The Last Radnorshire Election, Part One

It's something of a coincidence that while Radnorian Clem Edwards was representing Denbigh Boroughs at Westminster, his fellow Liberal MP, the Denbighshire born Frank Edwards, sat for Radnorshire.

Although it was a marginal, Frank Edwards represented the county for twenty of the twenty six years before the seat was combined with that of Breconshire at the 1918 Election. The Tories having snatched Radnor between 1895 and 1900 and during the short lived Parliament between January and December 1910.

That December 1910 election, which Edwards won with 2224 votes against 2182 for Tory Venables-Llewelyn, was the last Radnorshire election. The seat being subsequently abolished in favour of a new Welsh Universities seat, this being a time when graduates, like businessmen, were granted the privilege of two votes.

As far as I know UKIP and their newly elected MEP are not calling for the reintroduction of double votes for businessmen, athough much of their programme does seem to involve turning back the clock. While Radnorian can sympathise with opposition to the centralising of power in Brussels, the call to abolish the Assembly smacks of the Little Englander attitudes which drove Ireland out of the Union and which, no doubt, will do the same for Scotland should UKIP ever come to power. Home Rule and the call for a federal Britain were burning issues in the Westminster of Frank Edwards' day, UKIP seem determined to reinstate English domination of the other nations of what remains of the United Kingdom.