History
From 1832 until 1885 it was a two-member constituency, but its representation was reduced to one Member of Parliament under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. For the 1997 general election, it was merged with part of the former Woolwich constituency to form the Greenwich and Woolwich seat.
Its history is dominated by the area's strong maritime tradition. Its most prominent claim to fame was as the seat of William Ewart Gladstone between 1868 and 1880, and it also achieved prominence in the 1987 Greenwich by-election, when the SDP won a surprise victory.
Read more about this topic: Greenwich (UK Parliament Constituency)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)