Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...
represented in 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 ...
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
.
Constituency profile
Maldon covers a rural area of Essex including the
Dengie Peninsula
__NOTOC__
Dengie is a peninsula in Essex, England, that once formed a hundred of the same name (sometimes spelled Dengy).
The peninsula is formed by the River Crouch to the south, the Blackwater to the north, both of which are tidal, and the N ...
. The main settlements are Maldon and Burnham-on-Crouch on the coast, and the new town of South Woodham Ferrers. The seat is slightly wealthier than the UK average.
History
The Parliamentary Borough of Maldon, which included the parish of Heybridge, had sent two members to Parliament since 1332 (36 years after the Model Parliament). Under the Reform Act of 1867, its representation was reduced to one and in 1885 the Parliamentary Borough was abolished and replaced with a Division of the County of Essex (later a County Constituency) under the
Redistribution of Seats Act 1885
The Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 (48 & 49 Vict., c. 23) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was a piece of electoral reform legislation that redistributed the seats in the House of Commons, introducing the concept of equal ...
.
The constituency was abolished for the 1983 general election following the Third Periodic Review of Westminster Constituencies, but re-established for the 2010 general election by the Fifth Review. The current seat is a successor to the Maldon and East Chelmsford constituency which existed from 1997 to 2010.
Boundaries
1885–1918: The Municipal Borough of Maldon, the Sessional Divisions of Hinckford South (Braintree Bench) and Witham, and parts of the Sessional Divisions of Hinckford South (Halstead Bench), Lexden, and Winstree.
Formally known as the Eastern or Maldon Division of Essex, incorporating the abolished Parliamentary Borough of Maldon and extending northwards to include the towns of
Witham
Witham () is a town in the county of Essex in the East of England, with a population ( 2011 census) of 25,353. It is part of the District of Braintree and is twinned with the town of Waldbröl, Germany. Witham stands between the city of Che ...
Halstead
Halstead is a town and civil parish in the Braintree District of Essex, England. Its population of 11,906 in 2011River Crouch and River Blackwater, including Burnham-on-Crouch, transferred from the South-Eastern Division of Essex. The northernmost area, including Halstead, and eastern fringes transferred to
Saffron Walden
Saffron Walden is a market town in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England, north of Bishop's Stortford, south of Cambridge and north of London. It retains a rural appearance and some buildings of the medieval period. The population was 15, ...
and Colchester respectively. Other minor changes.
1950–1955: The Municipal Borough of Maldon, the Urban Districts of Braintree and Bocking, Burnham-on-Crouch, and Witham, the Rural District of Maldon, and part of the Rural District of Braintree.
Marginal changes as a result of changes to local authority boundaries.
1955–1974: The Municipal Borough of Maldon, the Urban Districts of Braintree and Bocking, Burnham-on-Crouch, and Witham, the Rural District of Maldon, and part of the Rural District of Braintree as altered by the County of Essex (Braintree and Lexden and Winstree Rural Districts) Confirmation Order 1955.
Marginal changes as a result of changes to local authority boundaries.
1974–1983: The Municipal Borough of Maldon, the Urban District of Burnham-on-Crouch, and the Rural Districts of Maldon and Rochford.
The Urban Districts of Braintree and Bocking, and Witham and the Rural District of Braintree formed the basis for the new County Constituency of Braintree. The Rural District of Rochford transferred from South East Essex.
Constituency abolished for the 1983 general election. Southern area, comprising the former Rural District of Rochford, included in the new County Constituency of Rochford. Remainder formed the majority of the new County Constituency of South Colchester and Maldon.
2010–present: The District of Maldon wards of Althorne, Burnham-on-Crouch North, Burnham-on-Crouch South, Heybridge East, Heybridge West, Maldon East, Maldon North, Maldon South, Maldon West, Mayland, Purleigh, Southminster, and Tillingham, and the Borough of Chelmsford wards of Bicknacre and East and West Hanningfield, Little Baddow, Danbury and Sandon, Rettendon and Runwell, South Hanningfield, Stock and Margaretting, South Woodham Chetwood and Collingwood, and South Woodham Elmwood and Woodville.
