Rossendale and Darwen Janet Anderson 16,521 27,470 5,435 0 674 Rossendale and Darwen 24,995 25,044 6,798 0 652 Labour Labour won four seats from the Conservatives in the county of Lancashire in 1992, and the closest of these was Rossendale and Darwen. Janet Anderson ousted the sitting Conservative David Trippier by just 120 votes. As in the neighbouring seats of Pendle and Hyndburn, the poll tax probably weighed heavily then on the owner occupants of small, but neat and tidy, terraced houses in the valley bottom communities that make up this seat. This area has had a long tradition of marginality. Before 1983 the Rossendale valley, which includes small towns such as Rawtenstall and Bacup and several industrial villages, had a constituency of its own, which tended to side with whichever party won the general election as a whole. Darwen, over the hills in the next valley to the west, was at that time the core of a safe Conservative seat after which it was named - but it too was actually the more urban and industrial part of that seat, where Labour was competitive in local terms. In the latest boundary changes the Rossendale valley town of Haslingden has been ceded to Hyndburn, but this will have a politically neutral effect. Labour will hope to win Rossendale and Darwen by a somewhat safer margin next time.

	1,330	3.34	9.03	37
	985	2.47	11.17	22
	6,306	15.84	11.25	141
	10,934	27.47	14.70	187
	467	1.17	10.45	11
	129	0.32	2.81	12
	481	1.21	8.01	15
	8,364	21.02	15.25	138
	8,590	21.58	7.13	303
	1,778	4.47	10.17	44