Nottingham North
Not every MP has proved to be a friend of the
Almanac of British Politics idea by any means. But Graham Allen who represented Nottingham North between 1983 and 2017 definitely was. He first showed interest when he noticed in the Seventh Edition (2002, p.46) that his constituency figured right at the top of the list of those seats with the fewest university admissions in 1998, a total of just 115. He and I met regularly after that, not least because he was kind enough to sponsor my school’s annual visit to the Houses of Parliament, despite not being our constituency member. Graham was concerned to find out exactly why Nottingham North held this unlooked-for distinction at that time.
To simplify a somewhat more complex story, the answer is basically that North was (and to an extent still is) Nottingham’s predominantly ‘white working class’ area. According to recently released figures from the 2021 census, it ranks 10th out of the 573 constituencies in England and Wales for the proportion of workers in routine and semi routine occupations (35.4%). It is 12th in the list of those with the fewest in professional and managerial jobs (19.4%). This is all not unconnected to the fact that North has long included the bulk of Nottingham’s social housing, still over a third of the whole stock in 2021, despite a drop of over 2% since 2011 – this has been replaced with more private renting, not owner occupation which is below 50%, and further declined in those ten years. A further striking difference with Nottingham’s other two parliamentary divisions lies in the numbers of full time students. Whereas Nottingham South had a higher proportion than any other constituency in England and Wales, with 34.5% in 2021, and Nottingham East also achieved a top twenty ranking in 12th place with 23.5%, North is only a little above the national average, at 7.8%. The whole tone and character of the North constituency has long been starkly different from much of the rest of the city.
For most of its existence since its creation in 1955 North has appeared to be a safe Labour seat, but there have been aberrations. In 1983, for one term, it fell to the advance of Thatcherite Conservatism. Then in December 2019 there was a swing away from Labour towards the Tories of over 8%, when the movement in the other two constituencies hovered around a mere 3%. The reason is clear. In the 2016 referendum North is estimated to have voted about 64% to leave the EU, whereas East favoured Remain by around 57% and South too, with over 53%. Clearly this is connected to the massive demographic differences and their response to these key issues of the second half of the 2010s. As a result North now has far and away the smallest Labour majority of the three Nottingham divisions.
This situation may not last, as the EU question fades and is replaced by issues such as standard of living and economic stagnation. In local election terms Labour still looks fairly monolithically strong within Nottingham North. There are two main elements to the constituency as at present constituted. One is composed of a series of massive inter-war council estate developments, laid out in distinctive geometric patterns in the north western quadrant of the conurbation, between the inner city and the boundary. These are located in Bilborough and Aspley wards. Many of these largely semi-detached houses have been sold, but overall over 40% are still in the social rented sector. Once rather determinedly almost all white, the Black and Asian (and non-British white) percentages have climbed somewhat in the 21st century. For example, within the Aspley ward, two of the estates are Broxtowe (not to be confused with the parliamentary seats of that name, either the current one or the inter war one) and Cinderhill, which between them reported a 17% Black population in the 2021 census. This is by no means the original centre of the Nottingham Black community, which is essentially in St Ann’s and Radford in its inner city belt, but may be the result of displacement as areas like Lenton, Dunkirk and Radford have in turn been taken over for accommodating the massive student population. In any case, the Aspley and Bilborough wards voted 74% and 64%Labour (top candidate) respectively in the most recent council elections in May 2019. In 2015 UKIP had finished second, but the Conservatives have not returned a councillor in these estate wards since taking one out of two in Bilborough in 1983 and 1987.
The second element of Nottingham North is (also) charactersied by the letter ‘B’. These are the semi-independent communities of Basford, Bestwood and Bulwell. Relatively far from the city centre, they have their own ‘town centres’ and institutions, such as the non league football club in Basford (which is pronounced ‘Baysford’ by the locals). Old Basford only is in the North seat; New Basford, counterintuitively nearer the heart if the city, is in Berridge ward and East constituency (and is mainly a Victorian development, which indicates how long established Basford itself is). Basford grew as a railway junction and manufactured Cussons soap (as in Imperial Leather) until production was moved to Thailand in 2005. The ward is 70% white and only 50% owner occupied, with a large private rented sector, especially around the heart of Old Basford (39% in 2021) and social housing too, in smaller pockets than the giant estates. Basford ward last elected Conservatives in the year 2000, and was over two to one Labour in May 2019 (with a ‘Nottingham Independent’ runner up).
