REPORT journalism, similar to the more In many and were similarly based on reac- that was done in local organisation, recent ‘Mondeo Man’ and ‘Worces- tions against unpopular govern- the personal appeal of Eric Lubbock ter Woman’. Whereas parties now ways, Orp- ments and a divided Labour Party. and his strong roots in the local have recourse to sophisticated He concluded in agreement with community, and the historic weak- analytic tools which enable them to ington could the ‘ambiguous conclusion’ of Mark ness of the party in Kent – against identify particular subsets of voters Egan, reminding the audience which the later decline of Liberal on a range of characteristics, back be seen as that, although the core vote of the support could be seen as a reversion in 1962 the categorisation was more Conservative and Labour parties to type. straightforwardly geographic. Yet, the proto- declines at every election, the Lib- One audience member recalled the coming together of the new, eral Democrats are not well placed how he had been recruited to young, professional middle class and type of what to capitalise on this. Their voters lifelong Liberal membership by a the Home Counties suburbs did lay has become are less likely to ‘stick’ with them wine and cheese evening during the basis for later Liberal success. from election to election, their pol- the Orpington by-election. He Orpington was also, according the classic icy positions are not well known or emphasised the social aspect of the to Kavanagh, the forerunner of understood, they continue to suffer election, the personal support for two now-familiar electoral phe- pattern of from the electoral system, which Lubbock and the feeling of change nomena: by-elections as referenda penalises parties with an even geo- associated with the ‘Swinging ’60s’. on incumbent governments, and a Liberal graphical spread, and their growth There was a feeling of ‘sheer enthu- tactical voting. These have been the in support among young people is siasm’ which drove the Liberals ingredients of Liberal and Liberal by-election offset by the fact that this section of during this time. In particular, he Democrat resurgence over the past the electorate is least likely to vote. remembered travelling by motor- fifteen years. And they have very victory. He pointed to the 2010 general elec- cade up the M6 to Derbyshire, little to do with Jo Grimond. tion as evidence of this. where they were certain they were In many ways, Orpington could A lively discussion followed, going to win. be seen as the prototype of what with the many contributions from has become the classic pattern of a the audience stressing, among other Dr Emily Robinson is an Advance Liberal by-election victory. It was things, the importance of demon- Research Fellow at the School of Politics a forced election (i.e. not caused by strating successful administration and International Relations, University death), which gave the electorate in local government, the vital work of Nottingham. a reason to punish the incumbent party. Moreover, the Conservative government was itself unpopular. There was a third-party vote (in this case Labour), which could be squeezed. The Liberals had the momentum – following good show- In further search of ‘Orpington Man’ ings in Lincoln, Middlesborough The evidence re-examined and Blackpool, they were making headlines. Finally, a positive opin- By Michael Steed ion poll on the eve of the election allowed the Liberals to argue that the election should be seen as a ref- oth speakers at the History areas whose population had grown erendum on the government. All of Group meeting’s discussion most in the inter-war period. With these factors combined to provide Bof ‘Orpington Man’ referred just 12.3 per cent of the vote, Liberal an excellent opportunity for tactical to the wider pattern of Liberal support in the new Orpington itself voting. In addition, Lubbock was a voting in London and Manchester was unexceptional for the 1945 gen- personable candidate and the local suburban constituencies before and eral election; what was unusual was party was well organised. after the 1962 by-election in Orp- that this was quite a jump compared Like Egan, Kavanagh pointed ington itself. This note examines to the 9.3 per cent who had voted to the fact that, since the late 1950s, that wider pattern more precisely, Liberal in the previous general elec- the Liberals had been building and concludes that ‘Orpington tion (1935) in Chislehurst, the near- their strength in suburban seats in Man’ should be seen as an earlier est to a predecessor constituency. London and Manchester with no and more enduring component This was an exception which Liberal tradition. This was Betje- in the Liberal revival than has illustrated a rule. Although Lib- man’s ‘Metroland’, detatched from been