Battersea (UK Parliament constituency) encyclopedia topics

Boundaries

Battersea is an unusually-shaped constituency due to it following the Thames as it snakes into and out of central London, covering the north-eastern third of the London Borough of Wandsworth.

It takes in all of the district of Battersea including the park and riverside, and stretches out eastwards to include Nine Elms and Queenstown; and westwards to include most of Wandsworth town, including the riverside, the Town Hall and East Hill. But Battersea also stretches south between Wandsworth Common and Clapham Common to include Balham ward, which is actually only the eastern end of Balham (the rest being in Tooting). It is no longer the safe Labour seat it used to be as the area had a considerable influx of young professionals, or yuppies, in the mid 1980's which swung it towards the Conservatives. It returned to Labour in 1997, but had a very meagre majority for them in 2005.

It is bordered by the constituencies of-

Boundary review

Following their review of parliamentary representation in South London the Boundary Commission for England has created a modified Battersea constituency from the following electoral wards:

Balham, Fairfield, Latchmere, Northcote, Queenstown, St Mary’s Park, Shaftesbury.

History

Battersea constituency was originally created in 1885. From 1892 to 1918 the seat was held by trade union leader John Burns, who would serve in the Liberal cabinets of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Herbert Asquith from 1905 until 1914. The constituency was split in 1918 into two constituencies, Battersea North and Battersea South. The two constituencies were rejoined in 1983, although some areas of Battersea South became part of the adjoining Tooting constituency. Alf Dubs, who had previously been MP for Battersea South, won the constituency for the Labour Party in 1983 and the Conservative candidate John Bowis won in 1987 and 1992. Martin Linton won it back for the Labour Party in 1997 and has held the seat ever since.

In the 2005 election, Linton's majority was slashed and he now has the fourth smallest Labour party majority in the country.

Trivia

In 2001, the candidate T.E Barber used the candidate description "No fruit out of context party", and advocated the end of, amongst other crimes against food, pineapples on pizza. (David Boothroyd

The old Battersea North seat is one of only two seats in London to have had a Communist MP Shapurji Saklatvala represented the area from 1922 to 1929. A wealthy aristocratic Indian he was not only one of the first Communists ever elected to the House of Commons but also only the third from a minority ethnic background. At first, Saklatvala had local Labour party support but then stood as a Communist in 1924 with local Labour party backing. However, the national party stepped in to ensure in 1929 that an official Labour candidate stood against him. The Battersea Labour Club had a notice on its notice board up until the 1980s banning Communists from admission to the club.