Crosby by-election, 1981

The Crosby by-election, 1981 was a by-election held in England on 26 November 1981 to elect a new Member of Parliament (MP) for the House of Commons constituency of Crosby on Merseyside. It followed the death of Crosby's MP Sir Graham Page, of the Conservative Party.

The Crosby by-election took place against an almost unprecedented backdrop of division and disunity within both the Conservative and Labour parties, combined with social unrest and economic recession in the United Kingdom as a whole.

The opposition Labour Party was riven by factionalism and divided over entryism - in particular, that of the Militant tendency. It expounded left-wing policies, with perceived weak leadership provided by Michael Foot, who was routinely ridiculed by the national press.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had recently sacked or neutralised the remaining allies of Edward Heath, the previous more moderate Conservative leader, and the country was being subjected to the full rigours of monetarism, her economic policy. Inflation was near 20%, with unemployment climbing towards three million, a figure not seen since the 1930s.

In July 1981 the most intense and prolonged instance of public unrest in the United Kingdom in the late twentieth century had occurred in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, following on the heels of similar riots in the St Paul's area of Bristol, Handsworth and Brixton.

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