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Torrington (UK Parliament Constituency)
Torrington was a county constituency centred on the town of Torrington in Devon. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1950 until it was abolished for the February 1974 general election. An earlier constituency called Torrington, a parliamentary borough consisting only of the town itself, returned members to some of the parliaments of the Middle Ages; it was not represented after 1372. Boundaries The Municipal Boroughs of Bideford, Great Torrington, and Okehampton, the Urban Districts of Crediton and Northam, and the Rural Districts of Bideford, Crediton, Okehampton, and Torrington. History The medieval borough Torrington, sometimes referred to as Chipping Torrington, was one of a number of English boroughs that were represented in Parliament only intermittently during the Middle Ages, and eventually lost the right completely; at this period, writs of election were directed to the sheriff of each co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Molton (UK Parliament Constituency)
South Molton is a town and civil parish in the North Devon district, in the county of Devon, England. The town is on the River Mole, Devon, River Mole. In 2021 it had a population of 6225. South Molton is a market town trading mostly in sheep and cattle. There was South Molton railway station, a railway station on the Devon and Somerset Railway until 1966, when the branch line was closed. It is situated on the southern side of Exmoor just off the A361 road, A361 North Devon link road, which in part follows the route of the railway line. History The Hundred of South Molton was a pre-Norman administrative centre overseeing the estates of: South Molton, Bishops Tawton, Bray, Bremeridge, Aller, Molland, Anstey, Swimbridge, Ringcombe, Newton, Whitstone, Knowstone, George Nympton, Honiton, North Aller, Hacche, Radworthy, Pulham, Satterleigh, Chittlehampton, Wadham and Swimbridge. "In South Molton hundred there are 22 hides." (roughly 2640 acres) References to South Molton as an estat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles II Of England
Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651 and King of England, Scotland, and King of Ireland, Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685. Charles II was the eldest surviving child of Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland and Henrietta Maria of France. After Charles I's execution at Palace of Whitehall, Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War, the Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II king on 5 February 1649. However, England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth with a republican government eventually led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, and Charles Escape of Charles II, fled to mainland Europe. Cromwell became Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. Charles spent the next nine years in exile in France, the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Mills (UK Politician)
Sir Peter McLay Mills (22 September 1921 – 16 August 1993) was a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. He served as a member of parliament (MP) for Torrington from 1964 to 1974, West Devon from 1974 to 1983 and Torridge and West Devon from 1983 to 1987. While an MP he served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in 1972, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Northern Ireland Office from 1972 to 1974, and was knighted for his work in 1982 Queen's Birthday Honours List. Mills performed the official opening of the Meldon Reservoir Meldon Reservoir is a man-made fresh water reservoir near Okehampton, Devon. The reservoir is the last of eight reservoirs to be constructed within the Dartmoor National Park. The reservoir was built to dam the Meldon Gorge, through which the W ... in September 1972. References External links * 1921 births 1993 deaths Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1964 United Kingdom General Election
The 1964 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 15 October 1964. It resulted in the Conservatives, led by Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home, narrowly losing to the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party, led by Harold Wilson; Labour secured a parliamentary majority of four seats and ended its thirteen years in opposition since the 1951 United Kingdom general election, 1951 election. At age 47, Wilson became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Rosebery in 1894. Background Both major parties had changed leadership in 1963. Following the sudden death of Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell early in the year, the party chose Harold Wilson (at the time, thought of as being on the party's centre-left), while Alec Douglas-Home, at the time the Earl of Home, had taken over as Conservative leader and Prime Minister in October after Harold Macmillan announced his resignation in the wake of the Profumo affair. Douglas-Home shortly afterward discla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percy Browne
Percy Basil Browne (2 May 1923 – 5 March 2004) was an English businessman, farmer, amateur jockey and Conservative Party politician. He was Member of Parliament for Torrington from 1959 to 1964. He was educated at Eton before joining the army in 1941, and fought in North Africa, Sicily and Italy before joining the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944, reaching the rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Armoured Corps. After the war he took up farming in Devon with his first wife, Pamela Exham, who died after a hunting accident. After his wife's death, Browne moved to Dorset where he took up steeplechasing, and rode in the 1953 Grand National. He then remarried and moved to Gloucestershire, where he bought and ran a coal merchant's business. He later married for a third time and moved to Wiltshire, where he died in 2004. Career Browne was selected by the Conservative party to fight the 1959 general election in the Labour-held Gloucester constituency, but was persuaded to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1959 United Kingdom General Election
