History
In the 1997 election, this seat was won by the Conservatives by a margin of only 77 votes, one of the smallest margins in the UK. The constituency went on to be won by Labour from the Conservatives in the 2001 election, but with Labour's smallest majority in England, at 153. In the 2005 election this constituency was one of the few in which Labour significantly increased their majority. Labour may have been helped by the fact that Tony Blair started his official campaign in this seat. A more significant factor perhaps was that Conservative candidate Ed Matts was found to have doctored an image which was part of his campaign material. Matts changed a photo of a protest against the deportation of a South Dorset resident, so that it appeared to be a protest against "uncontrolled immigration". In both elections, the left-wing singer-songwriter Billy Bragg ran an anti-Conservative tactical voting campaign in Dorset constituencies.
Read more about this topic: South Dorset (UK Parliament Constituency)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)