How would Calais vote if it were still British?

[bjornhattan]

A comment on the Labour Leadership thread joked about Calais having a Constituency Labour Party, but Calais did send MPs for a couple of centuries, when it was part of England. Assuming the city remained in English (and later British) hands, how might it vote today? It's a somewhat implausible scenario, and no doubt being an exclave would dramatically change how it developed, but I do think its voting patterns might have been interesting.

In the French system, it has tended to elect socialist MPs but was an area of great strength for Marine Le Pen - might it have voted similarly to towns which were traditionally Labour but switched this time around? I suspect it would elect two MPs, with the population of the former Pale of Calais standing at about 150,000 (which is the figure for Calais' arrondissement).

[jamesg]

I'd say Lib Dem. Not because of the current Lib Dem Europe policy but because it just feels like that type of place in such a scenario.

[jimboo2017]

Brexit

[relique]

Quite interesting.

I guess Calais would still have been a port, though British. French Calais was a communist city from 1971 to 2008 (and it was lost due to support from socialist to the right wing list, in a year when the left won a lot of cities). The member of parliament became a socialist only in 1988 until 2017 when the level of the national front was so high and the socialist government so hated that the left was eliminated for the first time since who-knows-when.

Calais developed through his port but also "lace-manufacture" ( ? "La dentelle de Calais"), so it was a very working-class city.

If it were still british, would-it have known industrial development or become yet another british tax haven, a Gibraltar of the Channel ? Northern Guernesay ?

Calais also lost a lot of commercial traffic in its port due to the competition from Dunkerque. It only grew thank's to people crossing the channel. The building of the Channel was also a great investment for the town. I don't believe the british would have built it on their own, without the support of the French.

In recent political developments, the fact that Calais is at the border of Great-Britain means that a lot of migrants willing to go to GB go through the city. There would not be any "Touquet deal" between Chirac and Blair (or Sarkozy and your interior minister at the time) putting the border in continental France because...it would already be there.

But the border would not be as closed as today and if there were a "jungle" (it was the french media expression) of migrants, it would be outside Calais (and therefore not the problem of the british-voting Calais people). So the far-right would probably not to big results.

I'm not sure they would be big remainers though. Would they like to be the gateway to all clandestine migrations ? Would there have been a lot of conflicts between the Calais british people and the french government (the french government encouraging migrants to go into the british area to 'get rid of the migrants') ? And so would resentment towards french and european lead to a leave vote ?

But the major issue would probably economical: would it have been still a working-class city or would it have become a financial tax haven ?

[jimboo2017]

Jan 25, 2020 21:26:56 GMT relique said:

Quite interesting.

I guess Calais would still have been a port, though British. French Calais was a communist city from 1971 to 2008 (and it was lost due to support from socialist to the right wing list, in a year when the left won a lot of cities). The member of parliament became a socialist only in 1988 until 2017 when the level of the national front was so high and the socialist government so hated that the left was eliminated for the first time since who-knows-when.

Calais developed through his port but also "lace-manufacture" ( ? "La dentelle de Calais"), so it was a very working-class city.

If it were still british, would-it have known industrial development or become yet another british tax haven, a Gibraltar of the Channel ? Northern Guernesay ?

Calais also lost a lot of commercial traffic in its port due to the competition from Dunkerque. It only grew thank's to people crossing the channel. The building of the Channel was also a great investment for the town. I don't believe the british would have built it on their own, without the support of the French.

In recent political developments, the fact that Calais is at the border of Great-Britain means that a lot of migrants willing to go to GB go through the city. There would not be any "Touquet deal" between Chirac and Blair (or Sarkozy and your interior minister at the time) putting the border in continental France because...it would already be there.

But the border would not be as closed as today and if there were a "jungle" (it was the french media expression) of migrants, it would be outside Calais (and therefore not the problem of the british-voting Calais people). So the far-right would probably not to big results.

I'm not sure they would be big remainers though. Would they like to be the gateway to all clandestine migrations ? Would there have been a lot of conflicts between the Calais british people and the french government (the french government encouraging migrants to go into the british area to 'get rid of the migrants') ? And so would resentment towards french and european lead to a leave vote ?

But the major issue would probably economical: would it have been still a working-class city or would it have become a financial tax haven ?

they would build a wall.

[johnloony]

It would be like one of the grim bits of south Essex or north Kent, alternating between Labour and UKIP. No doubt there would be lots of French migrant workers or refugees escaping over the border from the hated and despotic (insert name of French government) régime.

[relique]

Jan 26, 2020 0:13:54 GMT johnloony said:

It would be like one of the grim bits of south Essex or north Kent, alternating between Labour and UKIP. No doubt there would be lots of French migrant workers or refugees escaping over the border from the hated and despotic (insert name of French government) régime.