The 1959 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 8 October 1959. The Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party under the leadership of incumbent prime minister Harold Macmillan won a landslide victory with a majority of 100 seats. This was their third election victory in a row. The Conservatives won the largest number of votes in Scotland, but narrowly failed to win the most seats in that country. They have not made either achievement ever since. Both Jeremy Thorpe, a future Liberal leader, and Margaret Thatcher, a future Conservative leader and eventually Prime Minister, first entered the House of Commons following this election. Background Following the Suez Crisis in 1956, Anthony Eden, the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Prime Minister, became unpopular. He resigned early in 1957, and was succeeded by Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan. At that point, the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party, whose leader Hugh Gaitskell had succeeded Clement Attlee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Liberal Party (UK, 1947)
The National Liberal Party, known until 1948 as the Liberal National Party, was a liberal political party in the United Kingdom from 1931 to 1968. It broke away from the Liberal Party on the issue of abandoning free trade and supporting protectionism, and later co-operated and merged with the Conservative Party. History The Liberal Nationals evolved as a distinctive group within the Liberal Party when the main body of Liberals maintained in office the second Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald, who lacked a majority in Parliament. A growing number of Liberal MPs led by Sir John Simon declared their total opposition to this policy and began to co-operate more closely with the Conservative Party, even advocating a policy of replacing free trade with tariffs, anathema to many traditional Liberals. By June 1931, three Liberal MPs — Simon, Ernest Brown and Robert Hutchison (a former Lloyd George ministry-supporting coalitionist of the earlier National Liberal Party) — resi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1970 United Kingdom General Election
The 1970 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 18 June 1970. It resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, which defeated the governing Labour Party under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The Liberal Party, under its new leader Jeremy Thorpe, lost half its seats. The Conservatives, including the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), secured a majority of 30 seats. This general election was the first in which people could vote from the age of 18, after passage of the Representation of the People Act the previous year, and the first UK election in which party affiliations of candidates were put on the ballots. Most opinion polls prior to the election indicated a comfortable Labour victory, and put Labour up to 12.4% ahead of the Conservatives. On election day, however, a late swing gave the Conservatives a 3.4% lead and ended almost six years of Labour government, although Wilson remained leader of the Labour Party in opposition. Wri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two Major party, major List of political parties in the United Kingdom, political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs (British political party), Whigs, free trade–supporting Peelites, and reformist Radicals (UK), Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Ewart Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 United Kingdom general election, 1906 general election. Under Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916), the Liberal Party passed Liberal welfare reforms, reforms that created a basic welfare state. Although Asquith was the Leader of the Liberal Party (UK), party leader, its domin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Bonham Carter, Baron Bonham-Carter
Mark Raymond Bonham Carter, Baron Bonham-Carter (11 February 1922 – 4 September 1994) was an English publisher and politician. A member of the Bonham-Carter family, he was created a life peer in 1986. Early life He was the son of the Liberal activists Sir Maurice Bonham-Carter and his wife, the former Lady Violet Asquith, daughter of the Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. He was the second-youngest of four children; Helen, Laura and Raymond. Educated at Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read PPE, his studies were interrupted by the Second World War, and he was commissioned in the Grenadier Guards in November 1941. Captured in Tunisia in 1943 and imprisoned in Italy, he escaped and walked four hundred miles to return to British lines, being mentioned in dispatches. Bonham-Carter concluded the war by standing as the unsuccessful Liberal candidate for Barnstaple in the 1945 general election, before returning to finish the last year of his course ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1958 Torrington By-election
The 1958 Torrington by-election, in Devon, England, was the first gain by the British Liberal Party at a by-election since Holland with Boston in 1929. Background The election was caused by the accession of George Lambert, National Liberal and Conservative Member of Parliament for Torrington to a hereditary peerage as Viscount Lambert. He had held the constituency since its creation in 1950, with large majorities over Labour Party candidates. The Liberal Party had only contested the seat in 1950, although they then came second, with 25% of the vote. Lambert's father, also George Lambert, had held the predecessor seat of South Molton for much of its history, initially as a Liberal, but then as a National Liberal. Although generally popular, the Conservative administration of Harold Macmillan had been hit by differences over economic policy, and in January 1958, all the Government's Treasury Ministers had resigned. The Liberal Party had reached its lowest ebb in the 195 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Lambert, 2nd Viscount Lambert
George Lambert, 2nd Viscount Lambert, DL TD (27 November 1909 – 24 May 1989) was a British politician. Early life Lambert was the eldest son of long-serving Devon Member of Parliament, the Rt. Hon. George Lambert. He was educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford. During World War II, he was commissioned into the Royal Engineers, but transferred to the Royal Artillery in 1940. He became a lieutenant-colonel and a war Office liaison officer, visiting the Mediterranean, India and South-East Asia Commands. Political career In Parliament, Lambert spoke on agriculture matters. After almost fifty years in Parliament, George Lambert senior stepped down at the 1945 general election and was created Viscount Lambert. Lambert junior stood successfully as a National Liberal candidate in his father's seat, South Molton. In 1950 the constituency was abolished and replaced by Torrington, which Lambert continued to serve until his father's death in 1958, at which point he joined the Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
