History
The constituency was created in 1950, when the former two-seat constituency of Derby was split into two single-member seats.
A notable former MP for the seat was its first incumbent, Philip Noel-Baker of the Labour Party. He served as a Cabinet minister in the post-war Attlee government, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959 for his campaigning for disarmament. He had previously represented the former two-seat constituency of Derby since a by-election in 1936.
The former Cabinet minister Margaret Beckett, who previously represented Lincoln (under her maiden name of Margaret Jackson) from 1974 to 1979, has represented Derby South for the Labour Party since 1983. At that election Beckett won the seat with a majority of just 421 over the Conservatives, but has gradually built up healthier majorities since.
Read more about this topic: Derby South (UK Parliament Constituency)
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—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
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—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)