The 1986 Knowsley North by-election was a parliamentary by-election held on 13 November 1986 for the British

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

constituency An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger State (polity), state (a country, administrative region, ...

of Knowsley North. The Labour Party retained the seat with just over half of the votes, while the SDP-Liberal Alliance surged to achieve more than a third of the vote. The constituency had some of the highest levels of unemployment in the United Kingdom. There was a 14% swing from Labour to the Alliance, continuing a trend in by-elections, with the local

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harming the Labour vote in by-elections on Merseyside (see especially

Liverpool Walton Liverpool, Walton is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2017 by Dan Carden of the Labour Party. Carden won the highest percentage share of the vote in June 2017 of 650 constituencies, 85.7%. It is t ...

) .

Previous MP

The seat had become vacant on 1 October 1986. The constituency's

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 (MP),

Robert Kilroy-Silk Robert Michael Kilroy-Silk (born Robert Michael Silk; 19 May 1942) is an English former politician and broadcaster. After a decade as a university lecturer, he served as a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 to 1986. He left the H ...

, resigned his seat to pursue a media career. He did this by being appointed

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, a notional office of profit under the Crown, which is used to permit MPs to vacate their seats. Kilroy-Silk had been an MP since the February 1974 general election, originally sitting for

Ormskirk Ormskirk is a market town in the West Lancashire district of Lancashire, England, north of Liverpool, northwest of St Helens, southeast of Southport and southwest of Preston. Ormskirk is known for its gingerbread. Geography and administr ...

. That seat disappeared in a redistribution, and he moved to the new constituency of Knowsley North in 1983. He returned to politics in 2004, becoming a

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

(MEP) for the

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, initially representing the

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Candidates

Six candidates were nominated. The list below is set out in descending order of the number of votes received at the by-election. 1. Representing the Labour Party was

George Howarth Sir George Edward Howarth (born 29 June 1949) is a British Labour Party politician who serves as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Knowsley. He also served the seat's predecessors since being elected in a by-election in 1986, firstly as the ...

. He was Chief Executive of the Wales

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Centre in Cardiff, and had been deputy leader of

Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council is the local authority of the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley in Merseyside, England. It is a metropolitan district council, one of five in Merseyside and one of 36 in the metropolitan counties of England, a ...

from 1982 to 1983. He has been a 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 ...

since the 1986

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 ...

, originally for Knowsley North until 1997, then for its replacement Knowsley North and Sefton East, and since 2010 for Knowsley. 2. The Liberal Party candidate, representing the SDP-Liberal Alliance, was

Rosie Cooper Rosemary Elizabeth Cooper (born 5 September 1950) is a British health official and former Labour Party politician who has served as the chair of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust since November 2022. Previously, she served as the Member of Parli ...

. She had been a member of Liverpool City Council since 1973, and worked as a junior executive at

Littlewoods Littlewoods was a retail and football betting company founded in Liverpool, England, by John Moores in 1923. By the 1980s, it had grown to become the largest private company in Europe, but subsequently declined in the face of increased com ...

. Cooper had contested the seat of Liverpool Garston at the 1983 general election. She represented

West Lancashire West Lancashire is a local government district with borough status in Lancashire, England. The council is based in Ormskirk, and the largest town in the borough is Skelmersdale. At the 2011 Census, the population of the borough was 110,685 ...

from 2005 to 2022, having joined the Labour Party in 1999. 3. The Conservative candidate was Roger Brown, a barrister born in 1951. He was a member of

Bury Metropolitan Borough Council Bury Metropolitan Borough Council is the local authority of the Metropolitan Borough of Bury in Greater Manchester, England. It is a metropolitan district council, one of ten in Greater Manchester and one of 36 in the metropolitan counties of E ...

from 1982 until 1986. 4. David Hallsworth stood for election as a candidate of the Revolutionary Communist Party led by

Frank Furedi Frank Furedi ( hu, Füredi Ferenc; born 3 May 1947) is a Hungarian-Canadian academic and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent. He is well known for his work on sociology of fear, education, therapy culture, paranoid parent ...

. 5. George Weiss, a frequent election candidate, was an Independent using the ballot paper label "Rainbow Alliance Captain Rainbows Universal Party". 6. Robert Cory was an Independent candidate.

Result

Note ^a Change is calculated from the SDP candidate who represented the SDP-Liberal Alliance at the 1983 general election.

Sources

* ''Britain Votes/Europe Votes By-Election Supplement 1983-'', compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (Parliamentary Research Services 1985) {{By-elections to the 49th UK Parliament Knowsley North by-election Knowsley North by-election Knowsley North by-election Politics of the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley By-elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in Merseyside constituencies 1980s in Merseyside

Previous MP

Candidates

Result

See also

Sources