Post by Peter Wilkinson on Apr 8, 2020 20:31:37 GMT
Probably rather too long and even so has bits missing - something on demography needed, and probably results of recent elections. But I think it's at a point where the best thing is to ask for comments.
Chipping Barnet
This seat, on the northern edge of Greater London, has for the last two general elections been one of the closest Conservative/Labour marginals in England. Looking at its past history, this might seem surprising - since it came into being for the February 1974 General Election (and preceding 1973 GLC election), it has elected a Conservative MP at every general election and, except in the Labour landslides of 1997 and 2001, by margins which, before 2017, varied between comfortable and safe. In this, it had followed the example of its main predecessor, Barnet - which had indeed very narrowly returned a Labour MP in 1945, but from 1950 had always returned Conservative Reginald Maudling with at least a 10% majority. By 1974, Maudling's political career was past its peak (he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1962 to 1964 and Home Secretary from 1970 to 1972) but he remained MP for Chipping Barnet until his death shortly before the 1979 general election. Sidney Chapman, Maudling's successor as MP from 1979 to his retirement in 2005, was something of a contrast to Maudling - the height of his Westminster career was three years as a junior whip during the Major government, but his dedication as a constituency MP was acknowledged even by his political opponents. The MP since 2005 has been Theresa Villiers, Northern Ireland Secretary from 2012 to 2016 and Environment Secretary from July 2019 to February 2020.
The Chipping Barnet of 1974 was based on the small part of Hertfordshire (all within the Barnet constituency) which, having been absorbed by the growth of London suburbia between the 1930s and 1960s, had been incorporated into the new Greater London in 1964. By itself, however, this was not quite big enough to constitute one of the four small constituencies into which the new London Borough of Barnet was divided - so numbers were made up by transferring in a few thousand voters around Whetstone and Woodside Park from Finchley. Subsequent boundary changes for the 1997 and 2010 general elections have each added further substantial areas, including almost all of the former Friern Barnet Urban District, to the constituency, meaning that about 40% of the Chipping Barnet of 2019 was in Middlesex rather than Hertfordshire before 1964 and that it now contains about a third of the Finchley constituency of Margaret Thatcher's years as Prime Minister.
The highest ground in the constituency (at between 130 and 145 metres above sea level), including High Barnet (an alternative name for the original Chipping Barnet which will be used from here onwards to avoid confusion with the constituency), is close to its northern edge; along a slightly lower and shorter parallel ridge (a bit below 130 metres) a couple of kilometres to the south is the village of Totteridge. The Great North Road (A1000) towards central London runs through High Barnet as Barnet High Street before continuing sharply down to the south as Barnet Hill and then somewhat up again, crossing the old Hertfordshire-Middlesex boundary onto a lower north-south ridge (just touching 100 metres) on which it continues until it leaves High Barnet just north of North Finchley. Land to the west of this ridge drains into Dollis Brook, which becomes the River Brent rather further south, and to the east drains into Pymmes Brook, a tributary of the River Lea.
Dollis Brook starts just across the border in Hendon constituency and then flows roughly east between the ridges containing High Barnet and Totteridge until it bends south past the eastern end of the Totteridge ridge, coming to about 500 metres west of the A1000 and then very slowly diverging again. As it bends, the old Hertfordshire-Middlesex boundary joins it from the east for a couple of kilometres but then turns west up the Folly Brook, one of its tributaries. Soon after that, it reaches the current southern boundary of Chipping Barnet - it becomes the Chipping Barnet-Finchley boundary for a short distance before continuing as the Hendon-Finchley boundary for a while. Pymmes Brook officially starts at Jack's Lake on the Chipping Barnet-Enfield Southgate boundary, with tributaries both sides of the boundary, and then flows southwards but gradually trending south-east through the eastern part of Chipping Barnet for five kilometres or so before crossing again into Enfield Southgate. The point where it does so is the constituency's lowest point (at about 38 metres above sea level).
Chipping Barnet doesn't have that many railways passing through it, but it was largely populated by the ones it does have. Two hundred years ago, the current constituency was almost entirely rural, with one town - High Barnet, with its coaching inns along the High Street and its annual fair - and a handful of smallish villages. What is now the East Coast Main Line was opened in 1850, together with what are now New Barnet and New Southgate stations - Oakleigh Park opened about 20 years later. From New Barnet to just north of New Southgate, its route runs in an almost straight line roughly along the western edge of Pymmes Brook's valley - but, as the western edge of the valley is not at all straight, making significant use of embankments, cuttings and even one tunnel. For most of the distance south of Oakleigh Park, the route also very roughly matches the old county boundary. And what is now the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line followed in the 1870s - but as the High Barnet branch of the Edgware, Highgate and London Railway. Leaving High Barnet station on a viaduct across the lower end of Barnet Hill, it continued (and still continues) on a route between the A1000 and Dollis Brook but closer to the latter, with further stations (then in Middlesex, now in Chipping Barnet) at Totteridge and Whetstone and Woodside Park, and on into Finchley to join the EH&LR on its way through to Finsbury Park.
