Southport by-election, 1952

The 1952 Southport by-election was held on 6 February 1952 after the incumbent Conservative MP Robert Hudson was elevated to a hereditary peerage. The Conservative candidate was Roger Fleetwood-Hesketh, a former mayor of Southport.[1] The Labour party selected 32-year old Alan Tillotson, an executive of the Bolton Evening News.[2] Hubert Bentliff, who had been the Liberal party's candidate at the previous year's general election, ran again for the party.[3]

The campaign focused mainly on issues arising from the general election, which had brought the Conservatives to power after six years of Labour government. For the Conservatives the focus was on the cost of living: "we are applying the brakes to arrest the disastrous fall in the buying power of the pound ... we are determined to put a stop to the creeping inflation which is not only eating into our social services, pensions and savings, but destroying our capacity to import the food and raw materials by which we live". Labour insisted that the Conservatives had won the general election by blaming the party for all the difficulties of the post war period: "They now admit ... that they were caused by circumstances outside the control of any Government" and warned that cuts in social services "might foreshadow more serious attacks on the welfare State in the Budget".[4]

With turnout down around 10,000 votes from the general election, the Labour vote declined slightly, Liberal support fell by nearly 4,000 and Conservative votes by nearly 6,000.. The result was a comfortable majority for the Conservatives in a constituency that they had only twice failed to win since the beginning of the century.[5]

Southport by-election, 1952[6]
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Conservative Roger Fleetwood-Hesketh 24,589 62.0 +1.8
Labour A L Tillotson 11,310 28.5 +3.7
Liberal Hubert David Bentliff 3,776 9.5 -5.5
Majority 13,279 33.5 -1.8
Turnout 39,675
Conservative hold Swing

Previous Election

General Election 1951: Southport
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Conservative Robert Hudson 30,388 60.2
Labour H O Ellis 12,535 24.8
Liberal Hubert David Bentliff 7,576 15.0
Majority 17,853 35.3
Turnout 50,499 77.7
Conservative hold Swing

References

  1. "News in Brief." Times [London, England] 15 Jan. 1952
  2. "News in Brief." Times [London, England] 17 Jan. 1952
  3. "News in Brief." Times [London, England] 24 Jan. 1952
  4. OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. "Issues In Southport By-Election." Times [London, England] 2 Feb. 1952
  5. "Conservatives Hold Southport." Times [London, England] 7 Feb. 1952
  6. "1952 By Election Results". Archived from the original on 2012-02-25. Retrieved 2015-08-12.
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