Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2020 23:21:17 GMT
Luton South
Luton South covers the southern half and most of the centre of Bedfordshire’s largest town and a sliver of rural area sandwiched between Luton and the Hertfordshire border. This seat is rather different in character to the other Bedfordshire seats, being more urban, more deprived and less commuter-oriented than the other seats (Luton North aside). It also has an unusual distinction of having a station called Parkway both named after the town and within its boundaries.
Luton has been inhabited since the Palaeolithic era, although the town as it is today is actually not as old as neighbouring Dunstable. The industrial heritage of the town goes back a long way, and in the middle ages there were at least six water mills within Luton. Luton, like most of Bedfordshire, was strongly parliamentarian during the English Civil War and was attacked by royalist forces twice. The hatmaking industry arrived in the town in the 17th century. Within 100 years, the industry had become synonymous with the town: the local football club are still nicknamed The Hatters and the industry still continues, albeit on a smaller scale. Between 1800 and 1900, population of the town grew from 3,095 to around 39,000, driven by the hatmaking industry and rail links to London and nearby towns like Tring and Hitchin. In 1905, Vauxhall Motors opened what was then the largest car plant in the country in Luton and in 1914 it was joined by an aircraft manufacturing plant in the suburb of Leagrave. In addition, there was manufacturing industry in nearby Dunstable, and in and around Houghton Regis a little way to the North and West of Luton. The car plant closed in 2002 and like much of Britain most of the industry in the town and the surrounding area has disappeared. Post war slum clearance led to the building of a lot of new council housing in the town. Although most of this was in Luton North, although there were large pockets built in this constituency, in Stopsley on its north eastern edge and Farley in the south west of the town. Much of the Stopsley housing is no longer council housing, although Farley ward still has the highest number and proportion of council housing in the constituency at 1,071 households or 23.76% of those in the ward.
This is the most deprived constituency in Bedfordshire and the 131st most deprived in England as of 2019. This does not tell the full story of deprivation in the constituency, which contains LSOAs in all but the richest decile in England. Although it performs better than its overall ranking on income, employment and health deprivation, the seat ranks 41 in England in barriers to housing and services. On top of this, the constituency is younger than the national average – 43 years compared to 48.3, and has a lower than average proportion of inhabitants in social classes ABC1 – 46% compared to 54%.
It also has a very working-class profile in terms of occupations. The job market here is dominated by low-paid jobs, and despite the ease of travelling to London, there are a limited number of commuters, in stark contrast to the rest of the county. The top three categories, basically professional, managerial, and technical jobs, employ just 35% of the workforce in the seat compared to 47.4% nationally while the lowest two categories, essentially manual labourers – employ almost double the national average, 30.1% compared to 16.4%. Over-represented industries include manufacturing (10.4% compared to 8.1% nationally; transport and storage (10.3% to 4.8%); and administrative and support services (22.1% to 9.1%) while human health and social work is significantly under-represented (6.6% to 13.2%). In addition, the unemployment rate stands at 5.2% compared to just 3.9% nationally: interestingly, there is a significant gender disparity with 7.9% of women unemployed and no figure available for men thanks to the small sample size used in the research. Finally, 13.8% of the population has no qualifications compared to 7.8% nationally.
There is also a large ethnic and national minority population in the seat. Just 67% of its population was born in the UK compared to 87% nationally. British Asians form a majority of the population in Biscot and Dallow wards at 68% and 67% respectively: overall, they make up 29% of the seat’s population. The town has a reputation for having a far-right presence. Although it would be unfair to say that the far-right were popular in the town, they are more so here than in many other places, although thankfully genuinely far-right groups remain very unpopular nationwide. The far-right English Defence League were founded in the town.
