1962 Stockton-on-Tees by-election

The 1962 Stockton-on-Tees by-election was a parliamentary by-election held for the House of Commons constituency of Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham on 5 April 1962. It was the by-election at which Bill Rodgers, a future Cabinet minister and member of the "Gang of Four" of senior Labour politicians who defected to form the SDP, entered Parliament. Rodgers subsequently helped to lead the SDP into the merger that formed the Liberal Democrats, and later served as that party's leader in the House of Lords. In the circumstances it is not without irony that Rodgers remembers future Liberal leader David Steel, then not yet a Member of Parliament (MP), loudly booing the result of the election at Stockton from the floor of the count.