The 1990 Eastbourne by-election was a

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 ...

held on 18 October 1990 for 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. ...

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, ...

Eastbourne Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the la ...

East Sussex East Sussex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England on the English Channel coast. It is bordered by Kent to the north and east, West Sussex to the west, and Surrey to the north-west. The largest settlement in East Su ...

Background

The by-election was caused by the death of the town's

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

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)

Ian Gow Ian Reginald Edward Gow (; 11 February 1937 – 30 July 1990) was a British politician and solicitor. As a member of the Conservative Party, he served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Eastbourne from 1974 until his assassination by the ...

, who was killed on 30 July 1990 by a bomb placed under his car by the

Provisional IRA The Irish Republican Army (IRA; ), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and informally as the Provos, was an Irish republicanism, Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, fa ...

. The result was a victory for the

Liberal Democrat Several political party, political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties usually follow a liberal democracy, liberal democratic ideology. Active parties Former parties ...

candidate

David Bellotti David Frank Bellotti (13 August 1943 – 10 June 2015) was a British Liberal Democrat politician who was Member of Parliament (MP) for the Eastbourne constituency from 1990 to 1992. He was the first Liberal Democrat politician to win a parliam ...

, who defeated former Conservative MP

Richard Hickmet Richard Saladin Hickmet (born 1 December 1947 in Hammersmith, London) is a British Conservative Party politician. Early life Of Turkish Cypriot origin, Hickmet's father, Ferid Hikmet, emigrated from Cyprus to the UK in the 1930s. His father and ...

by a majority of 4,550 votes and with more than half the votes cast. The loss came as a shock to many Conservatives who had expected (not least given the circumstances under which the by-election was held, as well as the fact that it had been retained by a majority of more than 16,000 votes in 1987) that they would retain the seat. Conservative MP

Ann Widdecombe Ann Noreen Widdecombe (born 4 October 1947) is a British politician, author and television personality. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidstone and The Weald, and the former Maidstone constituency, from 1987 to 2010 and Member of the E ...

sent a message to voters saying that the IRA would be "toasting their success". It was a welcome success for the Liberal Democrats, formed in March 1988, after some disastrous early local and European election showings, as well as dismal showings in opinion polls. It came at a time when Conservative support was slumping and

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 ...

was enjoying a comfortable lead in the opinion polls, largely due to the unpopular introduction of

poll tax A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources. Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments fr ...

by the Conservative government. The Liberal Democrats, whose newly adopted party emblem was a 'bird of liberty', had been compared by

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...

in a Conservative party conference speech on 12 October to a "dead parrot". The shock defeat contributed to the end of Thatcher's premiership in November 1990 as Conservative MPs worried if they could hold their seats at a general election if she remained prime minister.

Result

References

Bibliography

British Parliamentary by-elections:Campaign literature from the by-election

Background

Result

References

Bibliography

See also