Balham and Tooting (UK Parliament constituency)

Balham and Tooting
Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons
1918–1950
Number of members	one
Replaced by	Clapham and Wandsworth Central
Created from	Wandsworth

Balham and Tooting was a constituency in South London, which returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was created for the 1918 general election and abolished for the 1950 general election.

Balham & Tooting in the County of London

A map showing the wards of Wandsworth Metropolitan Borough as they appeared in 1916.

Boundaries

The constituency, officially the Balham and Tooting Division of the Parliamentary Borough of Wandsworth, was created by the Representation of the People Act 1918. The 1918 Act realigned constituency boundaries to correspond to those of the local government structures created in 1889 and 1900. The new seat was one of five divisions of the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth in the parliamentary County of London.^[1]

The seat had previously formed part of the single-member Wandsworth constituency, created in 1885.^[2]

The constituency was defined in terms of wards of the metropolitan borough as they existed in 1918: it comprised the entire Tooting ward and the part of the Balham ward which lay to the west and south of the centre of Balham Hill, Balham High Road, Ormeley Road, Cavendish Road and Emmanuel Road. The remainder of the Balham ward was in another of the Wandsworth divisions, Clapham.^[3]

The constituency was surrounded by Wandsworth Central to the north-west, Battersea South to the north, Clapham to the north-east, Streatham to the east and south-east, Mitcham to the south and Wimbledon to the west.

In the redistribution which took effect with the United Kingdom general election, 1950 the Tooting ward and part of Balham ward were included in the redrawn Wandsworth Central seat. The rest of Balham ward remained in the Clapham constituency.

Members of Parliament

Election		Member	Party
	1918	John Denison-Pender	Unionist
	1922	Alfred Butt	Unionist
	1936 b-e	George Doland	Conservative
	1945	Richard Adams	Labour
1950		constituency abolished

Election results

Elections in the 1910s

General Election 1918: Balham and Tooting[4]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Unionist	John Cuthbert Denison-Pender	12,405	59.7
	Labour	Frank Smith	3,586	17.2
	Independent Democrat	Alfred James Hurley	1,805	8.7
	Liberal	Capt. Maxwell Hendry Anderson	1,542	7.4
	Independent Conservative	W Hunt	1,457	7.0
Majority			8,819	42.5
Turnout				51.7
	Unionist hold		Swing

• endorsed by the Coalition Government.

Elections in the 1920s

General Election 1922: Balham and Tooting [5]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Unionist	Alfred Butt	17,239	68.2	+8.5
	Liberal	Joseph William Molden	8,044	31.8	+24.4
Majority			9,195	36.4	-6.1
Turnout				61.1	+9.4
	Unionist hold		Swing	-8.0

General Election 1923: Balham and Tooting [6]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Unionist	Alfred Butt	12,695	49.4	-18.8
	Liberal	George Little	7,477	29.1	-2.7
	Labour	Edward Archbold	5,536	21.5	n/a
Majority			5,218	20.3	-16.1
Turnout				61.1	0.0
	Unionist hold		Swing	-8.0

General Election 1924: Balham and Tooting[7]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Unionist	Alfred Butt	20,378	67.8
	Labour	Edward Archbold	9,672	32.2
Majority			10,706	35.6
Turnout			30,050	70.3
	Unionist hold		Swing

General Election 1929: Balham and Tooting [8]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Unionist	Sir Alfred Butt	18,181	45.2	-22.6
	Labour	Charles Wortham Brook	13,499	33.6	+1.4
	Liberal	William Hadley Summerskill	8,533	21.2	n/a
Majority			4,682	11.6	-24.0
Turnout			40,213	70.6
	Unionist hold		Swing	-12.0

Elections in the 1930s

General Election 1931: Balham and Tooting[9]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Sir Alfred Butt	28,592	74.5
	Labour	Percy Frederick Pollard	9,780	25.5
Majority			18,812	49.0
Turnout			38,372	67.1
	Conservative hold		Swing

General Election 1935: Balham and Tooting[10]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	Sir Alfred Butt	22,013	62.9
	Labour	William Davies Lloyd	12,960	37.1
Majority			9,053	25.9
Turnout			34,973	61.8
	Conservative hold		Swing

Balham and Tooting by-election, 1936[11]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Conservative	George Frederick Doland	14,959	53.7
	Labour	W J Miller	12,889	46.3
Majority			2,070	7.4
Turnout				49.2
	Conservative hold		Swing

Elections in the 1940s

General Election 1945: Balham and Tooting[12]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labour	Capt. Harold Richard Adams	19,782	57.6
	Conservative	Walter Stanley Edgson[13]	14,552	42.4
Majority			5,230	15.2
Turnout				70.9
	Labour gain from Conservative		Swing

References

1. Youngs, Frederic A, Jr. (1979). Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, Vol.I: Southern England. London: Royal Historical Society. p. 744. ISBN 0-901050-67-9.
2. Schedule 4: New Boroughs, Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 (c.23)
3. Schedule 9: Redistribution of Seats, Representation of the People Act 1918 (c.64)
4. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, FWS Craig
5. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, FWS Craig
6. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, FWS Craig
7. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, FWS Craig
8. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, FWS Craig
9. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, FWS Craig
10. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, FWS Craig
11. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, FWS Craig
12. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, FWS Craig
13. Peter Scott. "Edgson, (Walter) Stanley (1893–1950)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

• Boundaries of Parliamentary Constituencies 1885-1972, compiled and edited by F.W.S. Craig (Parliamentary Reference Publications 1972)
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "B" (part 1)