Following the
Boundary Commission
A boundary commission is a legal entity that determines borders of nations, states, constituencies.
Notable boundary commissions have included:
* Afghan Boundary Commission, an Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission, of 1885 and 1893, delineated the no ...
's
Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies
The Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies was undertaken between 2000 and 2007 by the four boundary commissions for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for the UK Parliament. The changes for England, Wales and Northern Ir ...
, Parliament radically altered some constituencies and created new ones to allow for changes in population. The majority of the former Maldon and East Chelmsford constituency formed the basis of this new seat for 2010. The constituency included Maldon and Burnham-on-Crouch, and lost the Chelmsford parts . To compensate, wards in and around South Woodham Ferrers were added from the former Rayleigh constituency, and
Margaretting
Margaretting is a village and civil parish in the Chelmsford district, in the county of Essex, England. The population of the village taken at the 2011 Census was 847.
The village is located on the B1002 road approximately four miles from Chelmsfo ...
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...
, first represented in 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 ...
in 1332; it elected two MPs until 1868, and one from 1868 until 1885. In that year the borough was abolished but the name was transferred to a county division of Essex, which continued with some boundary changes until 1983.
Maldon borough (1332–1885)
Boundaries and franchise before the Reform Act
Until the
Great Reform Act
The Representation of the People Act 1832 (also known as the 1832 Reform Act, Great Reform Act or First Reform Act) was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom (indexed as 2 & 3 Will. IV c. 45) that introduced major changes to the electo ...
of 1832, the borough consisted of the three parishes of the town of Maldon, a small market town and port on the coast of
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...
.
Maldon had been a municipal as well as a Parliamentary borough. Its first charter dated from the reign of Henry II, and at one time the corporation had the sole right to elect the town's MPs. From 1701 at the latest, however, the right to vote was exercised by the freemen of the town, whether or not resident within the borough; and, unusually, honorary freemen and those acquiring the freedom by purchase were also entitled to vote in Maldon. This had several consequences. The electorate in Maldon was much bigger than was usual in a town of that size — in the first half of the 18th century, the number of qualified voters was generally about 800 (the majority of whom did not live in Maldon). It also meant that the town corporation, with the power to create freemen and therefore voters, was in a position to gerrymander elections if it so wished. This might, as was the case in some other boroughs, have ended in one interest gaining control of the corporation and turning Maldon into a pocket borough; in fact, however, Maldon instead stayed independent but venal, and gaining election there tended to be an expensive business. Sometimes it was not merely a case of bribing the voters: in 1690, it was recorded in the House of Commons journals that the wives and daughters of Maldon freemen were being bribed at election time as well.
One interest that was firmly established by the middle of the 18th century, however, was that of the government, which ensured that lucrative posts in the customs house were reserved for loyally-voting freemen, and also attempted to have government supporters – often strangers to the town – elected to vacancies on the corporation. It was generally taken for granted that the government candidates would normally be elected.
The Strutt ascendancy
However, in the 1750s the government's control of Maldon weakened, and a prominent local
Tory
A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The ...
, John Strutt, found he had enough influence with the voters to sway elections. He secured the election of several of his friends over the years and eventually, in 1774, successfully stood for election himself.
In the meanwhile, however, there was a dramatic change in the system. In 1763 one of the sitting MPs, Strutt's friend Bamber Gascoyne, was appointed to the Board of Trade and therefore had to stand for re-election at Maldon. Gascoyne's opponent, John Huske, accused him of threatening that any freemen working in the customs house who did not vote for him would be dismissed (which, by that time, would have been an illegal threat). Although the Prime Minister,
George Grenville
George Grenville (14 October 1712 – 13 November 1770) was a British Whig statesman who rose to the position of Prime Minister of Great Britain. Grenville was born into an influential political family and first entered Parliament in 1741 as an ...
