1.
House of Commons of the United Kingdom
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The House of Commons of the United Kingdom is the lower house of the countrys parliament. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster, officially, the full name of the house is, The Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. The House is a body consisting of 650 members known as Members of Parliament. Members are elected to represent constituencies by first-past-the-post and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved, under the Parliament Act 1911, the Lords power to reject legislation was reduced to a delaying power. The Government is primarily responsible to the House of Commons and the prime minister stays in office only as long as he or she retains the support of a majority of its members. Although it does not formally elect the prime minister, the position of the parties in the House of Commons is of overriding importance, by convention, the prime minister is answerable to, and must maintain the support of, the House of Commons. Since 1963, by convention, the minister is always a member of the House of Commons. The Commons may indicate its lack of support for the Government by rejecting a motion of confidence or by passing a motion of no confidence, confidence and no confidence motions are sometimes phrased explicitly, for instance, That this House has no confidence in Her Majestys Government. Many other motions were considered confidence issues, even though not explicitly phrased as such, in particular, important bills that form a part of the Governments agenda were formerly considered matters of confidence, as is the annual Budget. Parliament normally sits for a term of five years. Subject to that limit, the minister could formerly choose the timing of the dissolution of parliament. By this second mechanism, the government of the United Kingdom can change without a general election. In such circumstances there may not even have been a party leadership election, as the new leader may be chosen by acclaim. A prime minister may resign if he or she is not defeated at the polls. In such a case, the premiership goes to whoever can command a majority in the House of Commons, in practice this is usually the new leader of the outgoing prime ministers party. Until 1965, the Conservative Party had no mechanism for electing a new leader, when Anthony Eden resigned as PM in 1957 without recommending a successor and it fell to the Queen to appoint Harold Macmillan as the new prime minister, after taking the advice of ministers. By convention, all ministers must be members of the House of Commons or of the House of Lords, a handful have been appointed who were outside Parliament, but in most cases they then entered Parliament either in a by-election or by receiving a peerage. Since 1902, all ministers have been members of the Commons
2.
Harold Wilson
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James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, PC, FRS, FSS was a British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1976. Wilson narrowly won the 1964 election, going on to win an increased majority in a snap 1966 election. Wilsons first period as Prime Minister coincided with a period of low unemployment and relative economic prosperity, in 1969 Wilson sent British troops to Northern Ireland. After losing the 1970 general election to Edward Heath, he spent four years as Leader of the Opposition before the February 1974 general election resulted in a hung parliament. A period of crisis was now beginning to hit most Western countries. He took little action to pursue the Labour Party constitutions stated dedication to such nationalisation, Labour Party historians see his years in office as lost opportunities for major reforms. However, in keeping with the mood of the 1960s his government sponsored liberal changes in a number of social areas and his stated ambition of substantially improving Britains long-term economic performance remained largely unfulfilled. He lost his energy and drive in his second government 1974–76 and accomplished little as the split over Europe. Wilson was born at 4 Warneford Road, Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England and he came from a political family, his father James Herbert Wilson was a works chemist who had been active in the Liberal Party and then joined the Labour Party. His mother Ethel was a schoolteacher before her marriage, and her brother, when Wilson was eight, he visited London and a later-to-be-famous photograph was taken of him standing on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street. He was a supporter of his football club, Huddersfield Town. Wilson won a scholarship to attend Royds Hall Grammar School, his grammar school in Huddersfield in Yorkshire. In December 1930, his father, working as an industrial chemist, was made redundant and he moved to Spital on the Wirral, Cheshire in order to do so. Wilson was educated in the Sixth Form at the Wirral Grammar School for Boys, at Oxford, Wilson was moderately active in politics as a member of the Liberal Party but was strongly influenced by G. D. H. Cole. He graduated in PPE with an outstanding first class Bachelor of Arts degree, with alphas on every paper in the examinations. Biographer Roy Jenkins says, Academically his results put him among prime ministers in the category of Peel, Gladstone, Asquith, and no one else. What he was superb at was the assimilation of knowledge, combined with an ability to keep it ordered in his mind. He continued in academia, becoming one of the youngest Oxford dons of the century at the age of 21 and he was a lecturer in Economic History at New College from 1937, and a Research Fellow at University College
3.
