Kensington South by-election, 1968
The Kensington South by-election, 1968 by-election was held in the Kensington South constituency of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom on 14 March 1968. The election was to fill a vacancy in the seat formerly held by Conservative MP William Roots, who resigned from Parliament in 1968 due to ill health.
The seat was considered a safe seat for the Conservatives ('as safe and solid as the red-brick Victorian blocks of flats', wrote the Times); at the 1966 general election Roots was elected with 65.1 percent of the vote and a majority of 14,631. Turnout was expected to be low as the constituency had a large transient population living in bedsits and flats.[1]
The Conservative Sir Brandon Rhys-Williams, a management consultant, won the seat with 75.5 percent of the vote and a slightly reduced majority (13,747) on a much reduced turnout. The Liberal candidate Thomas Kellock, a QC who had fought the seat at the previous general election, came in a distant second, with Labour candidate Clive Bradley, a barrister and journalist, forced into third place and losing his deposit.[2] There were two independent candidates who received the fewest number of vote: Sinclair Eustace, 37, a teacher of phonetics and a campaigner against aircraft noise, described by the Times as 'perhaps the most civilized and likeable' of all the candidates but with a platform very close to that of the Liberal Party; and William Gold, 45, and engineer and 'a Buddhist, anti-vivisectionist, periodic vegetarian and author of at least six unpublished novels' who had only just returned to the UK after living in Australia.[3]
Results
| By-Election 14 March 1968: Kensington South[4] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| Conservative | Sir Brandon Rhys-Williams | 16,489 | 75.5 | ||
| Liberal | Thomas Oslaf Kellock | 2,742 | 12.6 | ||
| Labour | Clive Bradley | 1,874 | 8.6 | ||
| Independent | Sinclair Eustace | 675 | 3.1 | ||
| Independent | William Gold | 59 | 0.3 | ||
| Majority | 13,747 | 63.0 | |||
| Turnout | 40.0 | ||||
| Conservative hold | Swing | ||||
Notes
- ↑ Young, John (2 March 1968). "Bedsitter vote being wooed: Multiple clash a puzzle". The Times.
- ↑ "Tories sweep in at Kensington Labour candidate loses deposit in low poll", The Times, 15 March 1968.
- ↑ "Far From Madding Parties", The Times, 7 March 1968.
- ↑ "1968 By Election Results". Archived from the original on 2012-03-25. Retrieved 2015-08-21.
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