During the late 19th century, sizeable new commuter villages and extensions to nearby existing places developed around the stations, together with light industry along the railway lines, using the lines for freight traffic. But, while these places slowly grew, there was still open countryside between and around them - they better suited people who wanted semi-rural homes rather than quick commutes into central London. However, by the late 1920s, Whetstone and Woodside Park were connected through Finchley to the London built-up area by some not quite continuous ribbon development, and the areas of Middlesex closest to Chipping Barnet by now contained some of the closest remaining countryside to central London. The Piccadilly Line out to Cockfosters was opened in 1933 and, while there are no Piccadilly Line stations in Chipping Barnet, Cockfosters and Southgate stations are each no more than 200 metres outside Chipping Barnet, and Arnos Grove about 500 metres. This led to the rapid development of most of the remaining rural areas of Pymmes Brook valley beyond East Barnet and New Barnet - much of this was already built-up by 1939. Similar development also took place further west in anticipation of the transfer of the High Barnet branch to the Northern Line in 1940.
After the war, substantial areas around much of Totteridge and smaller ones all along the northern border of the constituency were included(and remain) in the Green Belt, but the developments interrupted in 1939 or already zoned for building elsewhere in the constituency were continued and completed in the late 1940s and 1950s, with some infilling continuing through the 1960s - but by that point, Chipping Barnet was clearly part of London suburbia. Since then, quite a number of the larger houses in the constituency have been converted either to multiple occupancy or into flats - or, indeed, with some of the larger Victorian houses, demolished and replaced with blocks of flats. Also, over the past 30 years, some larger developments have taken place on brownfield sites.
Overall, the constituency is less ethnically diverse, at about 55% White British and 71% White overall according to the 2011 census, than the rest of Barnet or than Greater London as a whole, but distinctly more so than the English average. The largest non-white minority is Indian, at between 6% and 7%. There is a wide spread of other ethnic minorities, often at close to the London average, but with Black and non-Indian south Asian distinctly below it.
While the 2011 census shows that three of Chipping Barnet's five constituency neighbours are the three with the highest Jewish populations in the country, its own Jewish population is slightly under 7% - enough to make it the eighth highest in the United Kingdom and the fifth highest in London, but less than a third of that of Finchley and Golders Green, and less that half of that of Hendon or Hertsmere. Chipping Barnet's Muslim population, at slightly above 7%, is a bit larger than its Jewish population but well below the London average Muslim population of rather above 12%. Otherwise, the religious profile of Chipping Barnet is not very different to that of London as a whole.
Turning back to the political history of the constituency, the first Barnet Council elections in 1964 were fought on a provisional set of ward boundaries based on the wards of the previous councils, adjusted where necessary to ensure very roughly the same number of voters per councillor. The division of the Borough of Barnet into 20 three-member wards, four of which were entirely in the Barnet constituency and a fifth partly so, which was created for the 1968 elections survived with only a few minor boundary revisions for the next 30 or so years, and was the basis used for both Chipping Barnet's 1974 boundaries (containing the five already-mentioned wards, as one of four constituencies) and the 1997 revision (adding a sixth ward, as one of three constituencies - the other two constituencies in Barnet had seven wards each). The current 21 three-member wards for the borough were first used in 2002, and Chipping Barnet's current boundaries, created for the 2010 general election, include seven wards. A further ward boundary review has recently been conducted which, assuming the LGBCE recommendations are implemented, will result in a greatly changed ward map, with a mixture of two- and three-member wards, being used for the 2022 borough elections.
