Bassetlaw

[carlton43]

I shall prepare a full and expanded entry for this seat.

[Deleted]

May 20, 2020 7:45:10 GMT carlton43 said:

I shall prepare a full and expanded entry for this seat.

I look forward to it. 

[carlton43]

BASSETLAW

This is a really interesting constituency and one has to say that not all constituenies are.

It is a rarity in being named after an ancient wapentake rather than by town or geographical positioning. It would be much better named as Worksop, Worksop and Retford or North Nottinghamshire; then we would all know where the damn place really is! North Notts would in fact be fine and serve all and every purpose. But, I am a traditionalist and a conservative and so I suppose I should root for the old name to be continued. I don't. North Notts would be better in every way. And, frankly, there is no love lost between Worksop and Retford so the anonymity of North Notts would placate the rivalry.

This is a homogeneous (and also divergent) but shrinking seat (ever retreating southern bounds) at the very top of the county of Nottinghamshire and as such it is damn near to the centre of everything. It is equidistant from the East and West coasts and pretty much half way from Channel coast to the top of the central belt of Scotland. It has a border with a lot of other constituencies and every single one of them is now Conservative and if I had been told that would happen any time between 1959 and 1997 I would have laughed out loud.

In geographical and geological terms it is interesting in being ill-drained and very wet with a water table extremely close to the surface over much of its area, but sitting on rafts of coal seams difficult to win. Only mining, canal and railway have kept it more usable by intensive pumping and draining. Coal mining and the residual authority charged with the closed sites keep the water table lower than the natural level. Worksop and the district of Warsop also once in the constituency are based on the word 'soppe' for a perpetual marsh. This is a wet area subject to minor but persistent flooding.

The surface was coated by English Oak as part of the once huge Sherwood Forest that ran from a bit south of Doncaster to just north of Nottingham. That was a value and one reason for the collection of great houses known as The Dukeries (for which there was once a named railway station) of Worksop, Welbeck, Thoresby, Clumber and Rufford. All amazing buildings and estates at their full extent, all large and Worksop at its height the largest house in Britain (once principal seat of the Duke of Norfolk). Oak that fed into support of the coal mines, the properties and the navy. The boats of the Pilgrim Fathers were built of Bassetlaw oak and partly in this constituency.

Coal and power generation were latterly the drivers of the economy aided by the transverse east-west Chesterfield Canal that passes through Worksop and Retford from Trent to Chesterfield, and the GCR (former Manchester, Sheffield and Lincoln) original and continuing main line; and by the north-south A1 (Great North Road), the East Coast mainline (former Great Northern) and close proximity of the M1 slightly to the west. This is well served by infrastructure. The canal was an oddity in always being horse-drawn until the end of commercial traffic 60s/70s with river silt from Humber for knife-grinding at Sheffield.

The politics and associations are as rich and interesting as the cultural and geographic position. This was Conservative from 1885 foundation to an early Labour capture in 1929 and then Labour for 90-years until 2019 and the Johnson landslide in the Midlands and the North. Except for very brief incursions of Liberal tenure 1906-1910 by Frank Newnes son of the famous publisher and newspaper owner George Newnes: And Malcolm MacDonald (son of the Labour Leader and PM Ramsay MacDonald) who was briefly National Labour from 1931-35.

Other notable members being Fred Bellenger 33-years to 1968, Joe Ashton 33-years to 2001, and John Mann 18-years to retirement in 2019. Those three men suited the constituency very well indeed and in my opinion the constituency would have been lost in 1983 but for Ashton and earlier than 2019 but for Mann. I met and liked both of the latter MPs and respected them. I voted for Mann in 1997 without hesitation. The party was a good machine and full of hard workers and with some sound councillors. Even in the most recent period they could hold and win council seats here.

What changed and why this catastrophic reverse in 2019 with the largest swing and vote change seen in the election? A number of reasons. Long-term gradual demographic change. Consequent cultural change. Decline of Coal, rail and therefore trades union solidarity. Large and widespread private sector new build over 2-3 decades. The retirement of Mann. It was not the sort of place that would warm at all to the Corbyn type. And there a monumental breakdown of Labour party relations locally and nationally, leading to walkouts and even hostility by Mann and his faction and his strong local following, plus dispute and deselection over candidate selection, including last minute imposition on diktat from London. This was a set of interlocking circumstances that got just about as bad as it could be with a result that was obvious well in advance of election day.

