History
The seat was created in February 1974 from the former seat of Shoreditch and Finsbury, and has a history of members switching parties. Ronald Brown, former incumbent for Shoreditch and Finsbury, was elected in 1974 as a representative of the Labour Party, but joined the splinter Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. He held the seat as an SDP member until 1983, when he was defeated by Labour Party candidate Brian Sedgemore. Sedgemore announced his retirement from parliament at the 2005 election; but on 26 April 2005 defected to the Liberal Democrats, the successors to the SDP, shortly before the week of the election. The Liberal Democrats were unable to capitalise on the defection; and the seat was held for Labour by the current incumbent Meg Hillier.
Read more about this topic: Hackney South And Shoreditch (UK Parliament Constituency)
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“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)