History
The constituency has gone through many changes and in January 2006 saw the boundary moved again, this time to correspond with the local government ward boundaries.
Elections have been held here since De Montfort's Parliament in 1265 for the county constituency of Middlesex. Under the Great Reform Act of 1832 Hackney formed part of the new Parliamentary Borough of Tower Hamlets. Tower Hamlets was divided with the creation of the two seat constituency of Hackney at the 1868 general election, comprising the parishes of Bethnal Green and Shoreditch. This was a creation of the Second Reform Act or the officially termed Representation of the People Act, 1867. Hackney's increased democratic representation provided suffrage for the first time to working-class men but was originally intended to increase the number of seats held in the House of Commons by the Conservative Party.
Following even greater electoral reform of the Redistribution of Seats Act, 1885, part of the Third Reform Act, the seat became Hackney North and this time returned only one Member of Parliament in the 1885 general election.
The Stoke Newington constituency was created at the 1918 general election by the division of the Hackney North constituency by the Representation of the People Act, 1918, known generally as Fourth Reform Act; an Act most importantly remembered for the first time extending suffrage to women. The constituency was identical in area to the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington.
Following a decrease in the population the two constituencies were merged by the Representation of the People Act, 1948, retaining David Weitzman as MP and becoming the current constituency in the 1950 general election.
Read more about this topic: Hackney North And Stoke Newington (UK Parliament Constituency)
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