, denied having authorised Gascoyne to make any such threat and Gascoyne denied having made it, it seems clear it was believed in Maldon and the corporation sided with Huske, creating enough new freemen to ensure Gascoyne was defeated. Both sides started actions for bribery, but Gascoyne had decided on more drastic action. He took out a writ against the corporation, and the Courts ordered the ousting of the majority of members; eventually, in 1768, the corporation was dissolved by judicial order.
For half a century the duties of returning officer were transferred to the
High Sheriff of Essex
The High Sheriff of Essex was an ancient sheriff title originating in the time of the Angles, not long after the invasion of the Kingdom of England, which was in existence for around a thousand years. On 1 April 1974, under the provisions of the ...
. However, the Sheriff could not assume the corporation's function of swearing in new freemen, and Strutt's influence was thus entirely secured against any possibility of new voters being created to outvote him. However, there was a problem: by the time of the general election of 1807 the number of remaining qualified voters had dwindled to 58, and the constituency was in imminent danger of quite literally dying out. Yet there were more than 800 new freemen who were only barred from voting because there was nobody to swear them in. Finally a new charter was granted, in time to enfranchise them for the election of 1810.
Matters then returned to normal in Maldon for the remaining 22 years before the Reform Act. Strutt's son, Joseph Holden Strutt, retained much of the influence that his father had wielded, being generally considered to be able to nominate one of the two MPs or to choose to sit himself; as he exercised all government patronage in Maldon, he was well-placed to secure the other seat as well. But when the voters proved uncooperative, they could easily enough be overruled: at the 1826 election, the Corporation secured the result it wanted by admitting another thousand new freemen in time for them to vote: 3,113 freemen voted, of whom only 251 were Maldon residents.
After the Reform Act
In the initial drafts of the Reform Bill, Maldon was to lose one of its two seats. It was eventually spared this fate, but its population of 3,831 in 1831 left it very close to the borderline. The eventual Reform Act extended the borough by adding the neighbouring parish of Heybridge, increasing the population to 4,895; but with only 716 qualified voters under the new franchise its electorate was less than a quarter of what it had previously been. The constituency was a highly marginal one, victory rarely being secured by more than a handful of votes. In 1852, only 40 votes separated first place from fourth, and the second Tory's majority over his Whig opponent was only 6; after the losing candidates petitioned, alleging corruption, the election was declared void and Maldon's right to representation was suspended while a Royal Commission investigated. However, no major scandal was uncovered and (unlike some other boroughs similarly investigated at the same period) its right to vote was reinstated and a writ for a new by-election which took place in 1854 was issued.
Maldon county constituency (1885–1983)
The Second Reform Act, implemented in 1868, took seats from most of the smallest boroughs, and Maldon's representation was halved; but it was still too small, and at the election of 1885 the borough was abolished altogether. The county division into which the town was placed, however, was named after the town. (Officially, until 1918, it was the Eastern (or Maldon) Division of Essex; after that, simply the Maldon division.) As well as Maldon itself this contained the towns of Braintree,
Halstead
Halstead is a town and civil parish in the Braintree District of Essex, England. Its population of 11,906 in 2011Witham
Witham () is a town in the county of Essex in the East of England, with a population ( 2011 census) of 25,353. It is part of the District of Braintree and is twinned with the town of Waldbröl, Germany. Witham stands between the city of Che ...
. Once again this constituency was a marginal one — almost the only rural county seat in the South East at this period not to be safely
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
. The strength of the Liberal vote seems to have been based partly on the strength of Nonconformism in the Halstead area, but also on trade unionism among the agricultural labourers (which elsewhere in Essex was offset by a strongly Tory maritime vote which Maldon lacked).
