Darwen (UK Parliament constituency)

Darwen
Former County constituency
for the House of Commons
1885 (1885)–1983 (1983)
Number of members	one

Darwen was a county constituency in Lancashire, centred on the town of Darwen. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1885 until it was abolished for the 1983 general election.

During the 1920s, the constituency was a fiercely contested marginal between the Liberal and Conservative Parties, with the sitting MP defeated at each election. At the 1924 general election, it saw a 92.7% turnout, a record for an English constituency.

It was largely replaced by the new Rossendale & Darwen constituency.

Boundaries

Members of Parliament

Election		Member	Party
	1885	James Gascoyne-Cecil	Conservative
	1892	Charles Philip Huntington	Liberal
	1895	Ald. John Rutherford	Conservative
	Jan 1910	Frederick George Hindle	Liberal
	Dec 1910	Ald. John Rutherford	Conservative
	1922	Sir Frank Bernard Sanderson	Conservative
	1923	Frederick Hindle	Liberal
	1924	Sir Frank Bernard Sanderson	Conservative
	1929	Sir Herbert Samuel	Liberal
	1935	Stuart Russell	Conservative
	1943 by-election	Stanley Prescott	Conservative
	1951	Sir Charles Fletcher-Cooke	Conservative
1983		constituency abolished

Election results

Elections in the 1940s

Darwen by-election, 1943
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Stanley Prescott	8,869	50.2	+9.1
	Independent Liberal	Honor Balfour	8,799	49.8	N/A
Majority			70	0.4	−2.7
Turnout			17,668	45.0	−43.9
	Conservative hold		Swing

See also

• Darwen by-election, 1943

References

• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "D" (part 1)