Politics
The first election to the council was on 1 November 1900, with the Progressive Party taking control of the new borough. They retained power until 1909, when the Municipal Reform Party (allied to the Conservatives) gained a majority. The Progressives regained the council in 1912, holding power until 1919 when the Labour Party gained control. In 1931 the borough come under Municipal Reform control again. Labour regained power in 1934, retaining it for the rest of the borough's existence.
Elections of the whole council were held every three years. Elections were cancelled during the two world wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945). The 1952 election was postponed for a year so that it did not clash with elections to the London County Council. The number of councillors returned at each election was as follows:.
- Local elections
| Year | 1900 | 1903 | 1906 | 1909 | 1912 | 1919 | 1922 | 1925 | 1928 | 1931 | 1934 | 1937 | 1945 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Progressives | 37 | 38 | 29 | 2 | 29 | ||||||||
| Municipal Alliance | 17 | 16 | 25 | ||||||||||
| Municipal Reform | 52 | 25 | 11 | 21 | 25 | 22 | 31 | 18 | 15 | 5 | |||
| Labour | 41 | 33 | 29 | 33 | 23 | 37 | 40 | 50 | |||||
| Discharged servicemen | 2 |
No Municipal Reform candidates were nominated after 1946, and Conservative candidates were nominated at local elections for the first time.
| Year | 1949 | 1953 | 1956 | 1959 | 1962 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labour | 34 | 37 | 46 | 34 | 40 |
| Conservative | 21 | 18 | 18 | 21 | 12 |
| Liberal | 3 |
Read more about this topic: Metropolitan Borough Of Battersea
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices.... Politics has once again become religious.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)
“Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self- Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The trouble with Nixon is that he’s a serious politics junkie. He’s totally hooked ... and like any other junkie, he’s a bummer to have around: especially as President.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)