Spen Valley (UK Parliament constituency)
| Spen Valley | |
|---|---|
| Former County constituency for the House of Commons |
|
| 1885–1950 | |
| Number of members | one |
| Replaced by | Batley and Morley, Brighouse and Spenborough and Dewsbury |
| Created from | Eastern West Riding of Yorkshire |
Spen Valley was a parliamentary constituency in the valley of the River Spen in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The constituency was created by the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 for the 1885 general election, retained with altered boundaries in 1918, and abolished for the 1950 general election. In the 1901 Census, there were 13,557 inhabited houses in the division; there were 10,960 registered electors, of which 9,396 qualified by virtue of occupying property within the division, 1,490 by virtue of owning property, 67 by virtue of occupying land only within the division, and 7 qualifying as lodgers.
Political historian Henry Pelling noted that the constituency as it existed from 1885 to 1918 was dominated by the woollen industry and carpetmaking, where the vast bulk of the population were nonconformist: the Church of England parish of Birstall was said to have had only four clergymen in the eighteenth century (two of whom were schoolmasters). In 1922, membership of nonconformist circuits in the constituency is estimated at 2,759 for the Congregational Church, 1,065 Wesleyanism, 1,027 United Methodist Church, 698 Primitive Methodism, and 328 Baptists, making it the second largest nonconformist attendance in the West Riding.
The death of the sitting MP in 1919 led to a sensational by-election gain for the Labour Party, which was described by historian Maurice Cowling as the worst result for the Coalition during the 1918-22 Parliament;John Ramsden admitted that Labour's win had a big psychological impact on the Coalition but thought the result was a "freak win" given that Labour had under 40% of the vote. At the ensuing general election, the Manchester Guardian described the constituency as "scattered between the three towns of Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield", centred on Cleckheaton, and populated by "woollen and wire workers, miners, card manufacturers". A significant presence of Irish voters was also noted. Sir John Simon, a former Home Secretary who had lost his seat in the 1918 election, regained the seat for the Liberals in 1922 and held it until given a Peerage in 1940. During this period Simon moved from declaring his basic sympathy with the Labour Party's objects, to forming the Liberal Nationals who went into alliance with the Conservatives. Simon found his constituency marginal, and had a majority of under 1,000 in his last election, and Labour gained it in the 1945 election landslide.
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