Bristol South East was a constituency in the city of

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

that returned one

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 o ...

(MP) to the

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. T ...

of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

. The constituency was created for the 1950 general election, mainly from the Bristol East constituency, and abolished for the 1983 general election which saw the reintroduction of Bristol East. In boundary changes for the February 1974 general election, part of the constituency's territory was transferred to the new seat of Kingswood. Sir Stafford Cripps won the seat comfortably from holding its main predecessor in 1950 and continued in government with the new seat for just over six months (he was at the time Chancellor of the Exchequer) before resigning from Parliament due to health reasons. The final MP for the constituency was

Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. A member of the Labour Party, ...

who served as Secretary of State (for Industry from 1974 to 1975 then as Secretary of State For Energy from 1975 to 1979), in the latter role, the UK saw the

Winter of Discontent The Winter of Discontent was the period between November 1978 and February 1979 in the United Kingdom characterised by widespread strikes by private, and later public, sector trade unions demanding pay rises greater than the limits Prime Minis ...

and power shortages. Benn ran in the near-overlapping successor seat,

Bristol East Bristol East is a List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies, constituency recreated in 1983 covering the eastern part of the City of Bristol, represented in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons of the Parliament of ...

in 1983 and was defeated by Conservative candidate Jonathan Sayeed.

Boundaries

1950–1955: The County Borough of Bristol wards of Brislington, Hengrove, St George East, and St George West. 1955–1974: The County Borough of Bristol wards of Brislington, St George East, St George West, and Stockwood, and the Urban District of Kingswood. 1974–1983: The County Borough of Bristol wards of Brislington, Knowle, St George East, St George West, Stockwood, and Windmill Hill.

Members of Parliament

Elections

Elections in the 1950s

Elections in the 1960s

Tony Benn was declared ineligible to sit in the House of Commons due to his having inherited a peerage, and Malcolm St. Clair was declared elected instead.

Elections in the 1970s

Notes and references

;Notes ;References {{DEFAULTSORT:Bristol South East (Uk Parliament Constituency) South East Parliamentary constituencies in South West England (historic) Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom established in 1950 Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom disestablished in 1983