Some relevant Statistics:

Last LAB member 2019
Previous Last CON 1929
Last (and only) LIB 1910

Lowest and Highest LAB Majorities 2.67 1935 (special situation inter party fight Nat-Lab)
                                                               7.86 1983 (Thatcher highwater)
                                                             36.40 1997 (Blair highwater)

This was never a monolithic seat but a solid, stolid, dependable seat for an unbroken 90-years.

2019 CON 27.5    2017 LAB 9.3    2015 LAB 17.9    2010 LAB 16.6

2019 GE  CON 55.2    LAB 27.7    BRX 10.6    LD 6.5

Swing 18.4%

Achieved 2nd places: LAB, CON

This seat has made such a decisive shift I do not see it reverting to type at the next election because I think it is trending to the right and is now a different type and a different animal altogether.

[bsjmcr]

Sept 16, 2020 21:48:22 GMT carlton43 said:

This seat has made such a decisive shift I do not see it reverting to type at the next election because I think it is trending to the right and is now a different type and a different animal altogether.

Without getting too much into personalities but more what they say - what would constituents make of Brendan-Clarke's recently widely derided comments on 'not nationalising children' with regards to FSMs? I don't get the impression that this is a hugely affluent area, there must be a fair few on FSMs there - would they swing back? Or is this the 'working class-but-hate those who don't work' types who would agree with his views?

Also interesting that Mann is not Lord Mann of Bassetlaw/Workshop/Retford, but his hometown of Leeds (Holbeck). How come he didn't choose his constituency like most of the new Lords have? I am glad to hear that you respected him locally and that he was a good fit, because his 2001 (though he was new) and particularly 2017 results seem a little underwhelming. 

[greenhert]

18.4% is in fact the largest swing from Labour to Conservative ever recorded, and I cannot see this seat returning to Labour anytime soon any more than I can see Brent North (which saw a 20% swing from Conservative to Labour in 1997) returning to the Conservatives for the foreseeable future.

[Sibboleth]

Bigger swings will doubtless be seen in the future and in all sorts of places. Particularly when there are extreme local factors, as there were here last year.

[warofdreams]

Oct 31, 2020 19:12:51 GMT greenhert said:

18.4% is in fact the largest swing from Labour to Conservative ever recorded, and I cannot see this seat returning to Labour anytime soon any more than I can see Brent North (which saw a 20% swing from Conservative to Labour in 1997) returning to the Conservatives for the foreseeable future.

It's not the largest swing from Labour to Conservative ever, there were certainly higher ones in 1931. For example, Sheffield Park. The 1976 Walsall North by-election saw a 22.6% swing which might be a record.

[Robert Waller]

2011 Census

Age 65+ 18.5% 204/650
Owner-occupied 68.8% 254/650
Private rented 12.7% 412/650
Social rented 16.4% 309/650
White 97.4% 187/650
Black 0.4% 391/650
Asian 1.1% 491/650
Managerial & professional 25.9%
Routine & Semi-routine 33.9%
Degree level 19.8% 518/650
No qualifications 28.8% 126/650
Students 5.8% 523/650

2021 Census

Owner occupied 68.0% 232/573
Private rented 16.6% 361/573
Social rented 15.5% 272/573
White 96.3%
Black 0.6%
Asian 1.3%
Managerial & professional 27.8% 407/573
Routine & Semi-routine 31.7% 49/573
Degree level 25.2% 483/573
No qualifications 21.7% 132/573



General Election 2019: Bassetlaw

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Conservative Brendan Clarke-Smith 28,078 55.2 +11.9
Labour Keir Morrison 14,065 27.7 -24.9
Brexit Party Debbie Soloman 5,366 10.6
Liberal Democrats Helen Tamblyn-Saville 3,332 6.6 +4.4

C Majority 14,013 27.5

Turnout 50,841 63.5 -3.0

Conservative gain from Labour

Swing 18.4 Lab to C

[Merseymike]

It's not a universal characteristic but perhaps the Red Wall should have been referred to as the White Wall

[john07]

May 27, 2021 21:16:02 GMT Merseymike said:

It's not a universal characteristic but perhaps the Red Wall should have been referred to as the White Wall

More like the Shite Wall.