Edward Heath
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It was, says biographer John Campbell, Heaths finest hour. Although he planned to be an innovator as Prime Minister, his government foundered on economic difficulties, including high inflation and he led his party to defeat by the Labour Party twice in 1974. He became a vehement opponent of Margaret Thatcher, who supplanted him as party leader in 1975, Heaths lower middle-class origins were quite unusual for a Conservative Party leader. However, he was a leader in student politics at Oxford University and he worked briefly in the Civil Service, but resigned in order to stand for Parliament, and was elected for Bexley in the 1950 general election. He was the Chief Whip from 1955 to 1959, having entered the Cabinet as Minister of Labour in 1959, he was promoted to Lord Privy Seal and later became President of the Board of Trade. Heath was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 1965, he retained that position despite losing the 1966 general election, Heath became Prime Minister after winning the 1970 election. Possibly most significantly, he took Britain into the European Economic Community in 1973, Heaths premiership also oversaw the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, with the suspension of the Stormont Parliament and the imposition of direct British rule. Heath also tried to curb the trade unions with the Industrial Relations Act 1971, however, rising unemployment in 1972 led him to reflate the economy, he attempted to control the resulting high inflation by a prices and incomes policy. Two miners strikes, in 1972 and at the start of 1974, damaged the government, Heath resigned as Prime Minister after trying in vain to form a coalition with the Liberal Party. Despite losing a general election in October that year, he vowed to continue as leader of his party. In February 1975, however, Margaret Thatcher challenged and defeated him to win the leadership, returning to the backbenches, Heath became an active critic of Thatchers policies. He remained a backbench MP until retiring at the 2001 election, outside politics, Heath was a world-class yachtsman and a talented musician. He was one of only four British prime ministers never to have married, in August 2015, the Wiltshire Police announced the beginning of Operation Conifer, a posthumous investigation of Heath for historical incidences of sex abuse. Edward Heath was born at 54 Albion Road, Broadstairs, Kent on 9 July 1916, the son of William George Heath, a carpenter and builder, and Edith Anne Heath and his father was later a successful small businessman. Heath was educated at Chatham House Grammar School in Ramsgate, and in 1935 with the aid of a county scholarship he went up to study at Balliol College, while at university Heath became active in Conservative politics. On the key issue of the day, foreign policy. His first Paper Speech at the Oxford Union, in Michaelmas 1936, was in opposition to the appeasement of Germany by returning her colonies, confiscated during the First World War. In June 1937 he was elected President of the Oxford University Conservative Association as a pro-Spanish Republic candidate, in 1937–38 he was chairman of the national Federation of University Conservative Associations, and in the same year he was Secretary and then Librarian of the Oxford Union
4.