In 1964, the 12 single-member wards within the then Barnet constituency elected 7 Conservative and 5 Labour councillors. In the next seven council elections, now using three-member wards, the Conservatives invariably did better and Labour worse than this in the five Chipping Barnet wards - the Conservatives held all 15 seats between 1968 and 1971 and between 1982 and 1990, and all but two seats between 1974 and 1982 (with the other seats going one Labour and one independent). In 1971, Labour won four seats, and in 1990 three. However, in both the 1994 and 1998 elections, Labour won six seats in Chipping Barnet (and 19 seats elsewhere in the borough both times, allowing a Labour minority administration). Friern Barnet ward, which came into the constituency in 1997, had always been (and remained) a Conservative ward. Despite the change to the current ward boundaries in 2002, the ten years after 2002 seemed, but were not quite, a reversion to the pre-1994 situation. In 2002, the Conservatives once more took all but one of the now 18 seats in the wards totally or predominantly within Chipping Barnet and, with the exception of a seat won in a 2005 by-election by a Liberal Democrat and retained by him in 2006 but not 2010, held onto them in 2006 and 2010. However, the Labour-leaning Coppetts ward, about a third in Chipping Barnet since 2002 came fully into Chipping Barnet with the 2010 constituency boundary revision, and Labour won a by-election in Brunswick Park ward in 2012. This was followed, in the 2014 council elections, with Labour winning 11 seats (several, it should be said, on very narrow margins) to the Conservatives' 10 - and even though two of these reverted to the Conservatives in 2018, this still leaves the political situation in the constituency very close to what it was at the New Labour peak in the late 1990s, in distinct contrast to the national situation.
Looking at the current wards in detail, starting with the original core of the constituency:
On the Hertfordshire edge of the constituency, High Barnet ward occupies the high ground on the northern edge of the constituency, together with an area to the east and south-east, containing a number of mostly small tributaries of Pymmes Brook (though not Pymmes Brook itself), bounded on the east by the East Coast Main Line. The south-eastern corner of the ward is in the centre of New Barnet, about 200 metres north of New Barnet station. The Green Belt along the ward's northern border contains some of the most seriously expensive housing in the constituency (matched only by Totteridge), at Arkley in the west and Monken Hadley, just north of High Barnet on the A1000. However, the original area of the town of High Barnet, while generally prosperous, is far more variable in its level of wealth; and a number of originally sumptuous houses in the New Barnet part of the ward have either been converted into flats or demolished and replaced by blocks of flats. Generally, to all appearances a safe Conservative ward which has always elected at least two Conservative councillors, the third seat has sometimes produced surprising results - between 2005 and 2010, it was held by a Liberal Democrat, and Labour came only two votes short of capturing a council seat here in 2018. In this, it is continuing the record of its main predecessor ward, Hadley, which had an independent councillor (and two Conservatives) between 1974 and 1982.
Underhill ward occupies the area south of High Barnet ward and west of Barnet Hill, sloping down to Dollis Brook, its southern boundary. While much of the ward, particularly close to High Barnet ward, contains clearly middle-class housing giving the impression of being solidly Conservative, there is also a lot of ex-council and social housing in areas down towards Dollis Brook. Over the long term, this ward and its main predecessor, Arkley, have been fairly evenly marginal - Underhill fully Labour since 2014 and split two Conservative to one Labour between 2002 and 2014, Arkley fully Labour from 1971 to 1974 and 1990 to 2002, fully Conservative from 1968 to 1971 and 1982 to 1990, and split two Conservative to one Labour from 1974 to 1982. With the exception of Coppetts ward, though, this has still made the ward by some distance the most Labour-leaning in Chipping Barnet - to the extent that other Chipping Barnet wards have only elected any Labour councillors in elections where Underhill has elected a full Labour slate.
East Barnet and Brunswick Park wards occupy the area to the east of the East Coast Main Line. The two wards very much have a shared history, even if it has sometimes produced rather differing results. Both wards were historically part of Hertfordshire, and it is quite possible that East Barnet was the original Barnet - certainly Saint Mary's Church, East Barnet (which seems to have shuttled between the two wards - at the moment, it is just inside Brunswick Park) is about three hundred years older than Saint John's Church, High Barnet. Before the 1930s, East Barnet ward contained the great majority of of the area's population, including the eastern half of New Barnet. While the eastern half of New Barnet developed at the same time as New Barnet's western half, there were definite differences. The western half of Victorian New Barnet was dominated by large, distinctly middle class housing - but the eastern half had most of the light industrial development and terrace housing built for working people. And the same applied to the new Edwardian hamlet of Brunswick Park, between the railway line and the Great North London Cemetery. Then, in the 1930s, the building boom consequent on the opening of the Piccadilly Line covered the rest of Brunswick Park ward and much of the remaining unbuilt areas of East Barnet ward with housing for the middle classes. Though East Barnet got a couple of council housing estates, while Brunswick Park didn't. The political consequence in the late 20th century was that while both wards usually elected Conservative councillors, East Barnet elected one Labour councillor in 1971 and three in 1994. Then in 1998, the Conservatives regained one of the three East Barnet seats but a Labour councillor was elected for the first time in Brunswick Park. The Conservatives regained all council seats in both wards in 2002, and held onto them in 2006 and 2010. But in a 2012 by-election, Labour again won a council seat in Brunswick Park, which has remained consistently split since then - two out of three Labour in 2014, two out of three Conservative in 2018. East Barnet, meanwhile, went fully Labour in 2014 but the Conservatives regained just one seat in 2018.
