50-733: Islington Central was a parliamentary constituency in the Islington district of Inner London . It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom . The constituency was created for the February 1974 general election , and abolished for the 1983 general election . The London Borough of Islington wards of Canonbury, Highbury, Holloway, Mildmay, and Quadrant. United Kingdom constituencies In
100-585: A consequence they were termed the "forty-shilling freeholders". This included many Catholics who obtained the vote under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 for the Irish House of Commons (from 1801 for the United Kingdom House of Commons ). The Parliamentary Elections (Ireland) Act 1829 , enacted on the same day as the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 , raised the franchise qualification to
150-420: A few cases one). From 1535 each Welsh county and borough was represented, by one knight or burgess. The franchise was restricted differently in different types of constituency; in county constituencies forty shilling freeholders (i.e. landowners) could vote, while in boroughs the franchise varied from potwallopers , giving many residents votes, to rotten boroughs with hardly any voters. A county borough
200-666: A form or degree of mixed-member proportional representation . The existing constituencies were created, effectively, for the first general election of the Scottish Parliament, in 1999. When created, all but two had the names and boundaries of Westminster constituencies. The two exceptions were the Orkney Holyrood constituency , covering the Orkney Islands council area , and the Shetland Holyrood constituency , covering
250-561: A freehold of 40s". The Parliament of England legislated the new uniform county franchise, in the Electors of Knights of the Shires Act 1429 ( 8 Hen. 6 . c. 7). The Electors of Knights of the Shire Act 1432 ( 10 Hen. 6 . c. 2), which amended and re-enacted the 1430 law to make clear that the resident of a county had to have a forty-shilling freehold in that county to be a voter there. Over
300-422: A full adult male franchise, property qualifications only affected some of the new women voters (who were not occupiers of a dwelling or the wife of an occupier, in the constituency) and plural voting business property owners. They needed respectively a £5 and £10 qualification — the forty shilling qualification ended. Universal adult suffrage was enacted in 1928 and the remaining plural votes were abolished by
350-448: A more suitable label cannot be found. Where used, "The compass point reference used will generally form a prefix in cases where the rest of the constituency name refers to the county area or a local council, but a suffix where the rest of the name refers to a population centre." This is the reason for the difference in naming between, for example, North Shropshire (a county constituency ) and Reading West (a borough constituency ). In
400-586: A number of single-member first-past-the Post constituencies, matching the way Westminster MPs are elected. Following the decision that all MEPs should be elected by some form of proportional representation , the Labour government passed the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999 , creating eleven constituencies on Great Britain, which were first used in 1999 . The South West England constituency
450-668: Is in the Holyrood area of Edinburgh , while the main meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom is the Palace of Westminster , in the City of Westminster . There are 73 Holyrood constituencies covering Scotland , and each elects one Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) by the first-past-the-post system . Also, the constituencies are grouped into eight electoral regions, and each of these regions elects seven additional members , to produce
500-513: The 2005 United Kingdom general election , the House of Commons had 646 constituencies covering the whole of the United Kingdom. This rose to 650 in the 2010 election following the Fifth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies . Each constituency elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the " first-past-the-post " system of election. The House of Commons is one of the two chambers of
550-601: The Acts of Union 1707 , Scottish burghs were grouped into districts of burghs in the Parliament of Great Britain , except that Edinburgh was a constituency in its own right . After the Acts of Union 1800 , smaller Irish boroughs were disenfranchised, while most others returned only one MP to the United Kingdom Parliament. The Reform Act 1832 reduced the number of parliamentary boroughs in England and Wales by eliminating
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#1733086155441600-668: The European Parliament , prior to the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union (see European Parliament constituency ). In local government elections (other than for the London Assembly) electoral areas are called wards or electoral divisions . House of Commons, Scottish Parliament, Senedd and Northern Ireland Assembly constituencies are designated as either county or borough constituencies, except that in Scotland
650-513: The Liberal cause later in the century. It was found that about 70% of the county constituency electorate after passage of the Reform Act 1832 still qualified to vote. From 1885 the property-owning franchise became less important than the occupancy one. Only about 20% of the county electorate were freeholders in 1886 and the proportion declined to about 16% in 1902. In 1918, with the introduction of
