The

Birmingham Ladywood Birmingham Ladywood is a constituency of part of the city of Birmingham, represented in the House of Commons since 2010 by Shabana Mahmood of the Labour Party. Members of Parliament Clare Short, elected as a Labour MP from the 1983 gene ...

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

, in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

, on 26 June 1969 was held after

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MP) Victor Yates died on 19 January the same year. Although the seat had been Labour-held since 1945 it was captured by the Liberals in a defeat for

Harold Wilson James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. He ...

's government.

Campaign

In Doris Fisher, Dr. Louis Glass and

Wallace Lawler Wallace Leslie Lawler (15 March 191228 September 1972) was a British Liberal politician. He was elected a Member of Parliament (MP) by gaining Birmingham, Ladywood from Labour at a by-election on 26 June 1969. However, Lawler only served for on ...

the three major parties all picked candidates who were members of the local council. Lawler, however, had a strong reputation for campaigning in the area, having previously used issues raised by the television drama ''

Cathy Come Home ''Cathy Come Home'' is a 1966 BBC television play about homelessness. It was written by Jeremy Sandford, produced by Tony Garnett and directed by Ken Loach. A 1998 ''Radio Times'' readers' poll voted it the "best single television drama" and a ...

'' (1966) to highlight poverty in the area, organised a petition to protest against increases in electricity prices and arranged a protest demonstration of mainly Birmingham pensioners to travel to London to hand in letters and petitions at

10 Downing Street 10 Downing Street in London, also known colloquially in the United Kingdom as Number 10, is the official residence and executive office of the first lord of the treasury, usually, by convention, the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Along wi ...

. As a consequence, the popular local activist ensured the first

Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. __TOC__ Active liberal parties This is a li ...

MP for a

constituency in 80 years.

Colin Jordan John Colin Campbell Jordan (19 June 1923 – 9 April 2009) was a leading figure in post-war neo-Nazism in Great Britain. In the far-right circles of the 1960s, Jordan represented the most explicitly "Nazi" inclination in his open use of the st ...

ran as a candidate for the

far right Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...

British Movement The British Movement (BM), later called the British National Socialist Movement (BNSM), is a British neo-Nazi organisation founded by Colin Jordan in 1968. It grew out of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which was founded in 1962. Frequentl ...

and, with Ray Hill as his election agent, their campaign, in which their literature attacked

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

s and immigrants and proclaimed loyalty to

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

, led to some violent scuffles with opponents. Although Jordan finished a distant fourth the result was frequently cited by those who advocated Nazi orthodoxy on the far right as the British Movement won 282 votes (3% share), despite openly wearing

swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. It ...

insignia and featuring

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

's image on their literature.Hill & Bell, ''The Other Face of Terror'', p. 38 A candidate for the anti-

nuclear energy Nuclear energy may refer to: *Nuclear power, the use of sustained nuclear fission or nuclear fusion to generate heat and electricity * Nuclear binding energy, the energy needed to fuse or split a nucleus of an atom *Nuclear potential energy ...

Fellowship Party The Fellowship Party was an environmentalist political party in England from 1955 to 2007. It opposed all weapons as well as nuclear power. Its national petition against nuclear weapons tests contributed to the forming of the Campaign for Nucle ...

also contested the by-election.

Results

References

{{By-elections to the 44th UK Parliament Birmingham Ladywood by-election Ladywood, 1969 Birmingham Ladywood by-election Ladywood by-election, 1969 Far-right politics in England Birmingham Ladywood by-election