The fight for votes: Dramatic election nights of the past in Dorset and the New Forest

In 1945, as Winston Churchill’s Conservatives lost heavily to Labour, every local seat still returned Tory MPs – except for Dorset Northern.

With Labour not fielding a candidate, Frank Byers caused an upset by taking the seat for the Liberals with a majority of 1,965.

Bournemouth’s MP then was the Conservative Leonard Lyle, president of the Tate & Lyle sugar company. But Churchill’s resignation honours list in October 1945 sent him the House of Lords as 1st Baron Lyle of Westbourne.

Brendan Bracken, an ally of Churchill’s who had briefly been First Lord of the Admiralty that year, won the Bournemouth by-election for the Tories that November.

The general election of 1950 – fought with new boundaries, so that Bournemouth now had two MPs – produced another night of drama.

Successive editions of the Evening Echo that Friday – from a 5am edition to a late final – show how Labour’s lead in the popular vote eventually translated into a majority of just five seats.

In North Dorset, with Labour now fielding a candidate, Liberal Frank Byers lost his seat by only 97 votes.

Prime Minister Clement Attlee called another election for October 1951, hoping to increase his fragile majority. In the event, his decision let in a resurgent Tory party under Churchill.

The Tories won across the area, but before the next parliament was out, Bournemouth would see two by-elections.

Bournemouth East and Christchurch MP Brendan Bracken was elevated to the House of Lords in 1952. The resulting by-election, held on the day of George VI’s death, saw Nigel Nicolson returned for the Tories.

Nicolson’s parents were part of the Bloomsbury set and his father had founded the publisher Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Another by-election was triggered the same year in Bournemouth West, when its MP, Viscount Cranborne, inherited his father’s title as Marquess of Salisbury. The Conservatives’ choice to replace him was John Eden, whose uncle, Sir Anthony Eden, was the Foreign Secretary and in line to become Prime Minister.

John Eden easily won the by-election in 1954 and would hold Bournemouth West for the Tories until 1983, when he became Lord Eden of Winton.

The 1955 general election saw the Tories increase their majority and again take all the seats locally.

North Dorset would see a by-election two years later, following the death of its MP, Robert Crouch, but fellow Tory Richard Glyn easily held the seat.

Meanwhile, Nigel Nicolson had angered Bournemouth Conservatives by criticising Prime Minister Anthony Eden and abstaining in a vote of confidence over the Suez crisis. His party were scandalised, too, by his business’s decision to publish Lolita, and he was deselected ahead of the 1959 general election. John Cordle took his place.

That election saw Harold Macmillan lead the Tories to a majority of 100 seats.

Dorset saw one of its dramatic political events in 1962, when a by-election was prompted after sitting MP Viscount Hinchingbrooke inherited his father’s title of Earl of Sandwich.

The campaign coincided with Macmillan’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to join the Common Market. Tory candidate Angus Maude backed the party line, but another local Conservative, Sir Piers Debenham, stood as an anti-Common Market candidate with the support of Viscount Hinchingbrooke.

The by-election that November saw Guy Barnett elected with a majority of 704 over the Tories.

Tory fortunes were on the wane nationally, and in 1964, Labour under Harold Wilson won a majority of just four seats.

The Conservatives took back South Dorset that night – but with a majority of only 935 over Guy Barnett.

The New Forest would see a change in MP at a 1968 by-election, when Patrick McNair-Wilson succeeded Oliver Crosthwaite-Eyre, who had resigned due to ill health.

The local area would remain true blue throughout several dramatic elections: Edward Heath’s victory for the Tories in 1970; the hung parliament of February 1974 which led to a minority Labour government; and the October 1974 poll which gave Labour a majority of just three seats.

In 1977, Bournemouth East’s MP John Cordle gave a tearful resignation speech after it was revealed that he had sought to advance the business interests of John Poulson – the Yorkshire architect who was to be jailed for corruption along with Newcastle Labour councillor T Dan Smith.

Tory David Atkinson had already been picked as a candidate in his native Essex when he was selected for Bournemouth East. He easily won the by-election, with the help of a visit from opposition leader Margaret Thatcher, and served for 28 years.

Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, with a 44-seat majority, and the local area remained true blue throughout her premiership.

But in 1993, a by-election caused by the death of Christchurch MP Robert Adley saw Liberal Democrat Diana Maddock elected with a majority of 16,427 following one of the biggest swings ever recorded.

The seat returned to Tory hands in 1997, and the Conservatives held on to all their other seats locally in the face of the Tony Blair’s landslide Labour victory.

It was in 2001, the night of Mr Blair’s second general election victory, that Dorset elected two non-Tory MPs: Jim Knight for Labour in South Dorset and Annette Brooke for the Liberal Democrats in Mid-Dorset and North Poole.

Jim Knight lost his seat in the election that produced a hung parliament in 2010. Annette Brooke held hers by 269 votes and became the longest-serving woman in the last parliament.