Description:In a recent quiz on Birmingham the question was posed, “Who was the city’s last Liberal MP?”
I regret that a few of us, with better long term memories than short, answered Joseph Chamberlain, before he split with Gladstone over the issue of home rule for Ireland and he took the rest of the Birmingham Liberals into the Unionist camp.
The truth, in fact, lay only 20 years ago, and the story is of perhaps the greatest electoral upset in Birmingham this century. The constituency of Ladywood in the 1960’s had a claim to fame on two accounts: firstly as the former seat of Neville Chamberlain, and secondly as the smallest constituency in the country.
Indeed, to the shrinking population, it must have seemed that Ladywood was being demolished. In the Labour landslide of 1945 Victor Yates had won it from the conservatives and remained its MP until his death in January 1969. It was then that the excitement began.
Initial excitement was caused by nothing at all. That is five months after the death of the sitting member, the Labour government had still not named the day for the by-election.
Could it be that they were fighting shy in a seat that they had held for a quarter of a century? Well, that depends on whom you supported, but it was an odd tactic given the disarray in the ranks of their two main rivals.
The Conservative nominee had resigned and the Liberal was less than wholeheartedly backed by the national party. His views on the need to build on Birmingham’s parks were unorthodox to say the least. By then, however, the two main runners were on the blocks: Wallace Lawler for the Liberals and Doris Fisher for Labour.
The two were old adversaries from council elections, having once chased each other through the streets of Duddeston in campaign vans. Suddenly, on June 9th a distant starting pistol was heard and they were off! The campaign was to last only 17 days.
Unfortunately the strategy of catching your opponents off guard with a snap election only works if you remember to inform your candidate. Doris Fisher was practically the last to know that the race was on, and from that point onwards was always struggling to keep her rival within loud hailing distance.
Despite their earlier reservations, the Liberals had found in Wallace Lawler the perfect candidate for a far from perfect seat. In an area caught between back-to-back and high-rise, Lawler placed housing at the top of the political agenda. His reputation as a champion of the poor gave him a ready made image that no other candidate could achieve or match in 17 days and by the second week, the opinion polls were forecasting an upset.
For once they were right: Lawler was returned with an impressive majority, the first Liberal MP for the city for 84 years. But if the Liberals were going back to their constituencies to prepare for government, the 1970 general election came as an unpleasant awakening.
They had held Ladywood for only 51 weeks.