South West Hertfordshire by-election, 1979

The South West Hertfordshire by-election, 1979 was a parliamentary by-election held on 13 December 1979 for the British House of Commons constituency of South West Hertfordshire.

The seat fell vacant when the constituency's Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), Geoffrey Hugh Dodsworth (born 7 June 1928) resigned due to ill health. On 24 October 1979 he was appointed Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, a notional office of profit under the Crown, in order to vacate his Parliamentary seat.

He is an accountant, who had contested Don Valley in 1959 and Hartlepool in 1964. He had represented South West Hertfordshire from the February 1974 general election.

Six candidates were nominated. The list below is set out in descending order of the number of votes received at the by-election.

1. The Conservative candidate was Richard Lewis Page (born on 22 February 1941), a mechanical engineer and company director.

He served previously as MP for Workington, between winning a 1976 by-election and being defeated at the 1979 general election. Page had also contested Workington in the February 1974 and October 1974 general elections.

After winning this by-election he was a junior minister under John Major. He stepped down from the House of Commons at the 2005 general election.

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