COUNCIL AND PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION
LCC and GLC
Chelsea at first had two members on the London County
Council, elected triennially from 1889; from 1949 there
were three, also representing Kensington's Brompton
ward. Progressives held the seats from 1889 to 1907,
except at the 1895 election when they fell to Moderates,
including the 5th Earl Cadogan. The 1898 election was
marked by allegations of corruption on the part of the
Progressives. From 1907 the Municipal Reformers held
both seats. Basil Marsden-Smedley, elected as a Municipal Reformer in 1933, served to 1946, being joined
from 1934 by an official Conservative. Conservatives
held all three seats from 1949 to the abolition of the LCC
in 1965. Thereafter Kensington and Chelsea had joint
representation, dominated by Conservatives, on the
Greater London Council. (fn. 1)
Parliament
Chelsea formed part of the Middlesex county constituency, but from the 1830s agitation for separate representation drew strong local support. A meeting of the
inhabitants in 1831 pressed for amendment to the
Reform Bill to provide representation for a district
including Chelsea, Kensington, Hammersmith, Fulham,
and Brompton; Chelsea alone was more populous than
26 districts for which the Bill proposed representation. (fn. 2)
A motion in the Commons in 1850 to incorporate
Chelsea, Kensington, Hammersmith, and Fulham into a
two-member parliamentary borough was withdrawn. (fn. 3) A
public meeting in 1859 attacked the government's
reform bill as inadequately representative, (fn. 4) and another
in 1861 unanimously supported a proposed twomember borough of Kensington and Chelsea. (fn. 5) Finally
under the Second Reform Act a two-member constituency of Chelsea, including also Kensington,
Hammersmith, Fulham, and part of Chiswick, became
effective in 1868. In 1885 the constituency was divided
and Chelsea became a single-member borough, coinciding with the parish and later, after Kensal Town was
excluded in 1918, with the metropolitan borough. It was
extended in 1948 by the addition of Kensington's
Brompton ward. In 1974 it became the southern division of Kensington and Chelsea, gaining Earl's Court
from the former south division of Kensington. (fn. 6)
At the 1868 election Chelsea returned two Liberals,
Charles Dilke (later Bt) and Sir Henry Hoare, Bt. Dilke
remained the leading member while the two-member
constituency continued, but in 1874 the second seat fell
to William Gordon, a Conservative, the Liberal J.F.B.
Firth regaining it in 1880. (fn. 7) Dilke was the first member
for the single seat in 1885, but following allegations of
his adultery he lost it to Charles Algernon Whitmore, a
Conservative, in 1886. (fn. 8) At the 1906 election Whitmore
was ousted by the Liberal Emslie Horniman, (fn. 9) but in
January 1910 Samuel Hoare (Bt from 1915) won the
seat for the Unionists, and Unionists or Conservatives
have held it ever since. (fn. 10) Hoare, who held in successive
Conservative or National governments the posts of air
minister, Secretary for India, Foreign Secretary, First
Lord of the Admiralty, Home Secretary, and finally air
minister again, remained MP for Chelsea until
promoted to the peerage as Viscount Templewood in
1944. His picturesque or prominent opponents at
general elections included a relative, Hugh Hoare,
standing for the Liberals in December 1910; (fn. 11) Miss E.
Phipps, a feminist independent and ex-president of the
National Union of Women Teachers, in 1918; (fn. 12)
Bertrand Russell for Labour in 1922 and 1923; (fn. 13) and Mrs
Bertrand Russell in 1924. (fn. 14) Though the British Union of
Fascists, with a base at Whitelands at the junction of
King's Road and Walpole Street, (fn. 15) nominated Sir Lionel
Berkeley Holt Haworth as their parliamentary candidate
in Chelsea in 1936, (fn. 16) he apparently did not contest an
election.
Sir Samuel Hoare's successor William Sidney, son of a
former mayor, returned unopposed in 1944, (fn. 17) became
Lord de l'Isle and Dudley in 1945 (fn. 18) and was succeeded by
Allan Noble, a junior minister under Churchill and
Eden. Capt. John Litchfield was member 1959-66 and
Marcus (from 1973 Sir Marcus) Worsley 1966-74.
Nicholas (later Sir Nicholas) Scott, MP from 1974 and
later a junior minister, narrowly deflected an attempted
coup against him in 1977 by his constituency party,
which deselected him in 1996 for alleged alcoholic
horizontality, probably caused by illness; in 1997 it
chose Alan Clark, also a former minister. Clark held the
seat that year despite allegations of his adultery, and died
in 1999. The ensuing by election was won by Michael
Portillo, former Secretary of State for Defence, who held
the seat in the 2001 general election. (fn. 1)
Perhaps because of the rebuilding of Chelsea and the
lack of a Labour Party in the constituency, (fn. 2) turnout at
general elections was low by national standards, and
generally well below its peaks of 71.1 per cent in October
1924 and 70.6 per cent in February 1950. (fn. 3) The Conservative share of the vote, 60.5 per cent in 1910, reached
85 per cent in 1935. After the Second World War, and in
the later 20th century, it normally varied between 60 and
67 per cent, rising to 73.4 per cent in 1955 and falling
below 60 per cent only in the general elections of 1966
and 1997. (fn. 4)