Battersea

[evergreenadam]

Nov 13, 2021 16:16:02 GMT Andrew_S said:

Nov 12, 2021 22:12:47 GMT sirbenjamin said:

Streatham was still seen as desirable well into the 1980s. When I was a young child our family friends who were considered 'well off' generally lived in the big houses facing Tooting Bec Common or nearby. Streatham High Road was pretty much *the* place to shop and, especially, to eat out.

The way in which Streatham moved downmarket while Balham and Tooting moved up has been fascinating to observe over the past 40 years. I just don't get why. I mean, if you're going to do a gentrification thing in South London, why not just do it in the area that already had a reputation for being quite nice? Why this obsession with taking over 'edgy' and 'up and coming' places in order to turn them into something that used to exist next door...

The other day I watched that episode of Poirot where he acts as a burglar to break into a house in Wimbledon. The lady housekeeper lives in Streatham and is the epitome of a lower-middle class snob.

The irony is that that sort of person would never admit to living in Streatham these days!

[londonseal80]

Nov 13, 2021 20:23:58 GMT evergreenadam said:

Nov 13, 2021 16:16:02 GMT Andrew_S said:

The other day I watched that episode of Poirot where he acts as a burglar to break into a house in Wimbledon. The lady housekeeper lives in Streatham and is the epitome of a lower-middle class snob.

The irony is that that sort of person would never admit to living in Streatham these days!

I saw a property program about 10-15 years ago where a couple looking to buy a two bed flat in Balham, a bigger property was found in Streatham and still close to Balham station but they wanted to show off to their friends that they could afford to buy in an SW12 postcode. Both areas are nice enough and have their good points. Personally if I had money back then I would rather live further out - Sutton South, Banstead, Coulsdon area.

[batman]

BATTERSEA

This seat dates back to 1983, since when it has been almost unaltered like all Wandsworth constituencies; before then, there was a North and South Battersea seat. Battersea North was a perennial Labour stronghold, with sweeping working-class and artisan terraces interspersed with council estates, some of them sizeable. When Battersea was created, it seemed natural that the Labour North would outvote the more mixed South, and so it proved. But already by then the area was changing, and in 1987 the Tories won the seat. Since then, it has had largely marginal characteristics, although there have been times when the Tories appeared to be about to put it out of Labour's reach, especially the 2015 election. As well as Battersea itself, which can be said to include the area known as Clapham Junction after the railway station, also included are parts of Wandsworth and Balham, both of which areas however are shared with other constituencies.

Battersea became a very desirable location for upwardly mobile, often City, professionals after the early 1980s, with its solidly-built Victorian terraces close to London and close to attractive green spaces such as Battersea Park and Clapham Common. They helped to reinforce the narrow Conservative majority on Wandsworth council, which in its turn helped with a project of attempted social engineering which frowned upon social housing but smiled upon executive homes, though it was always less direct that that seen in Westminster at the same time. These professionals have largely stayed, but there remain large council estates, particularly in Falconbrook ward in the vicinity of Clapham Junction station, but also in other wards most notably Queenstown & Shaftesbury, and Battersea Park. These are Labour's strongest wards, although following the 2022 local elections several others have Labour representation. 3 wards, the almost entirely new-build Nine Elms, Northcote and Lavender (the last two close to and including the central areas of Battersea itself), remain Conservative-held. While parts of the constituency have been transformed from shabby white and black working-class areas of owner-occupied and privately-rented terraced houses to expensive, restaurant-filled localities, others have resisted major social change. Some of the voters here are not unlike those found in Putney to the west, but the pockets of ultra-affluence are perhaps a little less extensive, and the constituency is also quite a bit less white-dominated than Putney too, retaining much of its old Caribbean community. As well as Battersea itself (this takes in Clapham Junction), the constituency includes parts, though not all, of the Balham, Wandsworth and Clapham communities. Again, as with almost all of the most affluent parts of London, the owner-occupied voters tend to be relatively social liberal even if they have voted Conservative at times (both of the 2 Conservative MPs who have won here are identified broadly with the left of that party), and were very pro-Remain in the 2016 referendum. This has tended to alienate even many very prosperous City workers from the Conservatives in national elections since then, and the seat, despite seeing a comfortable-looking Tory win in the 2015 election, swung heavily to Labour's Marsha De Cordova as she took it with votes to spare in 2017. The salience of Europe as an issue in the 2019 election, and De Cordova's broadly pro-Remain stance, prevented the Tories from coming all that close from retaking the seat in 2019. It is another seat where Europe has loomed large as an election issue, and the Conservatives will have to reconnect with their erstwhile pro-Remain voters if they are to retake it in the future.



I've slightly modified my previous profile to take into account boundary & political changes in the constituency since I wrote it.

[Pete Whitehead]

The borough of Wandsworth presented problems for the boundary commission. It is exactly the right size for three whole seats, as now, but while Tooting is within quota, Battersea is oversized and Putney undersized. The Commission were constrained to use the old wards which have by now been replaced. Moving the ward of Fairfield (the only possibility) from Battersea to Putney would have left Battersea undersized.
Fortunately the commission were prepared to engage in ward splitting here, so the area of Fairfield East of the A214 remains in Battersea with the bulk moving to Putney. Fairfield is a marginal ward and the partisan impact on both seats will be minor.

2019 Notional result

Lab	24757	46.1%
Con	19106	35.6%
LD	8095	15.1%
Grn	1358	2.5%
BxP	352	0.7%
Majority	5651	10.5%