Manchester Central

[Devil Wincarnate]

As a complete aside. Although it technically is in Gorton, City's home prior to Maine Road was Hyde Road. The site is now a container freight yard next to the railway as you go into Manchester from the South. However, no building has ever been built on the site since the ground was demolished, so you can still roughly work out where the pitch would have been.

[Devil Wincarnate]

A good summary there anyway. Two things that might be of use:
- the redevelopment of Hulme was a major factor in the future constituencies elsewhere in the area. People from Hulme tended to flee down the A56 and Princess Parkway and ended up in Stretford, Urmston, Sale etc. Manchester also had two major commercial centres after a fashion- the current one, and a second leading down Stretford Road and meeting Oxford Road at All Saints. When this was torn up, it caused said exodus, but also condemned the area to economic decline as it destroyed an awful lot of jobs.

[finsobruce]

Apr 19, 2020 22:25:21 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

As a complete aside. Although it technically is in Gorton, City's home prior to Maine Road was Hyde Road. The site is now a container freight yard next to the railway as you go into Manchester from the South. However, no building has ever been built on the site since the ground was demolished, so you can still roughly work out where the pitch would have been.

Just like the centre circle of Renton's old ground, in someone's garden, sometimes visited by Norwegian Liverpool fans.

[bsjmcr]

This seat has also had the dubious distinction of lowest turnout in the UK on several occasions, the 2010 election and the 2012 by-election was a record low apparently, at 18.2% - notably, the Conservative managed to lose their deposit on that occasion. The student turnout has thankfully increased in recent years, pulling turnout into the mid 50's and in 2019 handed over the lowest-turnout-in-Manchester baton to neighbouring Blackley and Broughton, and it is now Hull that is home to the lowest turnout nationally.

[Robert Waller]

As will be seen from the below, this is an interesting and unusual constituency.
If someone would be energetic and kind enough to replace the original profile, I am sure it would be much appreciated.

2011 Census

Age 65+ 7.6% 639/650
Owner-occupied 27.1% 642/650
Private rented 34.6% 10/650
Social rented 35.9% 22/650
White 62.6% 598/650
Black 14.1% 30/650
Asian 14.6% 77/650
Managerial & professional 21.5%
Routine & Semi-routine 21.5%
Degree level 29.7% 193/650
No qualifications 21.4% 385/650
Students 29.1% 6/650


2021 Census

Owner occupied 28.3% 564/573
Private rented 49.7% 4/573
Social rented 31.1% 27/573
White 53.9%
Black 17.8%
Asian 16.4%
Managerial & professional 27.2% 436/573
Routine & Semi-routine 20.0% 421/573
Degree level 41.5% 87/573 very high rise since 2011
No qualifications 17.0% 335/573
Students 23.8% 11/573




General Election 2019: Manchester Central

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Labour Co-op Lucy Powell 36,823 70.4 -7.0
Conservative Shaden Jaradat 7,734 14.8 +0.6
Liberal Democrats John Bridges 3,420 6.5 +3.1
Brexit Party Sarah Chadwick 2,335 4.5 New
Green Melanie Horrocks 1,870 3.6 +1.9
Socialist Equality Dennis Leech 107 0.2 New

Lab Majority 29,089 55.6 -7.6

Electorate 94,247

Turnout 52,289 56.9 +1.8

Labour Co-op hold

Swing 3.8 Lab to C

[greenhert]

Apr 20, 2020 22:17:48 GMT bsjmcr said:

This seat has also had the dubious distinction of lowest turnout in the UK on several occasions, the 2010 election and the 2012 by-election was a record low apparently, at 18.2% - notably, the Conservative managed to lose their deposit on that occasion. The student turnout has thankfully increased in recent years, pulling turnout into the mid 50's and in 2019 handed over the lowest-turnout-in-Manchester baton to neighbouring Blackley and Broughton, and it is now Hull that is home to the lowest turnout nationally.

