Cause of by-election
The Conservative MP, Sir Michael Shersby, died on May 8, exactly a week after holding on to his seat in the General Election. He was 64.
He had been the MP for Uxbridge for 25 years, but saw his comfortable majority of 13,179 shrink to just 724 in the Labour landslide of May 1. The seat is now the most marginal Tory-held seat in London.
Sir Michael was briefly a Parliamentary Private Secretary in Sir Edward
Heath's government, although the majority of his Parliamentary career was spent on the back benches. In 1989 he became a Parliamentary adviser to the Police Federation, the union for ordinary ranks in the police.
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