Totteridge ward, to the south and west of Dollis Brook, is named after the ex-Hertfordshire (and distinctly wealthy) village of Totteridge, but in terms of population, this and its surrounding Green Belt are rather sparsely inhabited. A post-war extension to Woodside Park had extended it across Dollis Brook (and thus within the existing electoral boundaries of Totteridge) and the terms of the pre-1968 ware boundary review required a ward to cross the former county boundary - so parts of Whetstone and most of Woodside Park (amounting to a smaller area but larger population than the Totteridge part of the ward) were included, and came into Chipping Barnet when the constituency was created in 1974. Totteridge has been the most solidly Conservative ward in Chipping Barnet ever since. Totteridge is also the ward with, at about 16%, by some distance the highest Jewish population in Chipping Barnet.
Oakleigh ward was created in the pre-2002 ward boundary review, and did not correspond strongly to any previous ward. The new ward was almost entirely in Chipping Barnet, but rather over a third of it had previously been in Hadley, one of the original Chipping Barnet wards, while most of the rest had been in Friern Barnet ward, which had only been added to Chipping Barnet in 1997, having previously been part of Finchley constituency. The northern end of Oakleigh ward corresponds to the south-western quarter of New Barnet and, with its mixture of large Victorian houses and replacement blocks of flats (and offices) is similar to the part of High Barnet ward immediately to its north. In this, it is not very different to Oakleigh Park, in the eastern half of the middle third of the ward - and most of the rest of the ward, like much of the constituency, consists of detached and semi-detached houses built between the 1920s and 1950s. Since its creation, Oakleigh ward has consistently voted Conservative, though by lesser margins than Totteridge - and so far as one can judge from available information, that is simply a continuation of the area's previous voting pattern.
Coppetts ward, also created in the pre-2002 ward boundary review, did not correspond strongly to any previous ward either. Until 2010, it was mostly in Finchley and Golders Green constituency, with only the northern third, from Friern Barnet Road northwards, in Chipping Barnet. Since 2010, the entire ward has been in Chipping Barnet. The ward roughly coincides with the southern two-thirds of the former Friern Barnet Urban District. Friern Barnet itself occupies a low east-west ridge in the north of the ward. The rest of the ward stretches south along Colney Hatch Lane, across the valley of Bounds Green Brook, a tributary of Pymmes Brook (and the closely parallel North Circular Road) towards Muswell Hill. Until the 1990s, most of the middle third of the ward, between Friern Barnet and the North Circular, was occupied byColney Hatch Lunatic AsylumFriern Hospital and its grounds to the east of Colney Hatch Lane, and by a mixture of industrial uses and open land to the west - these days, Friern Hospital and its grounds have been redeveloped as housing, and much but not all of the industrial area is occupied by a large Tesco. In the southern third of the ward, south of the North Circular, a small settlement to the east of Colney Hatch Lane and a little south of the Bounds Green Brook originated in the 1860s as accommodation for construction workers building Alexandra Palace in Muswell Hill. After about 1900, "the Freehold", as it was known, and Muswell Hill gradually expanded to merge physically but, even after the slum clearance of much of the original area in the 1970s, there is still an at least subliminal contrast between them. Taking the various parts of Coppetts together, the result is a ward where the Conservatives can certainly take council seats in a good year for them (in 2006, they took two, and in 2010, they held one) but is generally Labour-leaning.
So far as the suggested wards for 2022 are concerned, East Barnet and Brunswick Park remain almost unchanged, and the differences between the current Coppetts ward and the new Friern Barnet ward are in practice fairly small. The new High Barnet and Underhill wards are both smaller than their current namesakes, each with two councillors rather than three; and some territory at the western end of Underhill transfers to High Barnet. High Barnet ward loses its southeastern end, towards New Barnet, and Underhill some of its eastern edge to a new three-councillor Barnet Vale ward which also contains the northern part of the current Oakleigh ward. The rest of the new Oakleigh ward, together with the Whetstone part of the current Totteridge ward become a two-member Whetstone ward. The rest of Totteridge ward incorporates a major new development from Mill Hill ward in Hendon constituency, and is renamed Totteridge and Woodside.