Labour Party (UK)
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The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. Labour later served in the coalition from 1940 to 1945. Labour was also in government from 1964 to 1970 under Harold Wilson and from 1974 to 1979, first under Wilson and then James Callaghan. The Labour Party was last in government from 1997 to 2010 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, beginning with a majority of 179. Having won 232 seats in the 2015 general election, the party is the Official Opposition in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the party also organises in Northern Ireland, but does not contest elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Labour Party is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance. In September 2015, Jeremy Corbyn was elected Leader of the Labour Party, the first Lib–Lab candidate to stand was George Odger in the Southwark by-election of 1870. In addition, several small socialist groups had formed around this time, among these were the Independent Labour Party, the intellectual and largely middle-class Fabian Society, the Marxist Social Democratic Federation and the Scottish Labour Party. In the 1895 general election, the Independent Labour Party put up 28 candidates, Keir Hardie, the leader of the party, believed that to obtain success in parliamentary elections, it would be necessary to join with other left-wing groups. Hardies roots as a lay preacher contributed to an ethos in the party led to the comment by 1950s General Secretary Morgan Phillips that Socialism in Britain owed more to Methodism than Marx. The motion was passed at all stages by the TUC, the meeting was attended by a broad spectrum of working-class and left-wing organisations—trades unions represented about one third of the membership of the TUC delegates. This created an association called the Labour Representation Committee, meant to coordinate attempts to support MPs sponsored by trade unions and it had no single leader, and in the absence of one, the Independent Labour Party nominee Ramsay MacDonald was elected as Secretary. He had the task of keeping the various strands of opinions in the LRC united. The October 1900 Khaki election came too soon for the new party to campaign effectively, only 15 candidatures were sponsored, but two were successful, Keir Hardie in Merthyr Tydfil and Richard Bell in Derby. Support for the LRC was boosted by the 1901 Taff Vale Case, the judgement effectively made strikes illegal since employers could recoup the cost of lost business from the unions. In their first meeting after the election the groups Members of Parliament decided to adopt the name The Labour Party formally, the Fabian Society provided much of the intellectual stimulus for the party. One of the first acts of the new Liberal Government was to reverse the Taff Vale judgement, the Peoples History Museum in Manchester holds the minutes of the first Labour Party meeting in 1906 and has them on display in the Main Galleries. Also within the museum is the Labour History Archive and Study Centre, the governing Liberals were unwilling to repeal this judicial decision with primary legislation
5.
Jeremy Thorpe
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John Jeremy Thorpe, PC was a British politician who served as Member of Parliament for North Devon from 1959 to 1979, and as leader of the Liberal Party between 1967 and 1976. In May 1979 he was tried at the Old Bailey on charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder, based on his relationship with Norman Scott. Thorpe was acquitted on all charges, but the case, Thorpe was the son and grandson of Conservative MPs, but decided to align with the small and ailing Liberal Party. After studying at Oxford University he became one of the Liberals brightest stars in the 1950s and he entered parliament at the age of 30, made a rapid mark, and was elected party leader in 1967. This culminated in the election of February 1974, when the party won 6 million votes. Under the first-past-the-post electoral system this gave them only 14 seats and he was offered a cabinet post by the Conservative prime minister, Edward Heath, if he would bring the Liberals into a coalition. His price for such a deal, reform of the system, was rejected by Heath. The February 1974 election proved to be the high water-mark of Thorpes career, thereafter his and his partys fortunes declined, particularly from late 1975 when rumours of his involvement in a plot to murder Scott began to multiply. Thorpe finally resigned the leadership in May 1976, when his position became untenable, when the matter came to court three years later, Thorpe chose not to give evidence on the grounds that the prosecution had not established its case. This stance left many questions unanswered, despite his acquittal, Thorpe was discredited, from the mid-1980s he was disabled by Parkinsons disease. Thorpe was born in South Kensington, London, on 29 April 1929 and his father was John Henry Thorpe, a lawyer and politician who was the Conservative MP for Manchester Rusholme between 1919 and 1923. His mother, Ursula, née Norton-Griffiths, was the daughter of another Conservative MP, Sir John Norton-Griffiths, the more recent Thorpe ancestors were Irish. Jeremy Thorpes great-grandfather, William Thorpe, was a Dublin policeman who rose to the rank of superintendent, one of his many sons, John Thorpe, became an Anglican priest and served as Archdeacon of Macclesfield from 1922 to 1932. Both John Henry and Jeremy Thorpe would benefit from this connection, Jeremy was his parents third child, following two sisters. His upbringing was privileged and protected, under the care of nannies and nursemaids until, in 1935 and he became a proficient violinist, and often performed at school concerts. Although John Henry Thorpe was no longer in parliament, he had maintained many of his contacts and friendships. Among the strongest of friendships was that with the Lloyd George family—Ursula Thorpe was a close friend of the former Liberal prime ministers daughter, Megan. The former prime minister David Lloyd George, a visitor, became Jeremys political hero and role model
6.