700-571: The Representation of the People Act 1948 so that by and since the 1950 United Kingdom general election no voters have qualified on the basis of the ownership of land. Similarly in Ireland before 1829 the franchise for county constituencies was restricted to forty-shilling freeholders. This gave anyone who owned or rented land that was worth forty shillings (two pounds) or more, the right to vote. As
750-518: The Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004 , which enabled the creation of a new set of Westminster constituencies without change to Holyrood constituencies. The new Westminster boundaries became effective for the 2005 United Kingdom general election . There are 40 Senedd constituencies covering Wales , and each elects one Member of the Senedd (MS) by the first-past-the-post system . Also,
800-562: The Shetland Islands council area . For Westminster elections, these council areas were covered (and still are covered) by the Orkney and Shetland Westminster constituency . In 1999, under the Scotland Act 1998 , the expectation was that there would be a permanent link between the boundaries of Holyrood constituencies and those of Westminster constituencies. This link was broken, however, by
850-506: The United Kingdom (UK), each of the electoral areas or divisions called constituencies elects one member to the House of Commons . Within the United Kingdom there are five bodies with members elected by electoral districts called " constituencies " as opposed to " wards ": Between 1921 and 1973 the following body also included members elected by constituencies: Electoral areas called constituencies were previously used in elections to
900-539: The bicameral Parliament of the United Kingdom , the other being the House of Lords . There are fourteen London Assembly constituencies covering the Greater London area, and each constituency elects one member of the assembly by the first-past-the-post system . Eleven additional members are elected from Greater London as a whole to produce a form or degree of mixed-member proportional representation . Constituency names and boundaries remain now as they were for
950-488: The first general election of the assembly, in 2000. The assembly is part of the Greater London Authority and general elections of the assembly are held at the same time as election of the mayor of London . There are 18 Northern Ireland Assembly Constituencies : four borough (for Belfast ) and 14 county constituencies elsewhere (see below). Each elects five MLAs to the 90 member NI Assembly by means of
1000-424: The single transferable vote system. Assembly Constituency boundaries are identical to their House of Commons equivalents. The constituencies below are not used for the election of members to the 11 district councils . Scottish Parliament constituencies are sometimes called Holyrood constituencies, to distinguish them from Westminster (House of Commons) constituencies. The Scottish Parliament Building
1050-544: The Boundary Commissions for England , Wales , Scotland and Northern Ireland the power to create names for constituencies, and does not provide a set of statutory guidelines for the Commissions to follow in doing so. Constituency names are geographic, and "should normally reflect the main population centre(s) contained in the constituency". Compass points are used to distinguish constituencies from each other when
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#17330861554411100-519: The English threshold level of ten pounds. This eliminated the middling tenantry who had risked much in defying their landlords on Daniel O'Connell 's behalf in the 1828 Clare by-election that helped finally force the issue of Catholic access to parliament, and it reduced the overall electorate in the country from 216,000 voters to just 37,000. O'Connell's erstwhile ally in Ulster , George Ensor predicted as
1150-545: The King who regarded this franchise as too democratic and would have liked to see it raised to £10 value, if it were not to be entirely [replaced]. Royal wishes did not however coincide with the interests of either party. The electoral strength of the Whigs in many county constituencies depended upon the freeholder vote of large urban communities, whereas the Tories , on the other hand, looked to
1200-508: The People (Ireland) , acts of 1832, it stood at just 3,487. The forty-shilling qualification continued after 1829 in the comparatively small number of Irish boroughs which had the status of a corporate county . But the ten-pound threshold remained the basis of the county franchise in Ireland until the Representation of the People Act 1884 which extended the same voting qualifications as existed in
1250-466: The United Kingdom elected its Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) through twelve multimember European Parliament constituencies . One, Northern Ireland , used single transferable vote , while the eleven covering Great Britain used the d'Hondt method of party-list proportional representation . For its first European Parliamentary elections in 1979 Great Britain was divided into
1300-418: The above interpretations and as the qualifying figure was not uplifted or based on backdated valuations (to take account of inflation as in Scotland, where to be a shire elector required ownership of land worth forty shillings of old extent ) the number of qualified voters gradually expanded. Tempering this extension to the franchise were laws proposed by objectors (such as King William IV in 1832) who deemed