Finally, it is mildly interesting to speculate about the possible results of general elections from before 2010 if held on the current constituency boundaries. The inclusion into Chipping Barnet of the parts of Coppetts ward previously in Finchley and Golders Green have almost certainly moved Chipping Barnet in a Labour direction, but Coppetts ward, while Labour-leaning, is not particularly strongly so. It looks more likely than not that the effect would have changed the result in 1997 from a distinctly marginal Conservative win to an equally marginal Labour one; and possible, though little more, also in 2001. There is little if any chance that it could have changed any other election result of recent decades.
Chipping Barnet
This seat, on the northern edge of Greater London, has for the last two general elections been one of the closest Conservative/Labour marginals in England. Looking at its past history, this might seem surprising - since it came into being for the February 1974 General Election (and preceding 1973 GLC election), it has elected a Conservative MP at every general election and, except in the Labour landslides of 1997 and 2001, by margins which, before 2017, varied between comfortable and safe. In this, it had followed the example of its main predecessor, Barnet - which had indeed very narrowly returned a Labour MP in 1945, but from 1950 had always returned Conservative Reginald Maudling with at least a 10% majority. By 1974, Maudling's political career was past its peak (he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1962 to 1964 and Home Secretary from 1970 to 1972) but he remained MP for Chipping Barnet until his death shortly before the 1979 general election. Sidney Chapman, Maudling's successor as MP from 1979 to his retirement in 2005, was something of a contrast to Maudling - the height of his Westminster career was three years as a junior whip during the Major government, but his dedication as a constituency MP was acknowledged even by his political opponents. The MP since 2005 has been Theresa Villiers, Northern Ireland Secretary from 2012 to 2016 and Environment Secretary from July 2019 to February 2020.
The Chipping Barnet of 1974 was based on the small part of Hertfordshire (all within the Barnet constituency) which, having been absorbed by the growth of London suburbia between the 1930s and 1960s, had been incorporated into the new Greater London in 1964. By itself, however, this was not quite big enough to constitute one of the four small constituencies into which the new London Borough of Barnet was divided - so numbers were made up by transferring in a few thousand voters around Whetstone and Woodside Park from Finchley. Subsequent boundary changes for the 1997 and 2010 general elections have each added further substantial areas, including almost all of the former Friern Barnet Urban District, to the constituency, meaning that about 40% of the Chipping Barnet of 2019 was in Middlesex rather than Hertfordshire before 1964 and that it now contains about a third of the Finchley constituency of Margaret Thatcher's years as Prime Minister.
The highest ground in the constituency (at between 130 and 145 metres above sea level), including High Barnet (an alternative name for the original Chipping Barnet which will be used from here onwards to avoid confusion with the constituency), is close to its northern edge; along a slightly lower and shorter parallel ridge (a bit below 130 metres) a couple of kilometres to the south is the village of Totteridge. The Great North Road (A1000) towards central London runs through High Barnet as Barnet High Street before continuing sharply down to the south as Barnet Hill and then somewhat up again, crossing the old Hertfordshire-Middlesex boundary onto a lower north-south ridge (just touching 100 metres) on which it continues until it leaves High Barnet just north of North Finchley. Land to the west of this ridge drains into Dollis Brook, which becomes the River Brent rather further south, and to the east drains into Pymmes Brook, a tributary of the River Lea.
Dollis Brook starts just across the border in Hendon constituency and then flows roughly east between the ridges containing High Barnet and Totteridge until it bends south past the eastern end of the Totteridge ridge, coming to about 500 metres west of the A1000 and then very slowly diverging again. As it bends, the old Hertfordshire-Middlesex boundary joins it from the east for a couple of kilometres but then turns west up the Folly Brook, one of its tributaries. Soon after that, it reaches the current southern boundary of Chipping Barnet - it becomes the Chipping Barnet-Finchley boundary for a short distance before continuing as the Hendon-Finchley boundary for a while. Pymmes Brook officially starts at Jack's Lake on the Chipping Barnet-Enfield Southgate boundary, with tributaries both sides of the boundary, and then flows southwards but gradually trending south-east through the eastern part of Chipping Barnet for five kilometres or so before crossing again into Enfield Southgate. The point where it does so is the constituency's lowest point (at about 38 metres above sea level).
