Liverpool West Derby (UK Parliament constituency)

Boundaries

1885-1918: The Municipal Borough of Liverpool ward of West Derby.

1918-1950: The County Borough of Liverpool wards of Anfield, Breckfield, and West Derby.

1950-1955: The County Borough of Liverpool wards of Croxteth and West Derby.

1955-1983: The County Borough of Liverpool wards of Clubmoor, Croxteth, Dovecot, and Gillmoss.

1983-1997: The City of Liverpool wards of Clubmoor, Croxteth, Dovecot, Gillmoss, and Pirrie.

1997-2010: The City of Liverpool wards of Clubmoor, Croxteth, Dovecot, Gillmoss, Pirrie, and Tuebrook.

2010-present: The City of Liverpool wards of Croxteth, Knotty Ash, Norris Green, Tuebrook and Stoneycroft, West Derby, and Yew Tree.

The constituency is one of five covering the city of Liverpool and covers the northeast of the city, including Croxteth, Gillmoss, Knotty Ash, Norris Green, Tuebrook, and Stoneycroft as well as West Derby itself.

Following their review of parliamentary representation in Merseyside, the Boundary Commission created a modified West Derby constituency, which was fought at the 2010 general election.

Their initial proposal to create a cross-border "Croxteth and Kirkby" constituency (which would have contained electoral wards from Knowsley borough, as well as from Liverpool) was dropped on its public consultation.

History

The seat was created in the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 and can be considered a safe seat from 1964 to date for the Labour Party, their candidates having been victorious in every general election since then. However, in the early 1980s it was briefly held by the Social Democratic Party as a result of the sitting Labour MP Eric Ogden being among many defectors. Labour regained the seat at the 1983 general election, when Bob Wareing was first elected.

Before 1964, it was held by the Conservatives, although their share of the vote has declined considerably; so much so that in four recent general elections, they have finished in fourth place, however they placed third in 2015.

In the general elections of 1997 and 2001, the seat was the only constituency in England in which a minor party came second, the continuing Liberal Party (after the Liberal-SDP merger) who had all three local councillors for one electoral ward in the area. In the 2005 election, however, the Liberals were pushed into third place by the Liberal Democrats and fell to fourth in 2015, with UKIP taking second place.

Sir Frederick Edwin Smith, then Solicitor-General in the David Lloyd George Coalition Government, was returned for West Derby in the General Election of December 1918 when constituency reorganisation abolished his former neighbouring Walton seat. He sat for only two months, being promoted Lord Chancellor and raised to the peerage as Lord Birkenhead in February 1919. He was the first of two MPs for this seat to achieve the highest legal office.

Maxwell Fyfe, KC, MP from 1935-54 (including World War II) became the highest judge in the country, the Lord Chancellor, having been the Attorney General and Solicitor General for England and Wales. He helped to co-write the European Convention on Human Rights and was one of the key prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials jointly with the (Labour-member) prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross. At this task was a "capable lawyer, efficient administrator and concerned housemaster". There were misgivings in some quarters as to how Fyfe would perform, cross-examination not being regarded as one of his strengths. However his cross-examination of Hermann Göring is one of the most noted cross-examinations in history."Faced with sustained and methodical competence rather than brilliance, Goering ... crumbled".

Stephen Twigg ousted Michael Portillo in the normally right-leaning Enfield, Southgate and served it from 1997 until the 2005 election, briefly serving as schools minister before that election, which he lost, before five years later standing for this normally left-leaning seat in Liverpool.

Elections in the 1910s