Saturday, May 26, 2012

From the Vaults

I've popped to the party offices in Clapham, and run across our archivist here. So, I put him to work, and here are our votes from the 1973 GLC election:

Islington NorthBuick284
Hackney North & Stoke NewingtonCarter250
HampsteadCox191
HornseyPorter144
StreathamSimpkins120
VauxhallSansum121
Lambeth CentralBaldwin115
TottenhamA. Young109
Holborn & St. PancrasDavies99
NorwoodH. Young95
St. MaryleboneWeidberg84


If we take those seats in our 2012 area, Norwood, Streatham, Lambeth Central and Vauxhall, we have 451. The Old GLC constituencies were much smaller and more numerous, but judging by their names they seem to have corresponded with the rough size of a Parliamentary constituency, and seem to have had electoral lists totalling about 45,000 voters. So that was 451 out of about 185,000 potential voters.

As the wikipedia article, linked to above, states, 1973 was a changed electoral system. Here are our totals for 1970

CamdenCox391
CamdenDavies323
CamdenGrant299
EalingGeorge735
EalingBuchanan695
EalingRose392
EalingSawyer293
HaringeyCarter443
HaringeyBuick374
HaringeyWaite212
LambethGarnham620
LambethPhillips536
LambethSimkins295


As can be seen, these were multi-member constituencies, so we could be picking up stray votes from other parties. We can take our "real" vote as being our top vote in each, which to summarise were:

CamdenCox391
EalingGeorge735
HaringeyCarter443
LambethGarnham620


We're mostly conerned with Lambeth. Now, note, this is across the whole borough (hence the much higher votes than 1973). Lambeth is, obviously, what is now our main stomping ground of Lambeth and Southwark. 620 votes in 1970 can be roughly coubled (assuming an equivilent vote available in Southwark) to give us 1,200 - about our result in 2008, but about half of our vote this time. The above results were about 0.6% of the vote. But, let's look at 1967.

CamdenBuchanan907
CamdenGrant419
CamdenGiles411
EalingCox1250
EalingGeorge1107
EalingRose611
EalingWait441
HaringeyBuick1277
HaringeyCarter1191
HaringeyDavies1067
LambethGarnham1362
LambethBaldwin970
LambethPhillips806


And those headlines again:

LambethGarnham1362
HaringeyBuick1277
EalingCox1250
CamdenBuchanan907


Now, intriguingly, we were up against Communist Party opposition that year, and by and large they ouit polled us. Except in Lambeth, where Garnham came above one of the communist candidates. 1967 was not a year of crisis (in fact, it was the year before the crisis, while the going was still relatively good). It was a year of voting against the incumbant Labour government (so the Tories got in) and that may explain our quite high vote in Haringey (1.8%), and our then record in Lambeth (1.3%). To continue my unscientific procedure, if we double the Lambeth vote, we get 2724, just behind our score this time. Last time led to Tory government and to a surge back to Labour, this time we achieved our vote during a surge to Labour, which suggests there may be space for more growth. but in any case, it looks like 2012 is definitively our best election result ever. The trick now will be to build on that vote.

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