After 1918, boundary changes added Burnham on Crouch and the surrounding district, but the constituency was still a rural one, with 35% of the occupied male population employed in the agricultural sector at the time of the 1921 census. The Labour Party rather than the Liberals were now the Conservatives' main opponents. When the Liberal Party split in 1922, Maldon's Liberals split as well, and the constituency was the first where the Lloyd George Liberals set up a constituency association, though this was apparently without the sanction of the national party headquarters and the association is not recorded as having organised any activities. In
1923
Events
January–February
* January 9 – Lithuania begins the Klaipėda Revolt to annex the Klaipėda Region (Memel Territory).
* January 11 – Despite strong British protests, troops from France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr area, t ...
no Liberal candidate stood at all, and Labour captured the seat for the first time. The Conservatives retook the seat in 1924, holding it until the 1940s, but it was won by Tom Driberg in a wartime by-election; yet his hold on the seat was rarely secure and he eventually moved to sit for a safer seat. Thereafter Maldon remained Conservative until its abolition, though at first by the narrowest of margins.
The Maldon constituency was abolished in the boundary changes which came into effect at the 1983 election, being divided between the new Colchester South and Maldon and Rochford constituencies.
Members of Parliament
MPs 1332–1640
MPs 1640–1868
MPs 1868–1983
MPs since 2010
The re-formed Maldon seat was fought for the first time at the 2010 general election.
Elections
Elections in the 2010s
Elections in the 1970s
Elections in the 1960s
Elections in the 1950s
Elections in the 1940s
Driberg was elected in 1942 as an Independent Labour candidate, but took the Labour Party whip in January 1945, and stood in the 1945 election as a Labour Party candidate.
Elections in the 1930s
Elections in the 1920s
Elections in the 1910s
Election results 1832–1918
Elections in the 1830s
Elections in the 1840s
Elections in the 1850s
The 1852 election was declared void on petition due to bribery and treating, and the writ was suspended in March 1853. A by-election was held in August 1854 to fill the vacancy.
Elections in the 1860s
''Seat reduced to one member''
Elections in the 1870s
Sandford's resignation caused a by-election.
Elections in the 1880s
Elections in the 1890s
Elections in the 1900s
Elections in the 1910s
General Election 1914–15:
Another General Election was required to take place before the end of 1915. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to take place and by July 1914, the following candidates had been selected;
*Unionist: James Fortescue Flannery
*Liberal: E. Tweedy Smith
Pre-1832 election results
Elections in the 1830s
See also
*
1942 Maldon by-election
The 1942 Maldon by-election was a parliamentary by-election held on 25 June 1942 for the British House of Commons constituency of Maldon in Essex. It was one a series of by-elections in World War II won by radical independent candidates.
Previo ...
* Robert Beatson, ''A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament'' (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807 * D. Brunton & D. H. Pennington, ''Members of the Long Parliament'' (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
* John Cannon, ''Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972)
* ''Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803'' (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808 * ''The Constitutional Year Book for 1913'' (London: National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, 1913)
* F. W. S. Craig, ''British Parliamentary Election Results 1832-1885'' (2nd edition, Aldershot: Parliamentary Research Services, 1989)
*
* Michael Kinnear, ''The British Voter'' (London: BH Batsford, Ltd, 1968)
* J. Holladay Philbin, ''Parliamentary Representation 1832 - England and Wales'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
* Edward Porritt and Annie G Porritt, ''The Unreformed House of Commons'' (Cambridge University Press, 1903)
* T. H. B. Oldfield, ''The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland'' (London: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1816)
*
Henry Pelling
Henry Mathison Pelling (27 August 1920 – 14 October 1997) was a British historian best known for his works on the history of the British Labour Party.
Life
Pelling was born in Prenton, Wirral, the son of a wealthy stockbroker. He was educat ...
, ''Social Geography of British Elections 1885-1910'' (London: Macmillan, 1967)
* Robert Waller, ''The
Almanac of British Politics
The ''Almanac of British Politics'' is a reference work which aims to provide a detailed look at the politics of the United Kingdom (UK) through an approach of profiling the social, economic and historical characteristics of each parliamentary cons ...