Leeds South was a parliamentary constituency in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1885 until it was abolished for the 1983 general election. It was then largely replaced by the new Morley and Leeds South constituency.

Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell was a British politician who served as Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955 until his death in 1963. An economics lecturer and wartime civil servant, he was elected to Parliament in 1945 and held office in Clement Attlee's governments, notably as Minister of Fuel and Power following the bitter winter of 1946–47, and eventually joining the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Facing the need to increase military spending in 1951, he imposed National Health Service charges on dentures and spectacles, prompting the leading left-winger Aneurin Bevan to resign from the Cabinet.