Lewisham East

Lewisham East
Borough constituency for the House of Commons
Boundary of Lewisham East in Greater London.
County	Greater London
Electorate	65,508 (December 2010)
Current constituency
Created	1974 (1974)
Member of parliament	Heidi Alexander (Labour)
Number of members	One
Created from	Lewisham North and Lewisham South
1918–1950
Replaced by	Lewisham North and Lewisham South
Created from	Lewisham
Overlaps
European Parliament constituency	London

Lewisham East is a parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Heidi Alexander of the Labour Party.

Lewisham East was created for the 1918 general election. From 1945-1950 the seat was represented by serving cabinet minister Herbert Morrison (Lab), winning the seat against its first MP, a Conservative, former army officer, Assheton Pownall.

The seat was abolished in 1950 but recreated in 1974. From 1979 to 1997 the MP elected won by marginal majorities. Its 1983–1992 representation was by Minister for Sport Colin Moynihan (Con). The area since the 1997 General Election has swung to Labour reflecting for example, 2014, local results. The seat produced the 51^st largest Labour share of votes in 2015, of the 650 constituencies. The Conservative candidate of 2015 for the second time came third — the runner up switched to a UKIP candidate.

This is a set of neighbourhoods in the inner London Borough of Lewisham, stretching from the relatively affluent and physically higher former village of Blackheath that overall has much more in common with the leafier parts of Greenwich than neighbouring Lewisham - the north and east of the more widely defined prominence is entirely in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The other wards to the south have more social housing and less architectural grandeur — incidence of social deprivation is highest approaching downtown Lewisham and the Rushey Green side of Catford, a low-to-middle income area which opened one of the first indoor shopping malls in England.