MP) came third. Nicholson had the support of Horatio Bottomley and his Independent Parliamentary Group, although he never joined it. He seems to have been a Conservative who did not support the coalition government in Parliament. After the fall of the coalition in 1922 Nicholson was an orthodox Conservative MP.
After Nicholson's death in 1924 a famous by-election took place. The new Conservative candidate (Otho Nicholson) was challenged by the very prominent politician Winston Churchill as a Constitutionalist, the formidable Labour stalwart and future MP Fenner Brockway and a much more obscure Liberal. The Constitutionalist label was one used by a number of candidates (mostly ex-Liberals like Churchill) in the 1920s. The Constitutionalists did not function as a party and many of them (like Churchill) ended up in the Conservative Party. Nicholson beat Churchill, by a razor thin margin of 43.
Until 1939 Otho Nicholson and his successor Sidney Herbert had little trouble winning elections. When Herbert died in 1939 the local Labour and Liberal parties jointly supported an Independent Progressive candidate, advocating a popular front. It did not matter. The Tories still won.
By 1945 the electorate of the area had dropped by almost half since the pre-war by-election. Labour almost equalled the 27% vote Brockway had received in 1924. Carritt, the Independent Progressive of 1939, reappeared as a Communist candidate and received an astonishing 17.6% of the vote. The Conservatives still had an absolute majority of the vote.
In 1950 the area became the central part of the Cities of London and Westminster constituency.
[edit] Members of Parliament 1918-1950
[edit] Elections
- Swing: As this was a constituency where the same parties only once finished in first and second places in successive elections, no attempt is made to calculate swing, except for 1929. The negative swing that year is towards the Labour Party and against the Conservative Party.
- Resignation of Nicholson in July 1932
- Constituency abolished 1950
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page
- Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885-1972, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (Political Reference Publications 1972)
- Who's Who of British Members of Parliament: Volume III 1919-1945, edited by M. Stenton and S. Lees (The Harvester Press 1976)
- British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (The Macmillan Press 1979)
- Minor Parties at British Parliamentary Elections 1885-1974, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (The Macmillan Press 1975)