Given its economic and demographic profile, you might expect this to be a historically Labour seat that was drifting away from the party at high speed: if it was located north of Birmingham, it might well be. However, from its creation in 1983 until 2010, it was a bellwether seat always represented by the largest party in the House of Commons. The same was true of its predecessor seats, Luton East and Luton West, and mostly true of their predecessor Luton aside from a year between the 1963 by-election and the 1964 general election. The large Muslim population helped the LibDems in the mid to late 2000s in response to the Iraq war. In 2003 they came close to seizing overall control of the council and ran a minority administration for a while. In 2005, and the hit 22.6% of the vote. Incumbent Labour MP Margaret Moran was heavily implicated in the expenses scandal, causing her to stand down and Esther Rantzen to run an independent campaign in 2010. However, a below-average increase for both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats allowed Gavin Shuker to win the seat by 2,329 votes or 5.5%. He held it on a 5.3% Conservative to Labour swing in 2015 and then hit 62.4% of the vote in 2017 after a massive 18.2% increase in the Labour vote. Shuker was one of the founder members of ChangeUK and ran with no description in 2019, holding his deposit with a creditable 9.3% with LibDem backing. Despite a larger than average swing against the party, Labour held the seat with an 8,756 vote or 20.7% majority. The current MP is Rachel Hopkins, whose father Kelvin was MP for Luton North from 1997 to 2019.
The only Conservative councillors in the seat represent Caddington ward, which is not in Luton and only slightly over half of which is in the constituency. The LibDems have all the councillors in Stopsley, Wigmore and Crawley wards around the eastern edge of the seat in the areas of lower deprivation, and one of the three in Round Green ward. These areas are where the Tories do better at general elections, while Labour dominate the ethnic minority and more deprived wards in the central and west of the seat.
The future of this seat will depend quite heavily on boundary reviews. Both constituencies are undersized but Luton is much too large for one seat so it will be necessary to add rural – and deeply Tory wards – from neighbouring seats. Overall, this is a former bellwether seat that has drifted leftwards and is now in fairly safe Labour territory. Although the Conservatives can never be ruled out here and they will always have a sizeable core vote in the more suburban areas an any rural areas added in future boundary reviews, it is quite hard to see anybody beating Labour here in the near future.
Luton South covers the southern half and most of the centre of Bedfordshire’s largest town and a sliver of rural area sandwiched between Luton and the Hertfordshire border. This seat is rather different in character to the other Bedfordshire seats, being more urban, more deprived and less commuter-oriented than the other seats (Luton North aside). It also has an unusual distinction of having a station called Parkway both named after the town and within its boundaries.
Luton has been inhabited since the Palaeolithic era, although the town as it is today is actually not as old as neighbouring Dunstable. The industrial heritage of the town goes back a long way, and in the middle ages there were at least six water mills within Luton. Luton, like most of Bedfordshire, was strongly parliamentarian during the English Civil War and was attacked by royalist forces twice. The hatmaking industry arrived in the town in the 17th century. Within 100 years, the industry had become synonymous with the town: the local football club are still nicknamed The Hatters and the industry still continues, albeit on a smaller scale. Between 1800 and 1900, population of the town grew from 3,095 to around 39,000, driven by the hatmaking industry and rail links to London and nearby towns like Tring and Hitchin. In 1905, Vauxhall Motors opened what was then the largest car plant in the country in Luton and in 1914 it was joined by an aircraft manufacturing plant in the suburb of Leagrave. In addition, there was manufacturing industry in nearby Dunstable, and in and around Houghton Regis a little way to the North and West of Luton. The car plant closed in 2002 and like much of Britain most of the industry in the town and the surrounding area has disappeared. Post war slum clearance led to the building of a lot of new council housing in the town. Although most of this was in Luton North, although there were large pockets built in this constituency, in Stopsley on its north eastern edge and Farley in the south west of the town. Much of the Stopsley housing is no longer council housing, although Farley ward still has the highest number and proportion of council housing in the constituency at 1,071 households or 23.76% of those in the ward.