Liberal Party (UK)
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The Liberal Party was a liberal political party which was one of the two major parties in the United Kingdom in the 19th and early 20th century. The party arose from an alliance of Whigs and free-trade Peelites and Radicals favourable to the ideals of the American, by the end of the nineteenth century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite splitting over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to power in 1906 with a landslide victory, by the end of the 1920s, the Labour Party had replaced the Liberals as the Conservatives main rival. The party went into decline and by the 1950s won no more than six seats at general elections, apart from notable by-election victories, the partys fortunes did not improve significantly until it formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party in 1981. At the 1983 General Election, the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, at the 1987 General Election, its vote fell below 23% and the Liberal and Social Democratic parties merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. A splinter group reconstituted the Liberal Party in 1989 and it was formed by party members opposed to the merger who saw the Lib Dems diluting Liberal ideals. Prominent intellectuals associated with the Liberal Party include the philosopher John Stuart Mill, the economist John Maynard Keynes, the Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs, who had their origins in an aristocratic faction in the reign of Charles II, and the early 19th century Radicals. The Whigs were in favour of reducing the power of the Crown, although their motives in this were originally to gain more power for themselves, the more idealistic Whigs gradually came to support an expansion of democracy for its own sake. The great figures of reformist Whiggery were Charles James Fox and his disciple, after decades in opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the First Reform Act in 1832. The Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it brought about the Whigs demise. As early as 1839 Russell had adopted the name of Liberals, the leading Radicals were John Bright and Richard Cobden, who represented the manufacturing towns which had gained representation under the Reform Act. They favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England, avoidance of war and foreign alliances, for a century, free trade remained the one cause which could unite all Liberals. This allowed ministries led by Russell, Palmerston, and the Peelite Lord Aberdeen to hold office for most of the 1850s and 1860s, a leading Peelite was William Ewart Gladstone, who was a reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in most of these governments. The formal foundation of the Liberal Party is traditionally traced to 1859 and this was brought about by Palmerstons death in 1865 and Russells retirement in 1868. After a brief Conservative government Gladstone won a victory at the 1868 election. The establishment of the party as a membership organisation came with the foundation of the National Liberal Federation in 1877. John Stuart Mill was a Liberal MP from 1865 to 1868, for the next thirty years Gladstone and Liberalism were synonymous. William Ewart Gladstone served as prime minister four times, called the Grand Old Man later in life, Gladstone was always a dynamic popular orator who appealed strongly to the working class and to the lower middle class
7.
Ulster Unionist Party
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The Ulster Unionist Party is one of the two main unionist political parties in Northern Ireland. Having gathered support in the north of Ireland during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was supported by most unionist voters throughout the known as the Troubles. It is currently the party in Northern Ireland, having been overtaken in 2003 by the Democratic Unionist Party. At the 2015 general election, the party won two seats in the House of Commons, Fermanagh and South Tyrone and South Antrim and this marked the first time since 1921 that a devolved government in Northern Ireland did not include the UUP. The party was led by Mike Nesbitt, but on 3 March 2017 he announced his resignation following the poor performance in that years assembly election. The Ulster Unionist Party traces its existence back to the foundation of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905. Before that, however, there had been a less formally organised Irish Unionist Alliance since the late 19th century, modern organised unionism properly emerged after William Ewart Gladstones introduction in 1886 of the first of three Home Rule Bills in response to demands by the Irish Parliamentary Party. The IUA was an alliance of Irish Conservatives and Liberal Unionists and it was the merger of these two parties in 1912 that gave rise to the current name of the Conservative and Unionist Party, to which the UUP was formally linked until 1985. From the beginning, the party had an association with the Orange Order. The original composition of the Ulster Unionist Council was 25% Orange delegates, although most unionist support was based in the geographic area that became Northern Ireland, there were at one time unionist enclaves throughout southern Ireland. Unionists in County Cork and Dublin were particularly influential, however, after the Irish Convention failed to reach an understanding on home rule and with the partition of Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, Irish unionism in effect split. Many southern unionist politicians quickly became reconciled with the new Irish Free State, the existence of a separate Ulster Unionist Party became entrenched as the party took control of the new government of Northern Ireland. The leadership of the UUP was taken by Sir Edward Carson in 1910, throughout his 11-year leadership he fought a sustained campaign against Irish Home Rule, including being involved in the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912. In the 1918 general election, Carson switched constituencies from his seat of Dublin University to Belfast Duncairn. The leadership of the UUP and, subsequently, Northern Ireland, was taken by Sir James Craig, until almost the very end of its period of power in Northern Ireland, the UUP was led by a combination of landed gentry, aristocracy and gentrified industrial magnates. Only its last Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, was from a middle-class background, during this era, all but 11 of the 149 UUP Stormont MPs were members of the Orange Order, as were all Prime Ministers. James Craig governed Northern Ireland from its inception until his death in 1940 and is buried with his wife by the east wing of Parliament Buildings and his successor, J. M. Andrews, was heavily criticised for appointing octogenarian veterans of Craigavons administration to his cabinet
8.
