Aldershot has a long history, first mentioned in the Doomsday book as ‘Alreshete’, and if it were not for the incoming army settlements in the mid 1800s it is likely that the town would have remained as a sleepy backwater village .
However, by the mid-1900s, Aldershot was a flourishing town, serving both a large military barracks and the local civilian population. It is still one of the most gamous Garrison towns in Britain, and remains one of the biggest Army training centres in the UK.
The constituency has three focal population points - Aldershot, Yardley and Farnborough.
With good links to central London, Aldershot is a popular location for commuters and has a good record on employment with high levels of car ownership. Overall it has a fairly transient population, to which the army presence obviously contributes.
Since 1918, the voters of Aldershot have only returned Tory candidates.
Gerald Howarth replaced the retiring MP, Julian Critchley in 1997, who before leaving office commented that Mr Howarth was ‘a shade too Thatcherite for my taste’. By March 2000 Mr Howarth was proving these credentials with a call for General Pinochet’s plane to depart from Farnborough Airport, in the constituency, so that he could personally wave the general off.
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