Chipping Barnet doesn't have that many railways passing through it, but it was largely populated by the ones it does have. Two hundred years ago, the current constituency was almost entirely rural, with one town - High Barnet, with its coaching inns along the High Street and its annual fair - and a handful of smallish villages. What is now the East Coast Main Line was opened in 1850, together with what are now New Barnet and New Southgate stations - Oakleigh Park opened about 20 years later. From New Barnet to just north of New Southgate, its route runs in an almost straight line roughly along the western edge of Pymmes Brook's valley - but, as the western edge of the valley is not at all straight, making significant use of embankments, cuttings and even one tunnel. For most of the distance south of Oakleigh Park, the route also very roughly matches the old county boundary. And what is now the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line followed in the 1870s - but as the High Barnet branch of the Edgware, Highgate and London Railway. Leaving High Barnet station on a viaduct across the lower end of Barnet Hill, it continued (and still continues) on a route between the A1000 and Dollis Brook but closer to the latter, with further stations (then in Middlesex, now in Chipping Barnet) at Totteridge and Whetstone and Woodside Park, and on into Finchley to join the EH&LR on its way through to Finsbury Park.
During the late 19th century, sizeable new commuter villages and extensions to nearby existing places developed around the stations, together with light industry along the railway lines, using the lines for freight traffic. But, while these places slowly grew, there was still open countryside between and around them - they better suited people who wanted semi-rural homes rather than quick commutes into central London. However, by the late 1920s, Whetstone and Woodside Park were connected through Finchley to the London built-up area by some not quite continuous ribbon development, and the areas of Middlesex closest to Chipping Barnet by now contained some of the closest remaining countryside to central London. The Piccadilly Line out to Cockfosters was opened in 1933 and, while there are no Piccadilly Line stations in Chipping Barnet, Cockfosters and Southgate stations are each no more than 200 metres outside Chipping Barnet, and Arnos Grove about 500 metres. This led to the rapid development of most of the remaining rural areas of Pymmes Brook valley beyond East Barnet and New Barnet - much of this was already built-up by 1939. Similar development also took place further west in anticipation of the transfer of the High Barnet branch to the Northern Line in 1940.
After the war, substantial areas around much of Totteridge and smaller ones all along the northern border of the constituency were included(and remain) in the Green Belt, but the developments interrupted in 1939 or already zoned for building elsewhere in the constituency were continued and completed in the late 1940s and 1950s, with some infilling continuing through the 1960s - but by that point, Chipping Barnet was clearly part of London suburbia. Since then, quite a number of the larger houses in the constituency have been converted either to multiple occupancy or into flats - or, indeed, with some of the larger Victorian houses, demolished and replaced with blocks of flats. Also, over the past 30 years, some larger developments have taken place on brownfield sites.
Overall, the constituency is less ethnically diverse, at about 55% White British and 71% White overall according to the 2011 census, than the rest of Barnet or than Greater London as a whole, but distinctly more so than the English average. The largest non-white minority is Indian, at between 6% and 7%. There is a wide spread of other ethnic minorities, often at close to the London average, but with Black and non-Indian south Asian distinctly below it.
While the 2011 census shows that three of Chipping Barnet's five constituency neighbours are the three with the highest Jewish populations in the country, its own Jewish population is slightly under 7% - enough to make it the eighth highest in the United Kingdom and the fifth highest in London, but less than a third of that of Finchley and Golders Green, and less that half of that of Hendon or Hertsmere. Chipping Barnet's Muslim population, at slightly above 7%, is a bit larger than its Jewish population but well below the London average Muslim population of rather above 12%. Otherwise, the religious profile of Chipping Barnet is not very different to that of London as a whole.
Turning back to the political history of the constituency, the first Barnet Council elections in 1964 were fought on a provisional set of ward boundaries based on the wards of the previous councils, adjusted where necessary to ensure very roughly the same number of voters per councillor. The division of the Borough of Barnet into 20 three-member wards, four of which were entirely in the Barnet constituency and a fifth partly so, which was created for the 1968 elections survived with only a few minor boundary revisions for the next 30 or so years, and was the basis used for both Chipping Barnet's 1974 boundaries (containing the five already-mentioned wards, as one of four constituencies) and the 1997 revision (adding a sixth ward, as one of three constituencies - the other two constituencies in Barnet had seven wards each). The current 21 three-member wards for the borough were first used in 2002, and Chipping Barnet's current boundaries, created for the 2010 general election, include seven wards. A further ward boundary review has recently been conducted which, assuming the LGBCE recommendations are implemented, will result in a greatly changed ward map, with a mixture of two- and three-member wards, being used for the 2022 borough elections.