Including all the heirs to the bourbon dynasty. Definitely a high unemployment area

[BossMan]

Fascinating thread. Were there any other French constituencies which sent MPs to the Parliament of England?

The modern day constituency is of course the 7th constituency of the Pas-de-Calais which until 2017 returned Socialist MPs, as relique says. There was one exception, however: the 1993 RDR landslide.

In 2017 the Socialists were pushed into fourth place in the first round, with the Republicans winning the run-off against the Front National.

I suppose you could compare it most closely with Hartlepool if it was subject to the English party system. Under the French two round voting system Labour would have presumably found it much more difficult to hold on there last month.

[finsobruce]

Jan 26, 2020 9:24:46 GMT BossMan said:

Fascinating thread. Were there any other French constituencies which sent MPs to the Parliament of England?

The modern day constituency is of course the 7th constituency of the Pas-de-Calais which until 2017 returned Socialist MPs, as relique says. There was one exception, however: the 1993 RDR landslide.

In 2017 the Socialists were pushed into fourth place in the first round, with the Republicans winning the run-off against the Front National.

I suppose you could compare it most closely with Hartlepool if it was subject to the English party system. Under the French two round voting system Labour would have presumably found it much more difficult to hold on there last month.

There is an argument that Tournai did as well but it seems to have been debunked. The last election that would have included Calais (1557) coincided with the town falling to the French, which would have put something of a damper on the campaign**

Of course the place to go for all your historical parliamentary news is the fantastic History of Parliament site : www.histparl.ac.uk/

** There was, of course, no campaign - the two MPs were just appointed.

[BossMan]

Tournai of course falls into modern day Belgium, and is quite far inland.

Another left leaning sort of place. It has been electing Socialist mayors since 1977. The Socialists also dominate municipal elections in the area. Dutch Wikipedia article

[carlton43]

Dull, wet, scruffy region and a downmarket very ugly town with problems. It would have been solid Labour for decades, morphing to strong UKIP edges and then 19GE one of the Boris gains with a large majority.

[andrewteale]

I can't help feeling that a modern-day British Calais would cynically vote for whichever of the UK parties would be prepared to give them the biggest subsidy. Depending on how history worked out, there might be some sort of Francophone minority in the Pale demanding Francophone rights (this is not Gibraltar, it's not easily defensible). Perhaps the Calais Assembly has just returned from a period of political suspension with some sort of deal giving the French language greater prominence together with a commissioner for the promotion of the Calaisien-Douvrien dialect.

More seriously, how do Ceuta and Melilla vote?

[pl]

I love the premise, but I'm not sure how you get there without a MASSIVE change in British and European history.

If we assume England managed to keep Calais after 1558, England and France were at war so many times between then and 1815 I struggle to see how England could have managed to hold just Calais. Either England would have had to make more gains from France, or Calais (which isn't a Gibraltar-like strong point) would have fallen.

Of course, if England had held Calais, the defence of the Crown's possessions in North West Europe would have acquired a different dimension during the personal union with Hannover. Indeed, the problems defending Hannover during the Revolutionary Wars would have been replicated with Calais.

And that's before we even consider WW1 and WW2.

Let's assume somehow England managed to hold on. I imagine it would have remained the entrepot for England's European trade. It would probably have become a very important industrialised port, and undermined the development of the other French channel ports. It would probably have become very English (like Gibraltar), and would probably have been Conservative until the 1920s/1930s, and then Labour until being lost to the Tories in 1983.

[Adam in Stroud]

Jan 26, 2020 18:29:15 GMT pl said:

I love the premise, but I'm not sure how you get there without a MASSIVE change in British and European history.

If we assume England managed to keep Calais after 1558, England and France were at war so many times between then and 1815 I struggle to see how England could have managed to hold just Calais. Either England would have had to make more gains from France, or Calais (which isn't a Gibraltar-like strong point) would have fallen.

Of course, if England had held Calais, the defence of the Crown's possessions in North West Europe would have acquired a different dimension during the personal union with Hannover. Indeed, the problems defending Hannover during the Revolutionary Wars would have been replicated with Calais.

And that's before we even consider WW1 and WW2.

Let's assume somehow England managed to hold on. I imagine it would have remained the entrepot for England's European trade. It would probably have become a very important industrialised port, and undermined the development of the other French channel ports. It would probably have become very English (like Gibraltar), and would probably have been Conservative until the 1920s/1930s, and then Labour until being lost to the Tories in 1983.

You are correct in thinking that Calais' current political make-up would simply not apply had it remained English and then become British.

