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Constituency of Penrith and The Border | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 55.9% ( 17.2%) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The 1983 Penrith and The Border by-election was a parliamentary by-election held on 28 July 1983 for the British House of Commons constituency of Penrith and The Border in Cumbria.
Held seven weeks after the election in which the Conservatives won a second term by a landslide, it was the very first by-election of the 1983–1987 Parliament.
The seat had become vacant when the constituency's Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), William Whitelaw had been elevated to the peerage as Viscount Whitelaw. Whitelaw had held the seat since the 1955 general election, and had been Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party since 1974, and Deputy Prime Minister since 1979, serving as Home Secretary from 1979 until his ennoblement and appointment as Leader of the House of Lords.
The result of the contest was a narrow victory for the Conservative candidate, David Maclean, who won with a majority of 552 over the SDP–Liberal Alliance candidate Michael Young.
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | David Maclean | 17,530 | 46.0 | -12.8 | |
| Liberal | Michael Young | 16,978 | 44.6 | +16.7 | |
| Labour | Lindsay Williams | 2,834 | 7.4 | -5.8 | |
| Monster Raving Loony | Screaming Lord Sutch | 412 | 1.1 | New | |
| Retired Naval Officer | Eric Morgan | 150 | 0.4 | New | |
| Death off Roads: Freight on Rail | Helen Anscomb | 72 | 0.2 | New | |
| Independent Socialist | John Connell | 69 | 0.2 | New | |
| New Britain | Peter Smith | 35 | 0.1 | New | |
| Majority | 552 | 1.4 | -29.5 | ||
| Turnout | 38,080 | 55.9 | -17.2 | ||
| Conservative hold | Swing | -14.8 | |||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | William Whitelaw | 29,304 | 58.8 | -2.4 | |
| Alliance | Michael Young | 13,883 | 27.9 | +11.4 | |
| Labour | W Williams | 6,612 | 13.3 | -9.1 | |
| Majority | 15,421 | 30.1 | -8.7 | ||
| Turnout | 49,799 | 73.1 | -3.9 | ||
| Conservative hold | Swing | ||||
William Stephen Ian Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw, was a British Conservative Party politician who served in a wide number of Cabinet positions, most notably as Home Secretary from 1979 to 1983 and as de facto Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1988. He was Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1991.
The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of the Labour Party in 1945, with a majority of 144 seats and the first of two consecutive landslide victories.
David John Maclean, Baron Blencathra, is a Conservative Party life peer. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Penrith and The Border from 1983 to 2010.
Workington is a constituency in Cumbria represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2019 by Mark Jenkinson, a Conservative.
Copeland is a constituency in Cumbria created in 1983 and represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. The constituency is represented in Parliament by Trudy Harrison, of the Conservative Party, since a by-election in February 2017. It was retained at the snap 2017 general election four months later. The seat had been held by Labour candidates at elections between 1983 and 2015 included.
Penrith and The Border is a constituency in Cumbria represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2019 by Neil Hudson, a Conservative.
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Neil Peter Hammerton HudsonFRCVS is a British politician, academician, and veterinary surgeon who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Penrith and The Border since 2019. A member of the Conservative Party, he has served on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee since 2020.
