History
Sir Edward Heath, prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974, held this seat and its predecessors from 1950, and announced his retirement at the end of the 1997-2001 parliament; at the age of 85 he was by now the nation's oldest member of parliament.
His successor was Derek Conway, elected as a Conservative Party candidate. However on 29 January 2008 the Conservative Party withdrew the whip from Derek Conway following alleged misuse of funds, and he became an Independent MP. He retired in 2010, and was succeeded by the Conservative James Brokenshire, who had transferred to this seat when his former seat of Hornchurch was abolished in boundary changes.
Read more about this topic: Old Bexley And Sidcup (UK Parliament Constituency)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)