With a General Election either just behind us, it is a good time to cast a brief look at some perhaps lesser-known facts about Herne Hill’s electoral history. Today Herne Hill, however you define its precise boundaries, is all included in Dulwich and West Norwood, a constituency with an electorate of some 75,000 created in 1997. At the 2015 General Election 67% turned out to vote, in line with overall turnout for the whole of the UK.
This is in fact only a little below the turnout in 1832. In that year, following the reforms of the Great Reform Act, the electorate in SE London was divided between the constituencies of Lambeth and Southwark, each entitled to send two members of parliament to Westminster. But even with the reforms only one in five of the adult male population was entitled to vote – and women not at all.
Charles Tennyson was one of Lambeth’s first two MPs. He is perhaps best remembered for his boundless social aspiration – he added D’Eyncourt to his name to distinguish his side of the Tennyson family from the more impecunious side to which his nephew, the poetic voice of Victorian England, belonged – and for Bayons Manor, the magnificent mock-medieval moated mansion he built for himself in Lincolnshire. In the same spirit that saw the destruction of the Euston Arch in 1961, Bayons Manor – admittedly in very poor condition – was dynamited in 1964. The local yellow stone was used for local road building. Elton John’s writing partner, Bernie Taupin, was living nearby at this time. It is said that, contrary to the popular association with the Wizard of Oz, this is the true origin of the “Yellow Brick Road” of their famous song.
Increases in London’s population in the 19th century and widening of the franchise saw the creation of two new constituencies, Norwood and Dulwich, in 1885. Lambeth and Southwark had been very much Whig/Liberal strongholds. For the next 60 years, until the Labour landslide of 1945, both constituencies were firmly Conservative. In Dulwich Sir Blundell Maple, who built up the once globally dominant furniture company – supplier of furniture to the Imperial palaces in Vienna and St Petersburg – was the Dulwich MP from 1887 until his death in 1903. Andrew Bonar Law, briefly Prime Minister in 1922-23 (the shortest term of any PM in the 20th century), was the member for Dulwich for 1906–1910. Over in Norwood Thomas Lynn Bristowe was the MP until his untimely demise at the opening of Brockwell Park in 1892, the saving of which from the hands of developers was very much his doing. Elections were often a less bruising business in those days and Bristowe’s successor, Sir Charles Ernest Tritton, was returned unopposed in two of the three of the elections in which he stood. From 1935 until his defeat in 1945, Norwood’s MP was Duncan Sandys, son-in-law of Winston Churchill. Sandys, who returned to Westminster as MP for Streatham in 1950, is now remembered for the strong pro-European views that he shared with his father-in-law and the long-running dissension within the Conservative party about Britain’s place in Europe. More notoriously, Sandys is also remembered from the scandal about the Duchess of Argyll and the “headless man” photographs.
More recent times have seen Eric Morley, the successful impressario who brought us the Miss World competition and TV’s Come Dancing, standing for the Conservatives in Dulwich in 1974 and 1979, on the latter occasion being defeated by a mere 122 votes by the Labour Attorney General Sam Silkin. Another unsuccessful contender in Dulwich was Labour’s Kate Hoey, before her election in Vauxhall, a constituency that lies wholly within the borough of Lambeth. In the 2016 Referendum Lambeth had the highest Remain vote in the country (at 78%), but Hoey is a strong Brexiteer – a conundrum for her electorate to consider. An unsuccessful contender in Norwood in 1987 was Dominic Grieve for the Conservatives, who later found a safe seat at Beaconsfield and was until 2014 Attorney General in the Coalition Government. A first attempt to be elected by Kemi Adegoke for the Conservatives in Dulwich and West Norwood in 2010 also ended in failure, but – since her marriage, Kemi Badenoch – she is standing this year in the rock-solid Conservative seat of Saffron Walden. She will not be the first Black British Conservative MP, that position being held by Helen Grant, member for Maidstone and the Weald.
Boundary changes have been recommended that would see Dulwich and West Norwood lose parts of Brixton and, curiously, West Norwood station, but areas in East Dulwich would be gained. The calling of the 2017 General Election put these proposals on hold.
Laurence Marsh
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