This is the most deprived constituency in Bedfordshire and the 131st most deprived in England as of 2019. This does not tell the full story of deprivation in the constituency, which contains LSOAs in all but the richest decile in England. Although it performs better than its overall ranking on income, employment and health deprivation, the seat ranks 41 in England in barriers to housing and services. On top of this, the constituency is younger than the national average – 43 years compared to 48.3, and has a lower than average proportion of inhabitants in social classes ABC1 – 46% compared to 54%.
It also has a very working-class profile in terms of occupations. The job market here is dominated by low-paid jobs, and despite the ease of travelling to London, there are a limited number of commuters, in stark contrast to the rest of the county. The top three categories, basically professional, managerial, and technical jobs, employ just 35% of the workforce in the seat compared to 47.4% nationally while the lowest two categories, essentially manual labourers – employ almost double the national average, 30.1% compared to 16.4%. Over-represented industries include manufacturing (10.4% compared to 8.1% nationally; transport and storage (10.3% to 4.8%); and administrative and support services (22.1% to 9.1%) while human health and social work is significantly under-represented (6.6% to 13.2%). In addition, the unemployment rate stands at 5.2% compared to just 3.9% nationally: interestingly, there is a significant gender disparity with 7.9% of women unemployed and no figure available for men thanks to the small sample size used in the research. Finally, 13.8% of the population has no qualifications compared to 7.8% nationally.
There is also a large ethnic and national minority population in the seat. Just 67% of its population was born in the UK compared to 87% nationally. British Asians form a majority of the population in Biscot and Dallow wards at 68% and 67% respectively: overall, they make up 29% of the seat’s population. The town has a reputation for having a far-right presence. Although it would be unfair to say that the far-right were popular in the town, they are more so here than in many other places, although thankfully genuinely far-right groups remain very unpopular nationwide. The far-right English Defence League were founded in the town.
Given its economic and demographic profile, you might expect this to be a historically Labour seat that was drifting away from the party at high speed: if it was located north of Birmingham, it might well be. However, from its creation in 1983 until 2010, it was a bellwether seat always represented by the largest party in the House of Commons. The same was true of its predecessor seats, Luton East and Luton West, and mostly true of their predecessor Luton aside from a year between the 1963 by-election and the 1964 general election. The large Muslim population helped the LibDems in the mid to late 2000s in response to the Iraq war. In 2003 they came close to seizing overall control of the council and ran a minority administration for a while. In 2005, and the hit 22.6% of the vote. Incumbent Labour MP Margaret Moran was heavily implicated in the expenses scandal, causing her to stand down and Esther Rantzen to run an independent campaign in 2010. However, a below-average increase for both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats allowed Gavin Shuker to win the seat by 2,329 votes or 5.5%. He held it on a 5.3% Conservative to Labour swing in 2015 and then hit 62.4% of the vote in 2017 after a massive 18.2% increase in the Labour vote. Shuker was one of the founder members of ChangeUK and ran with no description in 2019, holding his deposit with a creditable 9.3% with LibDem backing. Despite a larger than average swing against the party, Labour held the seat with an 8,756 vote or 20.7% majority. The current MP is Rachel Hopkins, whose father Kelvin was MP for Luton North from 1997 to 2019.
The only Conservative councillors in the seat represent Caddington ward, which is not in Luton and only slightly over half of which is in the constituency. The LibDems have all the councillors in Stopsley, Wigmore and Crawley wards around the eastern edge of the seat in the areas of lower deprivation, and one of the three in Round Green ward. These areas are where the Tories do better at general elections, while Labour dominate the ethnic minority and more deprived wards in the central and west of the seat.
The future of this seat will depend quite heavily on boundary reviews. Both constituencies are undersized but Luton is much too large for one seat so it will be necessary to add rural – and deeply Tory wards – from neighbouring seats. Overall, this is a former bellwether seat that has drifted leftwards and is now in fairly safe Labour territory. Although the Conservatives can never be ruled out here and they will always have a sizeable core vote in the more suburban areas an any rural areas added in future boundary reviews, it is quite hard to see anybody beating Labour here in the near future.
