Sensation in Montgomery as Shropshire turns all blue
And then there were none.
The 1979 general election saw Labour lose its only seat in Shropshire, which had been held by Gerry Fowler.
He was beaten by Warren Hawksley, who had worked for Lloyds Bank at Shrewsbury, and won for the Tories with a majority of 965.
For Fowler, it was a heavy blow, as he had represented The Wrekin on three occasions after first wresting it from the Tories in 1966.
He was a Minister for Education and Science under Harold Wilson in 1969, 1974 and 1976, but even a visit to Telford during the campaign by Sir Harold, who had come to Hadley to meet Labour supporters at the Manor School at the end of April, could not save the seat for Labour.
But the real local electoral shock came over the border where the Liberals lost the Montgomeryshire seat after 99 years of dominance in the county.
The new MP was 40-year-old Welshpool solicitor Delwyn Williams, who beat sitting member Emlyn Hooson in a close contest which ended in delirious scenes in and outside Welshpool Town Hall.
Williams' majority for the Tories was 1,593 and Hooson looked stunned as the returning officer announced the result.
Elsewhere, Sir John Holt, Shrewsbury's Conservative MP since 1945, carried the Tory flag to victory for the 11th time and saw his majority rise well above its previous record set in 1970.
He beat Liberal candidate Alan Laurie by 10,844 votes, becoming the second longest serving Tory member in the House of Commons.
It was the same old story as well in Oswestry, where John Biffen, who had first won the seat for the Tories in a 1961 by-election, easily held off Labour's Peter Sandland-Nielsen, with a major rise in his majority in the process, from 8,414 in 1974, to 13,446.
As for the Ludlow result... well, it was something you had to wait for as it was among the last in the country to be declared, a delay made even worse when it was found that there was a discrepancy of six votes between those which had been recorded at polling stations, and those actually in the ballot boxes.
After consultations, the unresolved mystery of the missing votes was shrugged off.
The winner for the Tories was a new kid on the block, Eric Cockeram, who was following in the footsteps of Jasper More, who had retired from Parliament after 19 years and was knighted in the 1979 Queen's birthday honours list.
Cockeram had previously been MP for Bebington.
The Ludlow campaign was notable as it was the first, and last, time the National Front contested a seat in Shropshire. Raymond Adshead polled 358 votes.
When the result was announced inside Ludlow Town Hall, Labour candidate Ivor Wymer refused to stand on the platform with him and Labour agent Roy Broome was asked up instead, and also refused.
At the end Mr Adshead left the town hall to be confronted by about 20 supporters of the Anti-Nazi League.
