2010 United Kingdom general election debates can do something to change our country." The final round of the first ever televised leaders' debates, hosted by the BBC, was held in the Great Hall of Birmingham University on 29 April 2010. The background to the debate was overshadowed a day before by a remark made by Gordon Brown in private, while being driven away after canvassing in Rochdale, when he met retired council worker Gillian Duffy. In the remark, caught by a lapel microphone, Brown said that "...she was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour". At the beginning of the
1972 Rochdale by-election The Conservative candidate was David Trippier, born in 1946. He was a stockbroker and Rochdale councillor. He contested Oldham West in both 1974 general elections. Trippier became the Member of Parliament for Rossendale from 1979 to 1983, and for Rossendale and Darwen from 1983 until he lost his seat in 1992. Jim Merrick, the chairman of the British Campaign to Stop Immigration, was from Bradford and issued leaflets headed "Enoch is right". 1972 Rochdale by-election The Rochdale by-election, 1972, was a parliamentary by-election held on 26 October 1972 for the British House of Commons constituency of Rochdale. The by-election took