Wallsend (UK Parliament constituency)

Wallsend was created as a parliamentary borough constituency under the Representation of the People Act 1918 and was formed from the majority of the abolished Northumberland county division of Tyneside.

After middle-class Gosforth was moved out of the seat in the 1983 boundary changes, the constituency had the country's highest percentage of working-class voters at 84% of the electorate.

The constituency gained the communities of Backworth and Earsdon which had previously been part of the seat of Blyth.

1983 Conservative candidate Mary Leigh was a solicitor and councillor for St Leonard's ward in Lambeth.

1987 Conservative candidate David Milburn was a salesman and trade unionist who had previously been a Labour member before joining the Conservatives in 1974; at the party's 1980 conference he had called for Keith Joseph to be sacked and Edward Heath brought into the cabinet, accusing the Thatcher government of murder over unemployment-linked suicides.