In 1964, the 12 single-member wards within the then Barnet constituency elected 7 Conservative and 5 Labour councillors. In the next seven council elections, now using three-member wards, the Conservatives invariably did better and Labour worse than this in the five Chipping Barnet wards - the Conservatives held all 15 seats between 1968 and 1971 and between 1982 and 1990, and all but two seats between 1974 and 1982 (with the other seats going one Labour and one independent). In 1971, Labour won four seats, and in 1990 three. However, in both the 1994 and 1998 elections, Labour won six seats in Chipping Barnet (and 19 seats elsewhere in the borough both times, allowing a Labour minority administration). Friern Barnet ward, which came into the constituency in 1997, had always been (and remained) a Conservative ward. Despite the change to the current ward boundaries in 2002, the ten years after 2002 seemed, but were not quite, a reversion to the pre-1994 situation. In 2002, the Conservatives once more took all but one of the now 18 seats in the wards totally or predominantly within Chipping Barnet and, with the exception of a seat won in a 2005 by-election by a Liberal Democrat and retained by him in 2006 but not 2010, held onto them in 2006 and 2010. However, the Labour-leaning Coppetts ward, about a third in Chipping Barnet since 2002 came fully into Chipping Barnet with the 2010 constituency boundary revision, and Labour won a by-election in Brunswick Park ward in 2012. This was followed, in the 2014 council elections, with Labour winning 11 seats (several, it should be said, on very narrow margins) to the Conservatives' 10 - and even though two of these reverted to the Conservatives in 2018, this still leaves the political situation in the constituency very close to what it was at the New Labour peak in the late 1990s, in distinct contrast to the national situation.
Looking at the current wards in detail, starting with the original core of the constituency:
On the Hertfordshire edge of the constituency, High Barnet ward occupies the high ground on the northern edge of the constituency, together with an area to the east and south-east, containing a number of mostly small tributaries of Pymmes Brook (though not Pymmes Brook itself), bounded on the east by the East Coast Main Line. The south-eastern corner of the ward is in the centre of New Barnet, about 200 metres north of New Barnet station. The Green Belt along the ward's northern border contains some of the most seriously expensive housing in the constituency (matched only by Totteridge), at Arkley in the west and Monken Hadley, just north of High Barnet on the A1000. However, the original area of the town of High Barnet, while generally prosperous, is far more variable in its level of wealth; and a number of originally sumptuous houses in the New Barnet part of the ward have either been converted into flats or demolished and replaced by blocks of flats. Generally, to all appearances a safe Conservative ward which has always elected at least two Conservative councillors, the third seat has sometimes produced surprising results - between 2005 and 2010, it was held by a Liberal Democrat, and Labour came only two votes short of capturing a council seat here in 2018. In this, it is continuing the record of its main predecessor ward, Hadley, which had an independent councillor (and two Conservatives) between 1974 and 1982.
Underhill ward occupies the area south of High Barnet ward and west of Barnet Hill, sloping down to Dollis Brook, its southern boundary. While much of the ward, particularly close to High Barnet ward, contains clearly middle-class housing giving the impression of being solidly Conservative, there is also a lot of ex-council and social housing in areas down towards Dollis Brook. Over the long term, this ward and its main predecessor, Arkley, have been fairly evenly marginal - Underhill fully Labour since 2014 and split two Conservative to one Labour between 2002 and 2014, Arkley fully Labour from 1971 to 1974 and 1990 to 2002, fully Conservative from 1968 to 1971 and 1982 to 1990, and split two Conservative to one Labour from 1974 to 1982. With the exception of Coppetts ward, though, this has still made the ward by some distance the most Labour-leaning in Chipping Barnet - to the extent that other Chipping Barnet wards have only elected any Labour councillors in elections where Underhill has elected a full Labour slate.
East Barnet and Brunswick Park wards occupy the area to the east of the East Coast Main Line. The two wards very much have a shared history, even if it has sometimes produced rather differing results. Both wards were historically part of Hertfordshire, and it is quite possible that East Barnet was the original Barnet - certainly Saint Mary's Church, East Barnet (which seems to have shuttled between the two wards - at the moment, it is just inside Brunswick Park) is about three hundred years older than Saint John's Church, High Barnet. Before the 1930s, East Barnet ward contained the great majority of of the area's population, including the eastern half of New Barnet. While the eastern half of New Barnet developed at the same time as New Barnet's western half, there were definite differences. The western half of Victorian New Barnet was dominated by large, distinctly middle class housing - but the eastern half had most of the light industrial development and terrace housing built for working people. And the same applied to the new Edwardian hamlet of Brunswick Park, between the railway line and the Great North London Cemetery. Then, in the 1930s, the building boom consequent on the opening of the Piccadilly Line covered the rest of Brunswick Park ward and much of the remaining unbuilt areas of East Barnet ward with housing for the middle classes. Though East Barnet got a couple of council housing estates, while Brunswick Park didn't. The political consequence in the late 20th century was that while both wards usually elected Conservative councillors, East Barnet elected one Labour councillor in 1971 and three in 1994. Then in 1998, the Conservatives regained one of the three East Barnet seats but a Labour councillor was elected for the first time in Brunswick Park. The Conservatives regained all council seats in both wards in 2002, and held onto them in 2006 and 2010. But in a 2012 by-election, Labour again won a council seat in Brunswick Park, which has remained consistently split since then - two out of three Labour in 2014, two out of three Conservative in 2018. East Barnet, meanwhile, went fully Labour in 2014 but the Conservatives regained just one seat in 2018.
