This article is about the British parliamentary constituency. For the Australian constituency of the same name, see Electoral district of Cheltenham.
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Cheltenham (/ˈtʃɛltənəm/) is a constituency[n 1]
represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. As with all constituencies, the constituency elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election at least every five years.
1918–1950: The Borough of Cheltenham and the Urban District of Charlton Kings.
1950–1983: As 1918 but with redrawn boundaries.
1983–1997: The Borough of Cheltenham, and the Borough of Tewkesbury wards of Leckhampton with Up Hatherley, Prestbury St Mary's, and Prestbury St Nicolas.
Leckhampton, Up Hatherley and Prestbury were added to the seat from the Cirencester and Tewkesbury constituency; they had previously been in the abolished Cheltenham Rural District.
1997–2010: The Borough of Cheltenham wards of All Saints, Charlton Kings, College, Hatherley and The Reddings, Hesters Way, Lansdown, Park, Pittville, St Mark's, St Paul's, and St Peter's.
Leckhampton, Up Hatherley and Prestbury were transferred to the new Tewkesbury constituency; they had been incorporated into the redrawn Borough of Cheltenham in 1991.
2010–present: The Borough of Cheltenham wards of All Saints, Battledown, Benhall and The Reddings, Charlton Kings, Charlton Park, College, Hesters Way, Lansdown, Leckhampton, Oakley, Park, Pittville, St Mark's, St Paul's, St Peter's, Springbank, Up Hatherley, and Warden Hill.
Leckhampton and Up Hatherley were transferred back to this seat from the Tewkesbury seat.
The seat covers the town of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire but covers a different, slightly smaller, area from the borough of the same name. It is bordered by the Tewkesbury and Cotswolds seats.
Constituency profile[]
Famous for its racecourse which hosts the annual Cheltenham Gold Cup in March, with a long-established girls' school and right at the edge of the Cotswold Hills, Cheltenham has a large tourism sector. GE Aviation is a large employer and GCHQ, the government communications centre, is here, so numbers of highly skilled workers and professionals (47.5% in the year ended September 2014[3]) are well above the national average (44.6%[3]). One of the West of England's most upmarket towns, the few neighbourhoods of medium levels in the Index of Multiple Deprivation are almost wholly in Hester's Way ward which has the most social housing. About 10%[citation needed] of the electorate are students at the University of Gloucestershire just outside the compact town centre. A Liberal Democrat served the seat from 1992 when their candidate Nigel Jones overturned four decades of Conservative MPs to 2015 when the Tories regained the seat.
History[]
Cheltenham borough constituency was created in the Great Reform Act of 1832 and has returned nine Liberals (or Liberal Democrats) and nine Conservatives to Parliament since that time, along with one independent.
A Conservative served the constituency from 1950 until 1992. The Conservatives' campaign in the 1992 general election following the Poll Tax riots saw a local party member make racist remarks about their own candidate, John Taylor, who was of Afro-Caribbean descent. Taylor lost the election to Nigel Jones of the Liberal Democrats.
In 2000, Jones was nearly murdered in a horrific incident at one of his MP's surgeries; a man attacked him and an assistant with a samurai sword. His colleague, Andrew Pennington, was killed in the attack. Jones was made a life peer in 2005. The Liberal Democrats held Cheltenham in the 2005 election when Martin Horwood won the election, and again in 2010, but lost when the Conservatives retook the seat in 2015.
In 2019, Cheltenham was one of five English constituencies, the others being Esher and Walton, Westmorland and Lonsdale, Winchester and East Devon, where Labour failed to obtain over 5% of the vote and lost their deposit.[13]
Another General Election was required to take place before the end of 1940. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to take place from 1939 and by the end of this year, the following candidates had been selected;
A general election was due to take place by the end of 1915. By the autumn of 1914, the following candidates had been adopted to contest that election.
^ Jump up to: abcdeStooks Smith, Henry. (1973) [1844–1850]. Craig, F. W. S. (ed.). The Parliaments of England (2nd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. p. 114. ISBN0-900178-13-2.
^Percentage change and swing for 2010 is calculated relative to the PA (Rallings and Thrasher) 2005 notional result, not actual 2005 result "Press Association Elections". Press Association. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018. Retrieved 17 July 2017.
^Percentage change and swing for 1997 is calculated relative to the Rallings and Thrasher 1992 notional constituency result, not actual 1992 result. See C. Rallings & M. Thrasher, The Media Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies (Plymouth: LGC Elections Centre, 1995)
^Percentage change and swing for 1983 is calculated relative to the BBC/ITN 1979 notional constituency result, not actual 1979 result. See British Broadcasting Corporation; Independent Television News. The BBC/ITN Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies (Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services 1983)
^‘LEMKIN, James Anthony’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2016; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 ; online edn, April 2014 accessed 18 Oct 2017
^ Jump up to: abcdefgBritish parliamentary election results, 1918–1949 (Craig)
^ Jump up to: abcCraig, F. W. S. (1983). British parliamentary election results 1918–1949 (3 ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. ISBN0-900178-06-X.
^ Jump up to: abcdBritish parliamentary election results, 1885–1918 (Craig)
^ Jump up to: abDebrett's House of Commons & Judicial Bench, 1901
^Debrett's House of Commons & Judicial Bench, 1886
^ Jump up to: abcdefghijklmnopCraig, F. W. S., ed. (1977). British Parliamentary Election Results 1832–1885(e-book)|format= requires |url= (help) (1st ed.). London: Macmillan Press. pp. 84–85. ISBN978-1-349-02349-3.
^"Election Intelligence". North Devon Gazette. 13 May 1856. p. 3. Retrieved 27 April 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^"Cheltenham Election". Cheltenham Chronicle. 10 July 1855. p. 2. Retrieved 27 April 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^"Cheltenham Election Petition". Cheltenham Journal and Gloucestershire Fashionable Weekly Gazette. 14 August 1848. p. 3. Retrieved 1 November 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^"Miscellaneous". Sheffield Independent. 3 June 1848. p. 5. Retrieved 1 November 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.
^"The Elections". Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser. 3 July 1841. p. 7. Retrieved 1 November 2018 – via British Newspaper Archive.