Wikipedia
Smethwick is a town in Sandwell, West Midlands, historically in Staffordshire. It is 4 miles west of Birmingham city centre and borders West Bromwich and Oldbury to the north and west. Formerly a Staffordshire county borough, Smethwick is situated near the edge of Sandwell metropolitan borough and borders the Birmingham districts of Handsworth, Winson Green, Harborne, Edgbaston and Quinton to the south and east, as well as the Black Country towns of West Bromwich and Oldbury in the north and west.
Smethwick was a parliamentary constituency, centred on the town of Smethwick in Staffordshire. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system.
The constituency was created for the 1918 general election, and abolished for the February 1974 general election.
The constituency gained national media coverage during the 1964 general election when Peter Griffiths, the Conservative Party candidate, gained the seat against the national trend, unseating the Labour Party sitting member, Patrick Gordon Walker, a front bench opposition spokesman in the previous Parliament and it was alleged that there had been racial overtones in the campaign.