Margaret Thatcher
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She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century, and the first woman to have held the office. A Soviet journalist dubbed her The Iron Lady, a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics, as Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism. A research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959, Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and she became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation, flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies and she narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in 1984. Thatcher was re-elected for a term in 1987. During this period her support for a Community Charge was widely unpopular and she resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a peerage as Baroness Thatcher which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. After a series of strokes in 2002, she was advised to withdraw from public speaking. Despite this, she managed to pre-record a eulogy to Ronald Reagan prior to his death, in 2013, she died of another stroke in London, at the age of 87. Always a controversial figure, she has described as one of the greatest and most influential politicians in British history. Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on 13 October 1925, in Grantham and her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel from Lincolnshire. She spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned two grocery shops, Prior to the Second World War, in 1938 the Roberts family gave sanctuary to a teenage Jewish girl escaping Nazi Germany. Thatcher was to describe this in her memoirs as among the significant events of her formative years, Alfred Roberts was an alderman and a Methodist local preacher, and brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church. He came from a Liberal family but stood as an Independent and he was Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950. Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement, her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking. She was head girl in 1942–43, in her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, but she was initially rejected and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew. Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin, even while working on chemistry, she was already thinking towards law and politics
9.
United Kingdom general election, 2015
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The United Kingdom general election of 2015 on 7 May 2015 elected the 56th Parliament of the United Kingdom. Each of the 650 parliamentary constituencies elected one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons and it was the first general election at the end of a fixed-term Parliament. Local elections took place in most of England on the same day, polls and commentators had predicted the outcome would be too close to call and would result in a second hung parliament similar to the 2010 election. Opinion polls were eventually proven to have underestimated the Conservative vote as they won an outright majority. Having governed in coalition with the Liberal Democrats since 2010, the Conservatives won 330 seats and 36. 9% of the vote, the British Polling Council began an inquiry into the substantial variance between opinion polls and the actual result. The Labour Party, led by Ed Miliband, saw an increase in its vote share to 30. 4%. This was its lowest seat tally since the 1987 election, senior Labour shadow cabinet members, notably Ed Balls, Douglas Alexander, and Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy, were defeated. The UK Independence Party came third in terms of votes with 12. 6%, the Green Party won its highest-ever share of the vote with 3. 8%, and held Brighton Pavilion with an increased majority, though did not win any additional seats. Labours Miliband and Murphy resigned, as did Clegg, Farage claimed that his resignation was rejected by his party, and he remained in post. In Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionist Party returned to the Commons with two MPs after an absence, while the Alliance Party lost its only seat despite an increase in total vote share. That renegotiation was followed by an in-out referendum a year later in June 2016, as a result, it is likely that this was the last general election to be held in the UK during its membership of the EU. There were local elections on the day in most of England. No other elections were scheduled to take place in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, all British, Irish and Commonwealth citizens over the age of 18 on the date of the election were permitted to vote. In general elections, voting takes place in all constituencies of the United Kingdom to elect members of parliament to seats in the House of Commons. Each parliamentary constituency of the United Kingdom elects one MP to the House of Commons using the first-past-the-post system, if one party obtains a majority of seats, then that party is entitled to form the Government. If the election results in no party having a majority. In this case, the options for forming the Government are either a minority government or a coalition government, the next boundary review is now set to take place in 2018, thus the 2015 general election was contested using the same constituencies and boundaries as in 2010. Of the 650 constituencies,533 are in England,59 in Scotland,40 in Wales and 18 in Northern Ireland, in addition, the 2011 Act mandated a referendum in 2011 on changing from the current first-past-the-post system to an alternative vote system for elections to the Commons
10.