generally recognised. The eral support declined generally any affiliation to the established phrase captures an important ele- between 1935 and 1945, the party’s political parties. Although the ment in the social changes which performance was extraordinarily party wasn’t yet winning seats in underpinned Liberal growth in uneven. For instance Orpington’s these areas, it was clearly breaking the Grimond era and were to make new neighbours also saw big jumps out of its Celtic fringe and finding a significant contribution to the in the Liberal vote: +8.4 in Bromley a new form of ‘Liberal Man’ in the party’s capacity to win seats by the and +3.9 in the reduced Chislehurst. suburbs. This was, Kavanagh felt, end of the twentieth century. Other newly drawn constituencies ‘the germ of the breakthrough that Orpington first appeared as a in the London suburbs also swung the party has made ever since.’ The constituency in 1945 due to a lim- dramatically to the Liberals. In surges in 1974, ’83 and ’87 were also ited localised redistribution. This 1935, the party had polled a mere particularly evident in the suburbs added 25 seats to the Commons in 7.5 per cent in the country’s largest Journal of Liberal History 74 Spring 2012 41 IN FURTHER SEARch OF ‘ORPINGTON MAN’ constituency, the Hendon division well as new suburban areas around years of bad by-election results. of Middlesex, with 164,786 electors; Birmingham and Manchester; but During this decade, the only good its 1945 votes were 16.9 per cent and most stretched out of London – by-election votes were in Inverness 18.5 per cent in the two new seats of poetically, John Betjeman’s Metro- (1954) and Rotherhithe (1946). No Hendon North and South. land. Most of these voters lived in sign of Orpington Man there, or in Historians have conspicuously recently built homes, developing either of the two general elections failed to note this localised resur- new communities. Typically there (1950 and 1951); the only seats gained gence of Liberalism, simply seeing was no local Liberal tradition. in three-cornered fights were in the 1945 election as part of a con- Such voters had generally spurned Scotland. In its continued decline, tinuous pattern of Liberal decline; Liberal candidates in 1935 but the parliamentary Liberal party a contemporary history called it responded better to the platform became the more associated with ‘the Waterloo of the Liberal party’.1 that the party promoted in 1945. the Celtic fringe. Its pockets of local Overall, the Liberal Party did do This surely reflected the social government support were mostly badly in 1945, both losing seats and Liberal appeal of 1945, the shift in Pennine towns, where another seeing its share of the vote drop in away from the party’s traditional type of Liberal tradition lingered most of the seats it had fought in themes to its new Beveridgian on, expressed at Westminster in 1935. But most of these were in tra- message. The twelve Liberal MPs the form of Liberal MPs elected ditionally Liberal areas: the Celtic elected in 1945 were all from Wales through local Tory-Liberal pacts. fringe, agricultural constituencies or agricultural areas (often both); That makes the pattern of where Labour had yet to overtake but popular Liberal support had change at the 1955 general elec- it and a scatter of urban strongholds shifted massively towards newer, tion all the more intriguing. David such as Birkenhead or Middles- urban Britain. That was most Butler noted this as the first elec- brough, often seaports where the evident in the new-growth areas, tion since 1929 when Liberal sup- party’s commitment to free trade but the party also gained ground port rose, if slightly; but stressed had still meant something in the dramatically in some urban con- the unevenness of the pattern.2 1930s. In 1945 such traditional sup- stituencies where it had polled very Generally, the slight rise failed to port was still ebbing fast; yet as that badly in 1935, such as Reading (up match the loss already sustained tide ebbed, new support in newly from 5 per cent to 12.6 per cent) or between 1950 and 1951. Whilst built up areas emerged out of the Edinburgh Central (4.6 per cent to a handful of striking improve- political seabed. If we take the thir- 11.2 per cent). The post-1945 party ments in peripheral Britain (North teen cases where rapid inter-war at Westminster was thoroughly Cornwall, North Devon, Hereford growth led to redistribution in 1945 unrepresentative of what was hap- and Inverness) did bring the party which had had a Liberal candidate Orpington pening amongst Liberal voters. above the 1950 level, in other tradi- standing in 1935 (most did not), the by-election, However, for the moment it was tional strongholds, from Anglesey average Liberal vote rose from 12.8 March 1962 – the a flash in the pan.