For information about current constituency issues see news.

The new constituency of Truro and Falmouth includes all of the former Carrick District Council area except Mount Hawke district ward. This means that it covers all or part of 22 Cornwall Council wards: 1. Chacewater and Kenwyn; 2. Falmouth Arwenack, 3. Falmouth Boslowick, 4. Falmouth Gyllyngvase, 5. Falmouth Penwerris, 6. Falmouth Trescobeas; 7. Feock and Kea; 8. Ladock, St Clement and St Erme; 9. Penryn East and Mylor, 10. Penryn West; 11. Perranporth, 12. Probus, 13. Roseland; 14. Threemilestone and Gloweth; 15. Truro Boscawen, 16. Truro Moresk, 17. Truro Tregolls, 18. Truro Trehaverne; most of 19. St Agnes, and 20. Newlyn and Goonhavern; plus part of 21. Mabe and 22. Stithians.

Some of our members are very interested in local Labour history. This page has more information about Labour politics and MPs for this area since the 1930s.

The new seat of Truro and Falmouth recreates the first constituency won by Labour in Cornwall.

In the 1930s, the St Austell born, high-flying Oxford historian A.L. (Leslie) Rowse (1903-97) fought the constituency of Penryn and Falmouth twice for Labour in 1931 and 1935. The young man who in the 1920s jotted notes in his diary on ‘the idea of a Labour university’, once said ‘all that I want to be is a spokesman for the Cornish people’. Rowse took the Labour Party from third to second place in Penryn and Falmouth at the 1935 general election, and continued his active involvement with the local Labour Party here until 1941. By 1937, the constituency of Penryn and Falmouth, which included Truro, held sixty per cent of Labour Party members in Cornwall. Rowse was a regular contributor to the Cornish Labour News, which was edited by local journalist Claude Berry, who worked for 34 years at, and later became editor of, the West Briton.

‘This car is like the Tory Party – out of date’. Labour’s 1945 landslide general election victory saw the return of Cornwall’s first Labour MP, Evelyn King (1907-94), for the Penryn and Falmouth constituency, which included Truro. During the 1945 election, King – who was a headteacher before he became an MP – was driven round the constituency by a former pupil in an old Rolls Royce, with a sign on the back saying ‘This car is like the Tory Party – out of date’. King subsequently lost some popularity among Labour Party supporters in Cornwall, because he first moved to stand in Dorset at the 1950 general election, and later switched to the Tory Party before being elected as the MP for Dorset South.

From 1948 to 1959, Labour’s Cornish Voice replaced the Cornish Labour News which had ceased publication when war broke out. It published articles by Cornwall’s Labour MPs and other national politicians, with photos, cartoons, and reports of local meetings. The newspaper sold to supporters, with local Labour Party members developing delivery and collection rounds of up to 100 people each.

At the general election in February 1950, campaigning on new constituency boundaries, Labour overtook the Liberal vote share in Cornwall for the first time. Frank Harold Hayman (1894-1966) – a former Cornwall County Council clerk who worked for the National Association of Local Government Officers, in 1945 stood unsuccessfully for the old Camborne constituency which was less good for Labour than Penryn and Falmouth. In 1950, Hayman was elected as Labour MP for the new Falmouth and Camborne seat. Hayman won this seat for Labour at five general elections, serving as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Labour Party and opposition leader Hugh Gaitskell in 1959-63.

The Falmouth Labour Party agent and treasurer J.H.Bennetts – who organised the increasingly successful general election campaigns of Rowse, King, and Hayman – was awarded an MBE in 1951 for services to the Labour and Trade Union movement.

Photo by Tim Green

In May 1952, one week after the Cornwall County Council elections, Falmouth Labour Party paid £1000 to purchase 4 Webber Hill in Penwerris, one of three county wards held by Labour at the time. Falmouth Labour Club opened to provide a social meeting place and political education for working people, occupying the ground floor and hillside garden. The upstairs rooms were used for meetings of the local Party, and office accommodation occupied initially by Michael Steuart, who was the longest-serving editor of Labour’s Cornish Voice from February 1952.

Photo by Tim Green

Clement Atlee MP’s brother Tom lived in the constituency, who Labour Party members remember hosting social events at his house near Devoran on the Falmouth to Truro road.

Harold Wilson MP was a frequent visitor, bringing his young family to see his parents who lived locally, and purchasing his bungalow on St Mary’s in the Scilly Isles in 1959. In 1950, Wilson as President of the Board of Trade addressed a Truro audience of 200 at a public meeting.

The first Labour Mayor of Truro, W.A. Philips, held office in 1919 – he was the first Labour Mayor in the South West as well as Cornwall. Truro voters elected Cornwall’s first Labour MP in 1945; but following the boundary changes at the 1950 general election, Labour came second when the Tories took the seat.

As Labour entered its sixth year of Government in 1951, local Labour Party membership soared. Throughout the early 1950s, Labour’s Cornish Voice published reports of active Labour Party branches in the Truro constituency of the day at St Dennis, Foxhole, Nanpean, St Austell, St Blazey, St Stephen, Grampound Road, Tregony, Truro, Newlyn East, Goonhavern, Perranporth, St Agnes, Mount Hawke, Chacewater, Portloe, and St Mawes.

A ‘Housewives Voice’ article in Labour’s Cornish Voice in November 1952, boasted that the Truro Labour Party women’s section had been in existence for more than 30 years. Spurred on by the example of Falmouth, in the early 1950s a Truro building fund was started, with the objective of buying 30 River Street, where the Party held its meetings in rooms above Tremletts the newsagents; and Truro Labour Party women’s section organised regular fundraising events for the building fund. In the photo above, Mrs Claude Berry (wife of the West Briton editor) is standing at the back; the photo was taken by Joan Sloman who together with her husband Dennis is still a Truro Labour Party member today.

At the October 1951 general election, more people voted Labour than Tory, but the Tories won more seats. Commenting on national radio on the election which ended his six years as Prime Minister, Clement Atlee MP said simply ‘Our defeat is not due to any falling away of Labour support, but to the fact that in most constituencies Liberals voted Tory, not Labour.’

In Truro in 1951, Labour’s vote share rose to 44.3%; but the Tories held the seat. Labour’s candidate for Truro in 1951 and 1955 was Jack Newby, a primary school teacher at Goonhavern. In the 1960s, Jack Newby published a novel ‘The Sitting Member’, in which the plot revolves around a Labour MP’s general election campaign in Truro.

Thanks to the generosity of Betty Newby, Jack Newby’s widow who lives at Perranporth, Truro and Falmouth Labour Party helped to deposit copies of Labour’s Cornish Voice in the Modern British Collection at the British Library. Copies of these editions are also held locally in Truro at the Royal Cornwall Museum Courtney Library, a few doors along from 30 River Street.

In 1966, following the death of Harold Hayman, Labour’s John Dunwoody (1929-2006) was elected as the MP for Falmouth and Camborne, but lost the seat in 1970.

In 1966, Labour reduced the Tory majority in Truro to 1,608; but the seat continued to be held by the Tories until the October 1974 general election.

Harold Wilson with journalists during a holiday on the Scilly Isles in the 1960s.

MPs elected in this constituency area, 1945-2005

At the 2010 general election Labour said it was a straight fight between Labour and the Tories. We warned voters that the Liberal Democrats were prepared to prop up a Tory government with David Cameron as Prime Minister. This constituency elected Tory MP Sarah Newton. We now have the first coalition (Con Dem) Government in over sixty years, making cuts to much needed budgets and services in Cornwall.

Labour is continuing to fight for a prosperous Cornish economy and better public services for people in Cornwall.