Totteridge ward, to the south and west of Dollis Brook, is named after the ex-Hertfordshire (and distinctly wealthy) village of Totteridge, but in terms of population, this and its surrounding Green Belt are rather sparsely inhabited. A post-war extension to Woodside Park had extended it across Dollis Brook (and thus within the existing electoral boundaries of Totteridge) and the terms of the pre-1968 ware boundary review required a ward to cross the former county boundary - so parts of Whetstone and most of Woodside Park (amounting to a smaller area but larger population than the Totteridge part of the ward) were included, and came into Chipping Barnet when the constituency was created in 1974. Totteridge has been the most solidly Conservative ward in Chipping Barnet ever since. Totteridge is also the ward with, at about 16%, by some distance the highest Jewish population in Chipping Barnet.
Oakleigh ward was created in the pre-2002 ward boundary review, and did not correspond strongly to any previous ward. The new ward was almost entirely in Chipping Barnet, but rather over a third of it had previously been in Hadley, one of the original Chipping Barnet wards, while most of the rest had been in Friern Barnet ward, which had only been added to Chipping Barnet in 1997, having previously been part of Finchley constituency. The northern end of Oakleigh ward corresponds to the south-western quarter of New Barnet and, with its mixture of large Victorian houses and replacement blocks of flats (and offices) is similar to the part of High Barnet ward immediately to its north. In this, it is not very different to Oakleigh Park, in the eastern half of the middle third of the ward - and most of the rest of the ward, like much of the constituency, consists of detached and semi-detached houses built between the 1920s and 1950s. Since its creation, Oakleigh ward has consistently voted Conservative, though by lesser margins than Totteridge - and so far as one can judge from available information, that is simply a continuation of the area's previous voting pattern.
Coppetts ward, also created in the pre-2002 ward boundary review, did not correspond strongly to any previous ward either. Until 2010, it was mostly in Finchley and Golders Green constituency, with only the northern third, from Friern Barnet Road northwards, in Chipping Barnet. Since 2010, the entire ward has been in Chipping Barnet. The ward roughly coincides with the southern two-thirds of the former Friern Barnet Urban District. Friern Barnet itself occupies a low east-west ridge in the north of the ward. The rest of the ward stretches south along Colney Hatch Lane, across the valley of Bounds Green Brook, a tributary of Pymmes Brook (and the closely parallel North Circular Road) towards Muswell Hill. Until the 1990s, most of the middle third of the ward, between Friern Barnet and the North Circular, was occupied by
So far as the suggested wards for 2022 are concerned, East Barnet and Brunswick Park remain almost unchanged, and the differences between the current Coppetts ward and the new Friern Barnet ward are in practice fairly small. The new High Barnet and Underhill wards are both smaller than their current namesakes, each with two councillors rather than three; and some territory at the western end of Underhill transfers to High Barnet. High Barnet ward loses its southeastern end, towards New Barnet, and Underhill some of its eastern edge to a new three-councillor Barnet Vale ward which also contains the northern part of the current Oakleigh ward. The rest of the new Oakleigh ward, together with the Whetstone part of the current Totteridge ward become a two-member Whetstone ward. The rest of Totteridge ward incorporates a major new development from Mill Hill ward in Hendon constituency, and is renamed Totteridge and Woodside.
Finally, it is mildly interesting to speculate about the possible results of general elections from before 2010 if held on the current constituency boundaries. The inclusion into Chipping Barnet of the parts of Coppetts ward previously in Finchley and Golders Green have almost certainly moved Chipping Barnet in a Labour direction, but Coppetts ward, while Labour-leaning, is not particularly strongly so. It looks more likely than not that the effect would have changed the result in 1997 from a distinctly marginal Conservative win to an equally marginal Labour one; and possible, though little more, also in 2001. There is little if any chance that it could have changed any other election result of recent decades.