1350-485: The constituencies are grouped into five electoral regions, and each of these regions elects four additional members , to produce a form or degree of mixed-member proportional representation . The current set of Senedd constituencies is the second to be created. The first was created for the first general election of the National Assembly for Wales, in 1999. Before its withdrawal from the European Union in 2020,
1400-456: The council. The spending limits for election campaigns are different in the two, the reasoning being that candidates in county constituencies tend to need to travel farther. For by-elections to any of these bodies, the limit in all constituencies is £100,000. In the House of Commons of England , each English county elected two " knights of the shire " while each enfranchised borough elected "burgesses" (usually two, sometimes four, and in
1450-463: The counties in which the borough was situated. The Tories objected that urban interests would affect the representation of agricultural areas. The Whigs pointed out this had always been the case with urban areas not previously represented as borough constituencies (which had included major centres of wealth and population like Birmingham , Leeds and Manchester as well as the rapidly growing suburbs of London ). This provision proved to be damaging to
1500-459: The course of time many different types of property were accepted as being forty-shilling freeholds and the residence requirement disappeared. According to Seymour, "this qualification was broader in practice than would appear at first glance, since the term freehold was applicable to many kinds of property. An explanatory act of parliament, it is true, confined it to lands of purely freehold tenure; but notwithstanding this purely formal declaration,
1550-558: The distinction; the Boundary Commission for England has stated that, "as a general principle, where constituencies contain more than a small rural element they should normally be designated as county constituencies. Otherwise they should be designated as borough constituencies." In Scotland, all House of Commons constituencies are county constituencies except those in the cities of Glasgow , Edinburgh , Aberdeen , Dundee and three urban areas of Lanarkshire . In England and Wales,
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1600-452: The financial possibilities and value of a vote. A chorister of Ely Cathedral , the butler and brewer of Westminster Abbey , the bell-ringer, the gardener, the cook and the organ-blower, all voted by virtue of their supposedly ecclesiastical offices. In 1835 the members of a vestry in Marylebone succeeded in qualifying as electors from a burial ground attached to the parish...". Because of
1650-480: The half of it, a foot archer was paid two or three pence (12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound). A war-horse could value from five to 100 pounds. The legislation did not specify the gender of the property owner, however the franchise became restricted to males by custom. In subsequent centuries, until the 1832 Great Reform Act specified 'male persons', a few women were able to vote in parliamentary elections through property ownership, although this
1700-412: The non-landowning office holders and smallest landowners/investors as a dangerously large franchise. Taxpaying qualifications in connection with the freehold franchise were first required in 1712. In that year the exercise of the franchise became contingent upon the assessment of the land or tenements, in respect of which the vote was conferred, ( 10 Anne , c. 31). In 1781 the right to vote in counties
1750-528: The ownership and value of property, and the creation of a group of forty-shilling freeholders, was practiced in many jurisdictions such as England , Scotland , Ireland , the United States of America , Australia , and Canada . During the Second Barons' War , Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester instigated the English parliament of 1265, without royal approval. De Montfort's army had met and defeated
1800-435: The parliamentary qualification was, like that which compelled attendance in the county court , merely a "resiance" or residence qualification". Seymour explains why Parliament decided to limit the county franchise: "The Act of 1430, after declaring that elections had been crowded by many persons of low estate, and that confusion had thereby resulted, accordingly enacted that the suffrage should be limited to persons qualified by
1850-465: The position of returning officer in borough constituencies is held ex officio by the mayor or chairman of the borough or district council, and the high sheriff of the county in county constituencies. The administration of elections is carried out by the acting returning officer, who will typically be a local council's chief executive or Head of Legal Services. The role, however, is separate from these posts, and can be held by any person appointed by
1900-413: The previous common electoral quota for the whole United Kingdom and replaced it with four separate national minimal seat quotas for the respective Boundaries commissions to work to, as a result the separate national electoral quotas came into effect: England 69,534; Northern Ireland 67,145, Wales 58,383 and in Scotland only 54,741 electors. The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 gives