Liberal Democrats (UK)
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The Liberal Democrats are a liberal political party in the United Kingdom. The party was formed in 1988 as a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party, at the 2015 general election, the party was reduced to eight MPs. Nick Clegg resigned as leader and Tim Farron won the subsequent leadership election, the party currently has nine MPs, following the Richmond Park by-election. The Alliance was led by David Steel and Roy Jenkins, Jenkins was replaced by David Owen, the two parties had their own policies and emphases, but produced a joint manifesto for the 1983 and 1987 general elections. Following disappointing results in the 1987 election, Steel proposed to merge the two parties, although opposed by Owen, it was supported by a majority of members of both parties, and they formally merged in March 1988, with Steel and Robert Maclennan as joint interim leaders. The new party was initially named Social and Liberal Democrats with the short form The Democrats being used from September 1988. The name was changed to Liberal Democrats in October 1989. The new party logo, the Bird of Liberty, was adopted in 1989, the party is a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party and Liberal International. The then-serving Liberal MP Paddy Ashdown was elected leader in July 1988, at the 1989 European Elections, the party received only 6% of the vote, putting them in fourth place after the Green Party. They failed to gain a single Member of the European Parliament at this election, over the next three years, the party recovered under Ashdowns leadership. They performed better at the 1990 local elections and in by-elections—including at Eastbourne in 1990, Ribble Valley in 1991, the Lib Dems did not reach the share of national votes in the 1990s that the Alliance had achieved in the 1980s. At their first election in 1992, they won 17. 8% of the vote, in the 1994 European Elections, the party gained its first two Members of European Parliament. The election was, however, something of a point for the Liberal Democrats. Ashdown retired as leader in 1999 and the party elected Charles Kennedy as his replacement, the party improved on their 1997 results at the 2001 general election, increasing their number of seats to 52 and their share of the vote to 18. 3%. The party won seats from Labour in by-elections in Brent East in 2003 and Leicester South in 2004, under Kennedys leadership the majority of Pro-Euro Conservatives, a group of former members of the Conservatives, joined the Liberal Democrats on 10 December 2001. At the 2005 general election, the Lib Dems gained their highest share of the vote since the SDP–Liberal Alliance and won 62 seats. Many had anticipated that this election would be the Lib Dems breakthrough at Westminster, party activists hoped to better the 25% support of the 1983 election, or to reach 100 MPs. Much of the apparent lack of success resulted from the first-past-the-post electoral system, controversy became associated with the campaign when it became known that Michael Brown had donated £2.4 million to the Liberal Democrats
11.
