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)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
““And now this is the way in which the history of your former life has reached my ears!” As he said this he held out in his hand the fatal letter.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)