This is primarily due to the low rates of owner-occupation and high proportion of students in Manchester Central, in addition to areas of significant deprivation. See also Leeds Central.

[owainsutton]

Apr 15, 2021 22:20:19 GMT greenhert said:

Apr 20, 2020 22:17:48 GMT bsjmcr said:

This seat has also had the dubious distinction of lowest turnout in the UK on several occasions, the 2010 election and the 2012 by-election was a record low apparently, at 18.2% - notably, the Conservative managed to lose their deposit on that occasion. The student turnout has thankfully increased in recent years, pulling turnout into the mid 50's and in 2019 handed over the lowest-turnout-in-Manchester baton to neighbouring Blackley and Broughton, and it is now Hull that is home to the lowest turnout nationally.

This is primarily due to the low rates of owner-occupation and high proportion of students in Manchester Central, in addition to areas of significant deprivation. See also Leeds Central.

I'm not convinced that's a solid explanation as the primary cause: both those cohorts are less likely to be on the electoral register in the first place?

[greenhert]

Apr 16, 2021 11:15:03 GMT owainsutton said:

Apr 15, 2021 22:20:19 GMT greenhert said:

This is primarily due to the low rates of owner-occupation and high proportion of students in Manchester Central, in addition to areas of significant deprivation. See also Leeds Central.

I'm not convinced that's a solid explanation as the primary cause: both those cohorts are less likely to be on the electoral register in the first place?

Yes, although a lot of people get registered because it helps their credit rating, even if they have no interest in voting.

[owainsutton]

Good point!

[batman]

Manchester Central, whether uniquely or not I am unable to say, is in fact not the only constituency so named, since there is also a Manchester Central constituency in the Jamaican parliament, and that too is held by the Labour Party - although as many know, rather confusingly in Jamaica the Labour Party is actually much the more conservative of the country's two main parties, the more left-wing being the People's National Party. I propose to write about the English constituency, which I know infinitely better, since I have never been to Jamaica.

There has only been a Manchester Central seat in England since 1974, a contrast with the situation in other major cities such as Edinburgh, Sheffield or Leeds. It was created from the entirety of the former Manchester Cheetham division, and it was that constituency's MP, Harold Lever, who became Manchester Central's inaugural MP; and from a majority of the former Manchester Exchange constituency. Since then, the constituency has grown considerably in electorate, but it has been a safe Labour seat throughout its history as Manchester Central. Its predecessors were safe Labour seats since WWII as well. It is not that hard to see why. Although Manchester's city centre has some desirable owner-occupied flats and houses, some being conversions of previously industrial buildings, it is surrounded by inner city deprivation, and some of the very poorest parts of Greater Manchester are to be found in this seat. The city centre is very unusual in being contiguous with a completely separate municipality, the city of Salford, whose traditional centre has some almost desolate areas not far from Manchester's gleaming and apparently thriving centre. The River Irwell forms the boundary between the two cities. Since Cheetham departed the constituency in 1997 and is now in Blackley & Broughton, this constituency now only contains areas any distance from the city centre in an easterly and a southerly direction. This is not only a mostly deprived and very working-class seat, it is also extremely multi-ethnic, with large Asian (mostly Muslim and of Pakistani heritage) and Black Caribbean communities, though there are plenty of other ethnic minorities represented.

The city centre itself is divided between two council wards, Deansgate and Piccadilly, although both contain other elements too. Although these wards contain the most expensive and perhaps in many people's eyes desirable residential properties, Labour is not negligible anywhere, and prevails in both wards - the Conservatives these days are weak almost throughout the city of Manchester itself, and cannot really aspire to win any of its wards despite sporadic efforts to take one ward, Brooklands, well to the south-west of here, and it is mainly the Greens and the Liberal Democrats who provide the bulk of what opposition there is in most wards, mostly the Liberal Democrats, although in some wards the Conservatives have at least managed to stay in second place. Many Conservatives without doubt commute to this constituency to work, but few live here. The old City Centre ward saw some rather narrow Labour majorities over the Liberal Democrats in the past, but just as has been the case in much of Britain the Lib Dems lost a great deal of ground in the city when they went into coalition with the Conservatives, a party few Mancunians wish to vote for, and now the city centre wards are at worst comfortable enough for Labour, at best very solid - Labour won very easily in Piccadilly ward in the 2021 local elections, for example.