Plaid Cymru
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Plaid Cymru is a social-democratic political party in Wales advocating for Welsh independence from the United Kingdom within the European Union. Plaid Cymru was formed in 1925 and won its first seat in 1966, Plaid is a member of the European Free Alliance. In September 2008, a senior Plaid Cymru assembly member spelled out her partys continuing support for an independent Wales, the Welsh Minister for Rural Affairs, Elin Jones, kicked off Plaids annual conference by pledging to uphold the goal of making Wales a European Union member state. She told the delegates in Aberystwyth that the party would continue its commitment to independence under the coalition with the Welsh Labour Party. While both the Labour and Liberal parties of the early 20th century had accommodated demands for Welsh home rule, no political party existed for the purpose of establishing a Welsh government. Initially, home rule for Wales was not an aim of the new movement, keeping Wales Welsh-speaking took primacy. In the general election of 1929 the party contested its first parliamentary constituency, Caernarvonshire, polling 609 votes, the party contested few such elections in its early years, partly due to its ambivalence towards Westminster politics. Indeed, the candidate Lewis Valentine, the party’s first president, by 1932 the aims of self-government and Welsh representation at the League of Nations had been added to that of preserving Welsh language and culture. However, this move, and the early attempts to develop an economic critique, did not broaden its appeal beyond that of an intellectual. The alleged sympathy of the leading members towards Europes totalitarian regimes compromised its early appeal further. The leaders treatment, including the judges dismissal of the use of Welsh and their subsequent imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs. This heightened the profile of the party dramatically and its membership had doubled to nearly 2,000 by 1939, in fact, the party adopted a neutral standpoint and urged conscientious objection to war service. In 1943 Saunders Lewis contested the University of Wales parliamentary seat at a by-election, gaining 1,330 votes, at this time Gwynfor Evans was elected president. Gwynfor Evans presidency coincided with the maturation of Plaid Cymru into a more political party. Its share of the vote increased from 0. 7% in the 1951 general election to 3. 1% in 1955 and 5. 2% in 1959, in the 1959 election, the party contested a majority of Welsh seats for the first time. Proposals to drown the village of Capel Celyn in the Tryweryn valley in Gwynedd in 1957 to supply the city of Liverpool with water played a part in Plaid Cymrus growth. Support for the party declined slightly in the early 1960s, particularly as support for the Liberal Party began to stabilise from its long-term decline. In 1962 Saunders Lewis gave a talk entitled Tynged yr Iaith in which he predicted the extinction of the Welsh language unless action was taken
12.
United Kingdom general election, 1983
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The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher the most decisive victory since that of Labour in 1945. Thatchers first four years as minister had not been an easy time. Unemployment increased during the first three years of her term and the economy went through a recession, however, the British victory in the Falklands War led to a recovery of her popularity, the economy had also returned to growth. By the time Thatcher called the election in May 1983, the Conservatives were most peoples firm favourites to win the election, the Labour Party had been led by Michael Foot since the resignation of James Callaghan. They had fared well in polls and local elections during this time. Labour adopted a platform that was considered more left-wing than usual, several moderate Labour MPs had left the party to form the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats then formed the SDP-Liberal Alliance with the existing Liberal Party, the opposition vote split almost evenly between the SDP/Liberal Alliance and Labour. This was the most recent election where a party in government increased its number of seats until 2015, the SDP/Liberal Alliance finished in third place but came within 700,000 votes of out-polling Labour. By gaining 25% of the vote, the Alliance won the largest such percentage for any third party since the 1923 general election. Despite this, they won only 23 seats, whereas Labour won 209, the Liberals argued that a proportional electoral system would have given them a more representative number of MPs. Changing the electoral system had been a long-running Liberal Party campaign plank, the election night was broadcast live on the BBC, and was presented by David Dimbleby, Robin Day and Peter Snow. It was also broadcast on ITV, and presented by Alastair Burnet, Peter Sissons, two future prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, were first elected as MPs in this election. Michael Foot was elected leader of the Labour party in 1980, the election of Foot signalled that the core of the party was swinging to the left and the move exacerbated divisions within the party. In 1981 a group of figures including Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers. The SDP agreed to a pact with the Liberals for the 1983 elections, the campaign displayed the huge divisions between the two major parties. The Conservatives key issues included employment, economic growth and defence, although, at barely 37 pages, it only seemed interminable, noted Roy Hattersley. Pro-Labour political journalist Michael White, writing in The Guardian, commented, There was something magnificently brave about Michael Foots campaign but it was like the Battle of the Somme
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