1950-449: The price for allowing "a few Catholic gentlemen to be returned to Parliament", the sacrifice of the forty-shilling freeholder and "indifference" it demonstrated to the cause of parliamentary reform would prove "disastrous" for the country. In Ensor's home county Armagh, "Emancipation" reduced an electorate of over 8,000 by three quarters so that even after the Reform , and the Representation of
2000-788: The rotten boroughs. It also divided larger counties into two two-seat divisions , the boundaries of which were defined in the Parliamentary Boundaries Act 1832 , and gave seven counties a third member. Similar reforms were also made for Scotland and for Ireland . The Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 ( 48 & 49 Vict. c. 23) equalised the population of constituencies; it split larger boroughs into multiple single-member constituencies, reduced smaller boroughs from two seats each to one, split each two-seat county and division into two single-member constituencies, and each three-seat county into single-member constituencies. The House of Commons (Redistribution of Seats) Act 1958 , eliminated
2050-454: The royal forces at the Battle of Lewes on 14 May 1264. Montfort sent out representatives to each county and to a select list of boroughs , asking each to send two representatives, and insisted the representatives be elected . Henry III rejected the new Parliament and resumed his war against Montfort, who was killed later that year at the Battle of Evesham , but the idea of electing knights of
Islington Central (UK Parliament constituency) - Misplaced Pages Continue
2100-412: The shire as representatives of the counties, and burgesses from the boroughs, became a permanent feature. In 1430, legislation limited the franchise to only those who owned the freehold of land that brought in an annual rent of at least forty shillings (forty-shilling freeholders). For comparison: In the mid 1340s, a knight received a daily pay of two shillings while on campaign, an ordinary man-at-arms
2150-449: The support of the small freeholder in the country districts. Neither party favoured the abolition or the increase in value of the freeholder qualification; instead the Commons voted [for] a continuation of the 40 s. franchise and agreed to impose limitations upon it: freehold estates lesser than [inherited] estates were to confer the vote only under certain conditions; and when the estate
2200-430: The term burgh is used instead of borough . Since the advent of universal suffrage , the differences between county and borough constituencies are slight. Formerly (see below ) the franchise differed, and there were also county borough and university constituencies. Borough constituencies are predominantly urban while county constituencies are predominantly rural . There is no definitive statutory criterion for
2250-504: The wider interpretation of the meaning of freeholder persisted, and we read of many freehold voters who were enfranchised by such qualifications as annuities and rent charges issuing out of freehold lands, and even dowers of wives and pews in churches. After the Restoration the electoral rights of clergymen were recognised by statute and church offices were held to confer a county franchise; this interpretation widened commensurately with
2300-562: Was expanded from the 2004 elections onward to include Gibraltar , the only British overseas territory that was part of the European Union , following a court case. Forty shilling freeholders Forty-shilling freeholders were those who had the parliamentary franchise to vote by virtue of possessing freehold property, or lands held directly of the king , of an annual rent of at least forty shillings (i.e. £ 2 or 3 marks), clear of all charges. The qualification to vote using
2350-539: Was for life (or lives) only, there must be actual and bona fide occupation for it serve as a qualification. The wider interpretation of the meaning of freehold, which admitted as qualifications such holdings as pew rights, annuities and church offices, was not restricted by the Act of 1832. A disputed point, on which the Whig majority in the Commons prevailed, was that freeholders in boroughs who did not occupy their property should vote in
2400-422: Was made dependent upon a charge, laid within six months of the election, "toward some aid granted or to be granted to His Majesty by a land-tax or an assessment, in the name of the person claiming to vote," ( 20 George III , c. 17)... When the question of voting rights came up in 1832, general sentiment in the House of Commons favoured retaining the qualification in counties, notwithstanding the well known desire of
2450-400: Was rare. Until legislation in the fifteenth century the franchise for elections of knights of the shire to serve as the representatives of counties in the Parliament of England was not restricted to forty-shilling freeholders. The Yale historian Charles Seymour discussing the original county franchise, suggested that "it is probable that all free inhabitant householders voted and that
2500-406: Was the constituency of a county corporate , combining the franchises of both county and borough. Until 1950 there were also university constituencies , which gave graduates an additional representation. Similar distinctions applied in the Irish House of Commons , while the non-university elected members of the Parliament of Scotland were called Shire Commissioners and Burgh Commissioners. After
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