Coordinates: 52°29′34″N 1°58′06″W / 52.492850°N 1.968226°W / 52.492850; -1.968226

Smethwick (/ˈsmɛðᵻk/) is a town in Sandwell, West Midlands, historically in Staffordshire. It is 4 miles west of Birmingham city centre and borders West Bromwich and Oldbury to the north and west. Formerly a Staffordshire county borough, Smethwick is situated near the edge of Sandwell metropolitan borough and borders the Birmingham districts of Handsworth, Winson Green, Harborne, Edgbaston and Quinton to the south and east, as well as the Black Country towns of West Bromwich and Oldbury in the north and west.

History

It was suggested that the name Smethwick meant "smiths' place of work", but a more recent interpretation has suggested the name means "The settlement on the smooth land". Smethwick was recorded in the Domesday Book as Smedeuuich, the d in this spelling being the Anglo-Saxon letter eth. Until the end of the 18th century it was an outlying hamlet of the south Staffordshire village of Harborne. Harborne became part of the county borough of Birmingham and thus transferred from Staffordshire to Warwickshire in 1891, leaving Smethwick in the County of Staffordshire.

Smethwick was a parliamentary constituency, centred on the town of Smethwick in Staffordshire. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system.

The constituency was created for the 1918 general election, and abolished for the February 1974 general election.

The constituency gained national media coverage during the 1964 general election when Peter Griffiths, the Conservative Party candidate, gained the seat against the national trend, unseating the Labour Party sitting member, Patrick Gordon Walker, a front bench opposition spokesman in the previous Parliament and it was alleged that there had been racial overtones in the campaign.

Members of Parliament

Election results

Elections in the 1910s

Elections in the 1920s

Elections in the 1930s

Elections in the 1940s

Elections in the 1950s

Elections in the 1960s

Elections in the 1970s

See also