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Inter-Constituency Movement of British Parliamentary Candidates, 1951–1959*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
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The legal or customary requirement that legislators reside in the districts they represent is one of the principal structural respects in which American legislatures differ from those of most other democracies. Our legislators and party leaders commonly defend the local residence rule by claiming that it ensures that each legislator will know the special problems and desires of his constituents and thus be equipped to represent them faithfully.
Some academic commentators, on the other hand, have argued that the rule is a prime cause of the parochialism which, they say, prevents Congress and state legislatures from formulating consistent and purposive general programs. These critics customarily contrast American practice unfavorably with that in Great Britain, where the last local residence rule for M.P.s was repealed in 1774. In Britain, the argument runs, the absence of the rule not only minimizes localism but, even more, it enables the national party leaders to allocate their personnel resources in the most effective way.
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- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1964
References
1 Cf. the comparative summary in Wheare, K. C., Legislatures (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 43–44Google Scholar.
2 See in particular Schattschneider, E. E., Party Government (New York, 1942), pp. 100, 104, 143 146–148Google Scholar; and Galloway, George B., The Legislative Process in Congress (New York, 1953), pp. 354–355Google Scholar.
3 Ross, J. F. S., Elections and Electors (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955), p. 229Google Scholar.
4 Cf. Ford, Henry Jones, Representative Government (New York, 1924), pp. 165–166Google Scholar; Finer, Herman, Governments of Greater European Powers (New York, 1956), p. 95Google Scholar; and Schattschneider, loc. cit.
5 “Voluntarily” in this context means that they were not forced to change constituencies by the abolition or drastic boundary revisions of the constituencies of their first candidatures: Amateurs and Professionals in British Politics, 1918–59 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. 26Google Scholar.
6 The median “swing” in the popular vote to the Conservatives from 1950 to 1951 was 1.1 per cent; from 1951 to 1955, 1.8 per cent; and from 1955 to 1959, 1.1 per cent: Butler, D. E. and Rose, Richard, The British General Election of 1959 (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1960), p. 235Google Scholar. In each of the three elections the Conservatives won a net gain of 23 seats.
7 Liberals won six seats in each general election, five by incumbents being reelected each time. They lost one seat (Carmarthen) and gained one (North Devon) in 1959. The only Liberal returned by a by-election (Mark Bonham Carter at Torrington in 1958) was defeated in 1959.
8 The redistribution of 1948 produced many more “involuntary” movements. In the general election of 1950, no less than 114 M.P.s stood in constituencies other than those they had held at the dissolution because their former seats had been abolished. Of these, 94 won and 20 lost in their new constituencies. Another 12 moved to new constituencies because boundary revisions had so drastically altered the political complections of their former seats that these no longer seemed winnable, and 11 won in their new constituencies.
9 An often-cited example of the latter was C. A. R. Crosland, who was elected Labour Member for South Gloucestershire in 1950 and reelected in 1951 with a majority of 5,338. The constituency was so revised by the 1955 redistribution that he sought another, safer seat and was adopted for the Test division of Southampton. He lost by 3,842 votes in the 1955 general election, while his Labour successor in South Gloucestershire lost by only 1,726 votes.
10 This does not include Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, a Conservative minister who had held the marginal (majority of 1,707 in 1951) West Derby division of Liverpool since 1935, but became prospective candidate for the safe (majority of 19,749 in 1951) seat of Epsom in Surrey in 1954. He was made Lord Chancellor before the 1955 general election, however, so his move did not become final as did the two cases discussed in the text.
11 It should be emphasized again that we have no information about what proportion of these candidates made no effort to secure second candidatures, and what proportion tried but failed.
12 Honourable Members (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1959), p. 24Google Scholar.
13 There are too few cases of Liberal repeaters to justify multivariate analysis.
14 A “personal connection,” as the term is used here, includes having been educated in the constituency, or making a living there, or holding a local government office there, or holding a trade union or trade association office there, or being the spouse or child of the current or former Member for the constituency. The information about each candidate was taken from published biographical sources. Since we have no systematic information about the candidates' connections with families socially prominent in their constituencies, the figures in Table V probably understate rather than exaggerate the proportions of locally-connected candidates.
15 This statement is based upon an analysis of the repeaters only, which reveals relationships obscured by the arrangement of the data in Table V.
16 A “hopeless seat” is here defined as one won by the opposition by a margin of 10 per cent or more in the preceding general election (i.e., 55 per cent to 45 per cent), and all other seats are defined as “winnable seats.”
17 The figures are as follows: among Conservative candidates under 40 in winnable seats, 71 per cent (17 of 24) with no local connections dropped out, while 55 per cent (6 of 11) of those with local connections dropped out. Among Labour candidates under 40 in winnable seats, 40 per cent (8 of 20) with no local connections dropped out, while 25 per cent (2 of 8) with local connections dropped out.
18 For a recent discussion, see Sampson, Anthony, Anatomy of Britain (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1962)Google Scholar, chs. 12–13.
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