BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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administrative counties including London.
Their geographic locations
reveal their largely metropolitan character. Fully eleven Habitations
came from the Greater London Region, another six were situated in
counties immediately adjacent to the city. An additional six
associations were located in areas only moderately removed from
London,8
leaving only six situated in areas remote from the pervasive
influence of the metropolis.
These distant Habitations were located in
Staffordshire (2), Gloucestershire, Pembrokeshire, Warwickshire, and
Lancashire counties.
More noteworthy, perhaps, is the character of the
constituencies represented.
Using Pelling's Social Geography of
British Elections as a means of identifying prominent class and voting
features of electoral districts, provides some interesting, if not
altogether surprising results.
Of the regions in London in which the
located in the Guildford, Epson, Norwood, Croydon, and Dulwich
parliamentary districts of the county. The latter three Divisions fell
within the Greater Metropolitan area of London as defined by a twelve
mile radius emanated from Charing Cross. Staffordshire and Middlesex
each had two Habitations, respectively, occupying the parliamentary
Divisions of Wednesday borough and Brentford.
The remaining associations were distributed individually among
several counties. These included Buckinghamshire, South Division;
Berkshire, North Abingdon; Hertfordshire, Eastern Division; Sussex,
Brighton Borough; Essex, Epping Division; Bedfordshire, Bedford
Borough; Cambridgeshire, Cambridge Borough; Oxfordshire, Mid or
Woodstock Division; Huntingdonshire, North or Ramsey Division;
Warwickshire, Birmingham Borough; Pembrokeshire county, represented by
the town of Tenby; Lancashire, Bootle Division; Hampshire, Portsmouth
Borough.
8 Those counties with Habitations in the immediate vicinity of
London included Middlesex, Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire,
Hertfordshire, and Essex. Located at a somewhat greater distance from
the metropolis were Sussex, Hampshire, Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire,
Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire.