The last Gorton by-election

Thursday sees the Gorton by-election in what was the safe Labour seat of Manchester Gorton and Denton. 

I was brought up in Gorton (East Manchester) and I was living there in 1967 at the time of another high profile by-election. (Though the constituency’s boundaries have been changed substantially since then.) 

The sitting MP was Konni Zilliacus, half-Finnish, who had worked for the League of Nations between the wars, was very much on the Labour left, and was dismissed as a ‘crypto-Communist’ by George Orwell. 

In July 1967, he died of leukemia. By the time the by-election was called for November, the Labour government was facing a sterling crisis largely because of Britain’s chronic balance of payments deficit, but Zilliacus had bequeathed his would-be successor Kenneth Marks, a former head teacher, a majority of nearly 8,000, having won more than 60 per cent of the vote at the 1966 general election.

Running for the Conservatives against Marks was Winston Churchill. No, not Britain’s wartime prime minister, but his grandson. Labour suffered an adverse swing of more than 14 per cent, but hung on to win by fewer than 600 votes.

In this week’s Gorton by-election, Labour are defending a majority of more than 12,500. In 2024, Reform was their nearest challenger. Turnout was well below 50 per cent.

 

New Year firework disasters

It now seems that sparklers being carried too close to the ceiling was the cause of the New Year fire in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana.  At least 40 people are thought to have been killed in the blaze in a bar.

Fireworks have been involved in a number of New Year accidents. On the first day of 2001, 350 young people had packed into three cafes in a building in the picturesque Dutch fishing village of Volendam, when sparklers set fire to ceiling decorations that had not been treated with flame retardants. 14 people died. 

One of the deadliest firework accidents ever happened in the run-up to the next New Year celebrations. The narrow streets of the Mesa Redonda shopping area in Peru's capital, Lima, were lined with wood and adobe buildings, and on 29 December 2001, hundreds had flocked there to buy fireworks for New Year.

Many traders were selling, and the ground was covered with gunpowder that had fallen from fireworks being unloaded. Witnesses said the blaze started as one trader was demonstrating his wares. It spread rapidly, destroying five blocks in a few minutes, and killing nearly 300 people. 

For more on firework accidents, see my book A History of Fireworks from their Origins to the Present Day. (Reaktion Books)