1) Sir Louis Gluckstein was the tallest politician of the 20th century ever to be elected to the British parliament. He was six foot seven inches tall! The record was only beaten in May 2005 when Shrewsbury Conservative candidate Daniel Kawczynski was elected, who was over six foot eight and a half inches tall.
2) Jim Thornton’s defeat in the 2005 General Election had pushed the Conservatives to third place; the first time they had been in such a position (excluding the Independent Conservative candidate in 1983), since these records began in 1885. He was also the first official Conservative candidate since Sir John Rees in 1912 to get less than 7,000 votes. Going back 93 years, it is absolutely depressing to even think about. Meanwhile Issan Ghazni, the Liberal Democrat candidate beat Professor Thornton by just 22 votes, and by doing so, managed to take second place – the first time that this has happened to a Liberal candidate since Norman Birkett stood in 1931. The 1931 General Election was also the last time that a General Election did not take place on a Thursday. John Heppell's 2005 count was the lowest for a Labour candidate since James Harrison stood in 1945 (the first time that Nottingham East had a Labour Member of Parliament), so that so called "low turnout" that they blamed on us had backfired on them instead.
3) Richard Shepherd, the February 1974 Conservative candidate has been the Member of Parliament for Aldridge-Brownhills in the West Midlands since 1979. Despite such a long stint in parliament, he has never held a frontbench position. Martin Brandon Bravo, the 1979 Conservative candidate, went on to win Nottingham South in 1983 and 1987 and more recently he became vice president of the Amateur Rowing Association.
4) Labour’s Jack Dunnett had been the constituency’s longest serving Member of Parliament of the 20th century. He had also stood as a candidate in the most elections - a total of six. He had served the area from 1964 to 1983, a total of 19 years, although ten of them were as member for Nottingham Central. He is also the only Member of Parliament to serve the area through an entire decade (the 1970s). More people have voted for Dunnett than any other candidate since 1885. He represented over 11.63% of all the votes ever cast in the constituency. Ignoring this, the longest serving Nottingham East Member of Parliament was Louis Gluckstein who served the area between 1931 and 1945, a total of 14 years. John Heppell will equal this record in 2006 and beat it in 2007.
5) Bernard Brook Partridge, the Conservative candidate in 1970, was a future chairman of the Greater London Council. He famously made comments about the Sex Pistols that were actually released on track four of their Pirates of Destiny album!
6) Sam Swerling, the October 1974 Conservative candidate was to be the chairman of The Monday Club between 1980 and 1982. The club was formed in 1961 as the Conservative Party’s right-wing pressure group.
7) The total number of votes cast in the constituency for all the election candidates from 1885 to 2005 stands at 939,806, which makes an average of just over 27,641 votes in each election. This figure will presumably pass the 1,000,000 mark sometime in the mid 2010s if there is to be an election held then - two elections after the 2005 General Election. Despite the constituency being recently Labour dominated, more people have voted Conservative since 1885. One assumes that if the next parliament lasts four years, and the one after that five years (or the other way round), then that election could be sometime in 2014, if estimation and prediction has anything to go by. Of course the figure doesn’t count the hundreds (or thousands) of supposedly spoilt ballot papers!
8) The biggest Conservative majority over an opposing candidate was in 1935 when Sir Louis Gluckstein had 9,291 votes more than Leon Freedman, the Labour candidate. There have also been eight Conservative Members of Parliament that have served the constituency in the 20th century. Only three Members of Parliament have been Labour (including John Heppell), and three were Liberals.
9) Present Member of Parliament John Heppell holds the record for the most number of votes in the constituency – 25,026 at his first election in 1992. He also holds the record for the biggest majority of 15,419 in the 1997 General Election. Heppell was also born on the same day as the 1960s pop singer Lulu. (You know that really makes me want to shout!)
10) Kenan Malik, who nowadays works as a frequent broadcaster and also an author of the book “Man, Beast and Zombie” and the film “Are Muslims Hated?”, had the accolade of being the candidate who received the least number of votes in any local General Election, when he stood in 1987 as a candidate for the anonymously named “Red Front”. He received just 212 votes - an all time low. To say that Malik got so few votes back then, one wonders whether or not if he had stood as a candidate in a more recent election for one of the three main political parties, he probably would have had more success winning and starting a political career.
11) Although Louis Gluckstein and Lady Abrahams had never stood against each other in the Nottingham East elections, the two people had stood against each other in 1964 for the Greater London Council election results in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency. Gluckstein got the most votes, while Abrahams was second to last with her number of votes.
12) Norman Birkett was an alternate judge in the Nuremberg trials after World War Two. He was also a trained barrister.
13) Arnold Morley became Postmaster General in 1892 and remained in the post until he lost his seat in 1895. He was to have a by-election in Nottingham East as a result, but Morley kept his seat as he was unopposed. The post was abolished in 1969.
14) Sir Louis Gluckstein's widow Lady Gluckstein only died in 2002 at the age of 98. Between them, the two had foreseen the 20th century from start to finish.
15) There is a Sir Louis Gluckstein prize for debating or advocacy that exists. As well as that a Sir Louis and Lady Gluckstein trophy is awarded to winners of canoe clubs.
16) The first ten Members of Parliament were all alive at the start of the 20th century. John Cordeaux was the first person to have been born after 1900. It is probably the only time since 1885 that the most people have been alive at the same time, even though James Harrison was in nappies at just four months old, while Sir Louis Gluckstein was a toddler!
17) Jack Dunnett became the constituency's oldest living former Member of Parliament in 2005 after beating Sir Louis Gluckstein's age of 83 years 8 months.
18) Michael Knowles was a municipal expert on the Solace team in Iraq during the 2003 war to capture Saddam Hussein.
19) If 2001 Conservative candidate Richard Allan had been elected, there would have been two Members of Parliament with that name in the House of Commons. His namesake (who had exactly the same spelling) was a sitting Liberal Democrat candidate for Sheffield Hallam who was re-elected, but stood down at the 2005 General Election. Allan's middle name was Friend, which was all the more reason for voting for him!
20) Sidney Shephard came second in his election in 1951 despite polling over 20,000 votes. Ian Winterbottom also lost with over 21,000 votes in 1959; the same election when John Cordeaux won the biggest number of votes for a Conservative candidate in the constituency. The main reason that Winterbottom's count was so high was because only two candidates were standing and therefore there were no Liberal candidates. However he had been a sitting Member of Parliament for Nottingham Central prior to 1955, when Nottingham East was still in existence.
21) From 1885 to 2005 there have been exactly 100 candidacies taken by the 63 standing candidates. Jack Dunnett represents 6% of this total.
22) James Harrison and yours truly both share the same birthday of August 30th.
23) On an edition of the BBC 2 programme “What the Papers Say”, one of the newspapers that were reviewed referred to John Heppell as John “Knuckles” Heppell. The nickname came about when Heppell had tattoos on his knuckles when he was younger. The tattoos were still there, albeit slightly faded many years later when he became a Member of Parliament, and so the aforementioned nickname became apparent because of this.
24) Jack Dunnett was just five days old when John Houfton won the 1922 by-election.
25) Edmund Brocklebank stood down from Nottingham East in 1929 to become the Member of Parliament for Fairfield in Liverpool between 1931 and 1945. We would have probably missed out on Louis Gluckstein and his record breaking height had Brocklebank decided to stand again as a candidate in Nottingham East.