Bestwood is on the far north-eastern edge of the city bordering Gedling constituency and has a coal mining heritage, though this was not the Bestwood in D H Lawrence’s novels, which was a thinly disguised Eastwood. (He could have chosen a pseudonym which was not also a real place elsewhere in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, but he was always something of an awkward cuss). The real Bestwood colliery closed in 1967. Bestwood Park is yet another large social housing estate. The ward of that name remained Labour even in 1983 and 1987, the Tories’ best years in Nottingham council elections in living memory. In May 2019 Labour won all three seats in Bestwood ward, as usual, followed by Nottingham Independents, UKIP, and a long way behind Conservative and Liberal Democrats.
Finally, Bulwell, in the furthest orbit to the north, the Neptune of Nottingham’s solar system, (described in Wikipedia as a “market town in Nottinghamshire, 3 miles from Hucknall and 4.5 miles from Nottingham”, though in fact it’s been administratively in Nottingham since the 1890s) has an extraordinary element in its local electoral history. John Peck was elected as a councillor for Bulwell East representing the Communist party in 1987, after many unsuccessful attempts, before defecting to the Greens in 1990 and winning election three more times in Bulwell. He also contested the North parliamentary seat ten times, without any victories at all, of course.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peck_(politician)Peck’s victories in Bulwell are a testament to his command of the personal respect of te voters in his ward, as the area is a hotbed neither of Communism or environmental politics; the best ever Green showing in a general election in Nottingham North is 3.1% in 2015. Bulwell’s two wards (Bulwell itself and Bulwell Forest) have elected no-one other than Labour, except for a solitary Conservative creeping into the third spot in Forest in 2007, since Peck retired in 1997.
Overall, then, Nottingham North has solidly Labour in its preferences in both local and national contests in all but the exceptional circumstances caused by the Brexit issue, the (municipally) exceptional John Peck and the low ebb of 1983-87. Some change is looming over the horizon in the shape of boundary changes, though. Nottingham does not now have the population to sustain three whole constituencies, and it is North that has been chosen by the Commission to cross the city boundary, to take in three wards from the Broxtowe local authority and parliamentary division: Kimberley, Nuthall East & Strelley and Watnall & Nuthall West. The name will reflect this:
Nottingham North and Kimberley. In addition, the Leen Valley ward is to be transferred from Nottingham South, and in exchange, Bilborough sent in the other direction.
All this does change the character of the North seat. The loss of Bilborough breaks up the huge north-eastern social housing estate bloc. Its swap with Leen Valley does not have much of a political impact, as that too is a very safe Labour ward. But the three Broxtowe wards are all Tory-inclined, especially Watnall & Nuthall West, where the Conservatives beat Labour by almost three-to-one in the most recent borough council elections in May 2019. The Conservatives also won Nuthall & Kimberley division in the county council elections of May 2021. The Nuthall wards are well over 30% professional and managerial, and owner occupation rates range between 75% and 85% - figures that are nowhere near seen anywhere in the current Nottingham North. The notional majority in North & Kimberley is likely to be a maximum of the order of 3,000, compared with 4,500 in the actual December 2019 contests on present boundaries.
This should not matter, unless there is an extraordinary Conservative advance from their present polling position and any currently foreseen scale of recovery. However it will mean that some of Nottingham North’s fairly extreme demographic statistics, the ones that so alarmed their MP twenty years ago, will move more towards the national mean. However Graham Allen, who retired through ill heath in 2017, may be pleased to see that the 2021 census reveals that even on existing boundaries there has been some substantial change, even since 2011. Looking at those education variables, the percentage with degrees has increased from 13.3% in 2011 to 21.8% in 2021, both absolutely and even more emphatically proportionally well above the national average rise. North is no longer in the bottom twenty seats in England and Wales on this criterion. The figure for those with no qualifications has also changed, dropping from 35.8%, 15th of 650 in the UK, to 27.0%, 21st out of 573 in England and Wales; when the figure from Scotland and Northern Ireland can be added for comparison, there will also be a number of others higher in this regard. The local MP tried hard to increase the numbers staying at school in this seat longer, tracing the problem all the way back to the youngest years and the need for ‘early intervention’, but a reason for the improved educational achievement may well be the increase in the non-white population, and also the moderate encroachment of the influence of the universities into this seat. That distinct character as ‘white working class’ has already been diluted - even before the forthcoming boundary changes.
Statistics are in post up-thread
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/b65f7782-658b-4c4a-9cba-59c16c807f77/a3-maps/EM_37_Nottingham%20North%20and%20Kimberley%20BC.pdf
