The year is 1978 and the Labour Party is defending its Moss Side seat in a byelection which was occasioned by the death of Frank Hatton who had won the seat for Labour in February 1974.
The Labour candidate was George Morton, who had served on both Manchester City Council and the Greater Manchester Council and lived locally.
There were four other candidates, drawn from the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the National Front and the Workers Revolutionary Party, and the election was fought against a backdrop of growing industrial conflict, which has come to be remembered as the “the winter of discontent”.
Added to which the Labour Government had lost its slim majority of three in 1976 and entered a pact with the Liberal Party the following year, which lasted until September 1978.
Here in Moss Side and indeed in Chorlton, George was well received and the outcome of the election was a Labour victory, with George increasing his majority and share of the vote in the General Election which followed in 1979.
And for those who are pondering on the significance of a Moss Side story, that is because Chorlton was in the Moss Side Constituency.
The seat had been created in 1918 and was abolished in 1983 when changes to the Parliamentary boundaries moved Chorlton into Manchester Withington.
For most of its existence it returned a Tory MP, with the Liberals briefly winning the seat in the 1923 General Election only for the Conservatives to win it back a year later.
By 1929 the Labour Party had over taken the Liberals as the main contender to the Tories and across the next three General Elections achieved between 32% and 41% of the votes cast.
The seat was finally won by Labour in the landslide victory of 1945, when William Griffiths took the seat for Labour with 49% of the vote.
Sadly in Chorlton, Labour had to wait until 1986 for its first election victory, which was followed a year later when Keith Bradly won Manchester Withington, giving Labour voters the double.
Location; Moss Side and Chorlton
Picture; George Morton campaigning in the by-election in Chorlton and Moss Side in 1978, with fellow MPs, the local organizer and volunteers, from the Lloyd Collection
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| George Morton and "team" in Chorlton, 1978 |
There were four other candidates, drawn from the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the National Front and the Workers Revolutionary Party, and the election was fought against a backdrop of growing industrial conflict, which has come to be remembered as the “the winter of discontent”.
Added to which the Labour Government had lost its slim majority of three in 1976 and entered a pact with the Liberal Party the following year, which lasted until September 1978.
And for those who are pondering on the significance of a Moss Side story, that is because Chorlton was in the Moss Side Constituency.
The seat had been created in 1918 and was abolished in 1983 when changes to the Parliamentary boundaries moved Chorlton into Manchester Withington.
For most of its existence it returned a Tory MP, with the Liberals briefly winning the seat in the 1923 General Election only for the Conservatives to win it back a year later.
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| Campaigning in Moss Side, 1978 |
The seat was finally won by Labour in the landslide victory of 1945, when William Griffiths took the seat for Labour with 49% of the vote.
Sadly in Chorlton, Labour had to wait until 1986 for its first election victory, which was followed a year later when Keith Bradly won Manchester Withington, giving Labour voters the double.
Location; Moss Side and Chorlton
Picture; George Morton campaigning in the by-election in Chorlton and Moss Side in 1978, with fellow MPs, the local organizer and volunteers, from the Lloyd Collection
I had no idea that when I left Moss Side to go to Chorlton I was still in Moss Side.
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