university consituencies

[joemac]

What if the labour government didnt abolish university constituencies in 1945 with the rise in the amount of people going to university whats the chances of some minor party getting in due to a student protest vote or would they mostly vote for the major parties

 

[V-J]

If the 1945 Labour government hadn't abolished them, then a later government would have done. They were mostly Tory freeholds for the duration of their existence, although I think one or two of them went a bit towards the Liberals during the war period. Electorally, it wouldn't have made any difference even if they hadn't been abolished - there was only, what, four or five of them by 1945?

 

[Dan1988]

Ireland still has university constitutencies, so what would have motivated Ireland to retain them? Maybe this could be part of the picture.

 

[V-J]

Ireland still has university constitutencies,

I think they have about two, in the upper house.

I'm not sure on what basis Ireland's Senate is convened, but I'll bet anything it isn't directly elected. I suspect that the prestige of University College and the like was (is) very high in Ireland, which, combined with the fact that we're talking about an upper house, stopped them from being abolished. A bit different from Commons constituencies in Britain.

 

[Derek Jackson]

In the Irish Republic the University seats are in the Senate. I believe that they are elected by the graduates of the Universities. NB The Irish Senate seems to have rather less power than the UK House of Lords.

In Britain the University seats had started changing their nature. A significant proportion of the University MPs were independent. They included AP Herbert and Eleanor Rathbone.

It should be noted that from 1918 to 1945 the University seats were elected by single transferable vote proportional representation.

In Northern Ireland there were 4 University seats in a House of Commons of 52 from 1922 to 1969. By the end the Official Unionists were only taking 2.