To the east of the city centre, there has been considerable redevelopment, not least the construction of the City of Manchester Stadium, nowadays Manchester City's home ground. The redevelopment has done little to change electoral politics in what remains an overwhelmingly working-class area. In either a due easterly, south-easterly or north-easterly direction from the city centre can be found Clayton and Openshaw, Miles Platting and Newton Heath, Moston, and Ancoats and Beswick. Moston used to be in the Manchester Blackley constituency and was once a relatively middle-class and Conservative area; it sees the only coherent Conservative vote in this constituency, but Labour still wins it easily enough. Clayton and Openshaw like Moston is a mostly white working-class area. It has seen the only instance of Labour losing an election in recent years; an Independent very narrowly gained the seat from Labour in a by-election, only to behave in an extremely erratic fashion, refusing to recognise Manchester Council as a legitimate local authority, and attempting to invoice shops and other businesses he visited for large amounts of money if they insisted he wear a mask. He has now departed the scene and Labour easily won the by-election (concurrent with the 2021 main local elections) caused by his resignation (he never actually used the word resign, leaving it up to the city's Chief Executive to deem him to have done so). The other wards named are overwhelmingly Labour at all levels, although Ancoats, once one of the most grindingly poor areas of any British city, has seen some executive dwellings spring up in recent years. Ancoats saw a rare Liberal Democrat by-election win in the run-up to the 2022 main elections, but Labour once again won it in those elections in May. Ardwick, immediately south-east of the city centre, is also a perennial Labour stronghold area, which gave its name to a constituency until 1974, as did Openshaw; before 1950, there were also Clayton and Platting constituencies in the city. It may not come as much of a surprise to note that all these were safe Labour seats at the time of their abolition, too.

The seat is completed by the wards of Hulme, Fallowfield (though only part of it), Whalley Range (again, only part of it)  and Moss Side. Not all of these wards have always seen Labour totally unchallenged. Whalley Range still has some fine older houses in fair numbers. Although it has at times had a reputation as a red-light district, in fact it was one of the last city wards to elect Conservative councillors, still being able to do so up to and including the 1980s. Nowadays, that seems hard to believe, as the Conservative vote has melted down and the Greens, in an area with fair numbers of students and other younger voters, now have a clear second place, albeit well behind (wait for it) Labour. Hulme, as well as being an area with some very deprived council estates, is a ward noted for a very large student electorate, including many from the University of Manchester, and its boundaries take in other areas neighbouring to Hulme itself. When Labour was associated with policies unpopular with such voters, most obviously military action in Iraq, there were brief periods of success for the Green Party - but they were brief, and Labour took little time to strike back. The Greens even lost second place to the Lib Dems in the ward for a time, but have reestablished themselves at least in second, although even further behind Labour than they are in Whalley Range. Fallowfield, further out, is a long-term Labour stronghold although there are some more middle-class areas immediately to the south of its ward boundary - though that part of the ward is in neighbouring Manchester Gorton. Moss Side, yet another ward which once gave its name to another constituency, was, almost incredibly, capable of electing Conservative councillors within many people's living memory, but has been Labour for over 70 years now as a ward (the eponymous constituency, though, contained the once Conservative-voting Chorlton area, and was never a completely safe Labour seat, indeed it was Conservative unbrokenly for over two decades). It is known for deprivation and social problems in its council estates, though there are owner-occupied areas in Moss Side too. It is traditionally regarded as the main centre of Manchester's Black community, although there are many other city wards which also have a sizeable Black community. Moss Side is, even by Manchester's exalted standards, a very safe Labour ward indeed.