Under English rule Calais was the largest military base in Europe. Its economy depended on that and on monopolies on English exports. To continue in English hands it would surely have had to have remained heavily militarised (I imagine it would have been lost under Napoleon and Hitler; at other times having a border with the Spanish/Austrian Netherlands/Belgium on one side and France on the other might have made it defensible so long as we played divide-and-rule.) It would have been a sort of army equivalent of Gibraltar, only more so. Post WW2 it would have slightly lost its raison d'être but due to bureaucratic military inertia I can see it having been the HQ for BAOR and a big transport hub for the forces - maybe the Channel Tunnel would have been built earlier to serve that.

I imagine that from the Reformation to the Enlightenment religion would have been a big deal - it would have been a Protestant enclave surrounded by Catholics. I can imagine puritans and Nonconformists finding it helpfully remote from the C of E. (As with the Channel Islands, it came under a French diocese; according to wikipedia, the Channel Islands did not come under an English diocese until 1569, almost 40 years after the break with Rome, and were flooded with Huguenot Calvinists so that Anglicanism wasn't established until James I. I'd expect similar in Calais, with southern Netherlandish Calvinists thrown in too.)  So as well as resembling Gib I think it would have resembled Ulster a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if it had its own political party, something similar to the DUP or UUP, but without the SF/SDLP equivalent.

 I feel its current politics would resemble NI quite a lot, torn between a high proportion of military families voting Tory and sympathising with Brexit party, with others dependent on being an entrepôt for Europe and worried about a land border with the EU. On bjornhattan's two MP scenario I suggest "Calais Town" returning a Democratic Calais Party MP taking the DUP whip and an Official Calais Party MP for "Guines and The Pale" doing a Lady Hermon impression.

[Devil Wincarnate]

I wonder what the dominant language would have been. At the time, you probably had more speakers of Picard or Flemish than standard French. Does English become the lingua franca as a result? Does Calais become the only officially Picard-speaking territory in Europe? It already had a written corpus in those days so could have been formalised easily.

[finsobruce]

Jan 26, 2020 21:05:28 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

I wonder what the dominant language would have been. At the time, you probably had more speakers of Picard or Flemish than standard French. Does English become the lingua franca as a result? Does Calais become the only officially Picard-speaking territory in Europe? It already had a written corpus in those days so could have been formalised easily.

This is a great thread.

[greatkingrat]

Jan 26, 2020 21:05:28 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Does Calais become the only officially Picard-speaking territory in Europe?

That would depend on whether they could convince the next generation to use it.

[Peter Wilkinson]

Jan 26, 2020 18:29:15 GMT pl said:

I love the premise, but I'm not sure how you get there without a MASSIVE change in British and European history.

If we assume England managed to keep Calais after 1558, England and France were at war so many times between then and 1815 I struggle to see how England could have managed to hold just Calais. Either England would have had to make more gains from France, or Calais (which isn't a Gibraltar-like strong point) would have fallen.

Of course, if England had held Calais, the defence of the Crown's possessions in North West Europe would have acquired a different dimension during the personal union with Hannover. Indeed, the problems defending Hannover during the Revolutionary Wars would have been replicated with Calais.

And that's before we even consider WW1 and WW2.

Let's assume somehow England managed to hold on. I imagine it would have remained the entrepot for England's European trade. It would probably have become a very important industrialised port, and undermined the development of the other French channel ports. It would probably have become very English (like Gibraltar), and would probably have been Conservative until the 1920s/1930s, and then Labour until being lost to the Tories in 1983.

I'm just trying to decide how you avoid having Charles II selling it off to Louis XIV...

[middyman]

[pl]

Jan 26, 2020 19:16:04 GMT Adam in Stroud said:

I imagine it would have been lost under Napoleon and Hitler; at other times having a border with the Spanish/Austrian Netherlands/Belgium on one side and France on the other might have made it defensible so long as we played divide-and-rule.

That is the interesting point. If we end up with a heavily armed camp of English/British Calais, it would result in Britain being more interested in the European balance of power and would massively alter the scope of British foreign/imperial policy. It would result in a Britain more focused on its army than its navy and result in a Britain less interested in imperial expansion.

Britain would likely have pushed for an extended Calais further along the coast and would have been interested in keeping the Holy Roman Empire as fragmented as possible. Belgium would likely have remained divided into several different states to prevent another strong state on Calais' frontier. I'm guessing England would have also pushed hard to have Dunkirk remain in the hands of the Spanish Netherlands rather than France, or captured it itself (like it did in the 17th century).

If we go with a Greater Calais (some smaller version of the 1.4m population Pas de Calais) we are probably looking at a lot more than two constituencies worth. I'd probably go for about 8-10. That's definitely enough to be a mini Ulster if you wanted to take it that way.