History of the Green Party of England and Wales of Deputy Leader. The Green Party fielded more than 300 candidates for the 2010 general election. Caroline Lucas became the first Green candidate to gain a seat in Westminster, after being elected MP for Brighton Pavilion by a margin of 1,252 votes. The following week 600 new members had joined the Green Party bringing total membership to over 11,000. In previous years 600 new members was high for a whole year. On 24 May 2012, the six Green Party councillors elected to Stroud District Council formed a power sharing administration (a "constructive cooperation") with both the Labour Party and the
Smethwick in the 1964 general election which had resulted in the party gaining a narrow five seat majority. However, in Smethwick, the Conservative candidate, Griffiths gained the seat and unseated the sitting Labour MP, Patrick Gordon Walker, who had served as Shadow Foreign Secretary for the eighteen months prior to the election. Griffiths did, however, poll 436 votes less in 1964 than when he stood unsuccessfully for the Smethwick constituency in 1959: Figures nevertheless show that votes for Labour's Patrick Gordon Walker had been in decline from the 1950 general election onwards, culminating in this 1964 defeat by Peter Griffiths. See Smethwick (UK Parliament constituency) for