|
Oh TW, I didn't mean to set anybody a task! I coulda googled. ;)
Just local colour would have done!
Good grief. I'm looking as blue blooded as they come though, eh?
On the other hand, maybe my good peasant stock ancestors just weren't comfortable surrounded by Tories. ;) Funny thing is, the one ancestor who made it big enough (as a mining broker) to have his bankruptcy show up in the Gazette is from the Devon/Cornwall lot.
I should put some elbow grease into it some day and see how those bits of the electoral map looked at the turn of the previous century and before.
Here I thought I had enough of a mongrel tree that the ancestral stomping grounds would be a bit of a cross-section. Now that I think about it, I suppose it's having no real northern blood - no Lancashire, no Yorkshire, no midlands even - that makes the bloodlines so consistently blue. And I do google and yes, that seems to be it. And I'll bet that's a bit that's been consistent over the decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_United_Kingdom_general_election,_2005
|
|
Well, it's taken me a while, but on the 2005 general election results, they were as follows:-
Romford, Essex - Conservative
Cornwall & Devon around Plymouth and up the Tamar valley - Labour
Calverton, Nottinghamshire - (Sherwood constituency) Labour
Hose, Leicestershire - Conservative (I think)
Cold Ashby, Northamptonshire - (Kettering?) Conservative
Rushden, Northamptonshire - Conservative
Salisbury, Wiltshire - Conservative
Canterbury, Kent - Conservative.
That is not to say how your ancestors will have voted, 70, 80 years ago it was a very different country.
|
|
Aargh. My exit polls are not looking good!
Romford I'm surprised at, yikes.
When my mum and I visited in 1994, we spent an afternoon in East Ham where her dad (son of the Romford gr-grm and Cornwall gr-grf) was born. We were welcomed into his old house by the Sri Lankan family living there, who gave us tea and orange juice, and then we visited the Newham library.
We were chatting with the woman at the front desk -- a Canadian war baby of all things -- and asked about the local results of the council elections the day before.
Oh, she said, very good. Last time 14 out of 15 council seats were Labour ...
... and oh no, I thought, we have a gloating Tory ...
This time, she said, they're all Labour!
Well, Salisbury and Canterbury, those are my bourgeois non-ag lab/shoe factory ancestors, so that makes sense. Butchers from Canterbury, musician from Salisbury.
The Canterbury clan are the source of my second cousin four times removed, the Lord Chancellor - a "class traitor" to the Tories in 1929 and Labour life peer. So the genes can be overcome. ;)
|
|
Hi Janey -
Romford - there's been boundary changes here, it was taken by Labour in 1997 but is currently Tory.
Salisbury and Canterbury are both Tory stroungholds.
|
|
I should have thought of this earlier - I'm curious. ;)
100 years ago, my gr-grparents -- well, my gr-grfathers -- would have been voting in a UK election. Well, 102 years ago; two of them immigrated here in 1908 and 1909. One of my grandfathers was eligible to vote in 1915 and 1916, before leaving; I don't know whether there was much voting in the trenches, though. My grandmother, his wife, left England before being able to exercise the right to vote, as she was just slightly too young in 1916 and by the next election she was gone. One great-grandmother who didn't come to Canada died youngish before women could vote. From the little I've heard about the other, I suspect she used her vote.
So I'm curious how my ancestral ridings vote!
The great-grandparents came from
Romford, Essex
Cornwall & Devon around Plymouth and up the Tamar valley
Calverton, Nottinghamshire
Hose, Leicestershire
Cold Ashby, Northamptonshire
Rushden, Northamptonshire
Salisbury, Wiltshire
Canterbury, Kent
Are any of them strongholds of any particular party? Do I have red, blue or purple blood?
|
