Plaistow was a

borough constituency In the United Kingdom (UK), each of the electoral areas or divisions called constituencies elects one member to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons. Within the United Kingdom there are five bodies with members elected by ...

returning a single

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

through the

first-past-the-post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...

voting system. The constituency was one of four divisions of the Parliamentary Borough of West Ham, which had at the time the same boundaries as the

County Borough of West Ham West Ham was a local government district in the extreme south west of Essex from 1886 to 1965, forming part of the built-up area of London, although outside the County of London. It was immediately north of the River Thames and east of the River ...

. Although administratively separate since 1889, the area was formally part of the county 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 G ...

; since 1965 it has been part of the

London Borough of Newham The London Borough of Newham is a London borough created in 1965 by the London Government Act 1963. It covers an area previously administered by the Essex county boroughs of West Ham and East Ham, authorities that were both abolished by the s ...

Greater London Greater may refer to: *Greatness, the state of being great *Greater than, in inequality (mathematics), inequality *Greater (film), ''Greater'' (film), a 2016 American film *Greater (flamingo), the oldest flamingo on record *Greater (song), "Greate ...

. The creation of the constituency was recommended by 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 ...

in a report issued in 1917, and formally created by the

Representation of the People Act 1918 The Representation of the People Act 1918 was an Act of Parliament passed to reform the electoral system in Great Britain and Ireland. It is sometimes known as the Fourth Reform Act. The Act extended the franchise in parliamentary elections, also ...

. It came into existence at the 1918 general election. Its first member was Labour's Will(iam) Thorne who won with an impressive 94.9% of the popular vote, a record for an English parliamentary seat held to this day. As the borough of West Ham had only 120,586 electors on 15 October 1946, the relevant date for the subsequent Boundary Commission review, the borough was only entitled to two Members of Parliament; North and South divisions were recommended. As a consequence Plaistow was abolished as a separate constituency by the

Representation of the People Act 1948 The Representation of the People Act 1948 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that altered the law relating to parliamentary and local elections. It is noteworthy for abolishing plural voting for parliamentary elections, including ...

and went out of existence at the 1950 general election.

Boundaries

Plaistow was based on Plaistow and Hudsons wards of the

. The large wards in the southern County Borough of West Ham at the time of the 1917 Boundary Commission review made it necessary to split one ward across two constituencies, or else the divisions of West Ham would have had significantly different sizes. The ward which was split was the Canning Town ward, with the northern and western part of the ward included in Plaistow: the commissioners drew a line along the centre of the Woolwich branch of the

Great Eastern Railway The Great Eastern Railway (GER) was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia. The company was grouped into the London and North Eastern R ...

(now the

North London Line The North London line (NLL) is a railway line which passes through the inner suburbs of west, north-west, north, and east London, England between Richmond in the south-west and Stratford in the east, avoiding central London. Its route is a rou ...

) from

Canning Town station Canning Town is a London Underground, Docklands Light Railway (DLR) and London Buses station in Canning Town in London, England. It is designed as an intermodal metro and bus station, fully opening in 1999 as part of the Jubilee Line Extensio ...

north to join up with Star Lane (near the future Star Lane DLR station), then east along Star Lane, to join up with the ward boundary at Hermit Lane and Beckton Road."103. Parliamentary Borough of West Ham" in "Report of the Boundary Commission (England and Wales)", vol. III ( Cd. 8758). In 1950 the territory of this division was transferred to form part of the

West Ham South West Ham South was a United Kingdom constituencies, parliamentary constituency in the County Borough of West Ham, in what was then Essex but is now Greater London. It returned one Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) ...

constituency.

Members of Parliament

Elections

Elections in the 1910s

Elections in the 1920s

Elections in the 1930s

General Election 1939–40 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 and by the Autumn of 1939, the following candidates had been selected; *Labour:

Will Thorne William James Thorne CBE (4 October 1857 – 2 January 1946) was a British trade unionist, activist and one of the first Labour Members of Parliament. Early years Thorne was born in Hockley, Birmingham, on 8 October 1857. His father and othe ...

Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party, 1939 *Conservative:

Elections in the 1940s

References

Bibliography

* ''Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885-1972'', compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (Parliamentary Reference Publications 1972) * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Plaistow (Uk Parliament Constituency) Parliamentary constituencies in London (historic) Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom established in 1918 Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom disestablished in 1950 Politics of the London Borough of Newham Plaistow, Newham