This is therefore a seat which, perhaps a little similarly to Leeds Central, can be seen as a seat with a bustling, prosperous and at times very attractive city centre, with serious deprivation in its surrounding areas, whether they be included in this constituency or not. The bulk of its population now lives outside the city centre itself, but Labour wins everywhere, and generally by very wide margins. While in their highest water-mark period the Liberal Democrats were fairly competitive in several wards, they struggled to gain a foothold as they did in neighbouring Gorton and in Withington; the tide for them has now receded, and they have now lost all but a small sprinkling of their council seats in the entire city. In both the last two elections Lucy Powell, first elected here in 2012 in a by-election notorious for its appallingly low turnout, has achieved more than 70% of the vote for the Labour Party, and the only contest of interest is likely to remain that for the distinction of achieving second place, no matter how boundary changes may alter the seat in the future.

[batman]

I haven't been to this constituency for a time, but expect to be there at least a couple of times next year for different reasons. I am particularly keen to try the Lower Turk's Head pub on Shude Hill, acquired and rescued from oblivion by Joseph Holts. And a visit to Chinatown (which I failed to mention in the profile) is surely de rigueur.

[owainsutton]

Nov 21, 2021 20:49:12 GMT batman said:

While in their highest water-mark period the Liberal Democrats were fairly competitive in several wards, they struggled to gain a foothold as they did in neighbouring Gorton and in Withington; the tide for them has now receded, and they have now lost all but two of their council seats in the entire city.

After this May's election, they're back down to just a single seat.

[batman]

yes of course, silly of me. Will correct.

[batman]

I've edited the profile slightly since only a part of Fallowfield ward is in this constituency, and I'm given to understand those bits are more Moss Side-ish than Fallowfield proper.

[Pete Whitehead]

Manchester Central is majorly reconfigured in the proposed boundary changes with the area South of the city centre (some 36,000 voters in Ardwick, Hulme and Moss Side) forming part of the new Manchester Rusholme.
The core of the seat and the majority of its voters survives in trhe City Centre (Deansgate and Piccadlilly wards) with Ancoats & Beswick, Clayton & Openshaw, Miles Platting & Newton Heath (quite a few former constituency names there) and Cheetham (another) added from Blackley & Broughton. Cheetham is quite as strongly Labour as the departing wards, but anomalously the Failsworth wards of Oldham are added and this will lift the Conservative vote above the derisory.

2019 Notional results

Lab	26611	64.6%
Con	8283	20.1%
LD	2890	7.0%
BxP	2146	5.2%
Grn	1233	3.0%
Oth	49	0.1%
Majority	18328	44.5%

[batman]

that is seriously anomalous, I doubt that many residents of Failsworth will regard themselves as living in central Manchester.

I shall rewrite my profile to take these proposed changes into account, thanks Pete.

[john07]

Regarding the comment about Whalley Range Ward. I recall some data when working in Moss Side in the February 1974 General Election. We were canvassing in Hulme Ward and went back to Hulme Labour Club in a very confident mood. That was until we were shown the canvass returns for the Chorlton and Alexandra Wards, which were overwhelmingly Conservative.

In the event, the votes from Hulme along with Lloyd Street and Moss Side Wards won the day for Frank Hatton and Labour. By the time of the 1982 local elections, Alexandra Ward (on new boundaries) was renamed as Whalley Range. This was much to the disgust of the local Tories who complained that Whalley Range was seen as a 'Red Light' area.

Within five years, both Chorlton and Whalley Range flipped to Labour and have largely remained so, since then, despite some gains by the Liberal Democrats in the 2000s.

[batman]

MANCHESTER CENTRAL - New version in the light of proposed boundary changes


Manchester Central, whether uniquely or not I am unable to say, is in fact not the only constituency so named, since there is also a Manchester Central constituency in the Jamaican parliament, and that too is held by the Labour Party - although as many know, rather confusingly in Jamaica the Labour Party is actually much the more conservative of the country's two main parties, the more left-wing being the People's National Party. I propose to write about the English constituency, which I know infinitely better, since I have never been to Jamaica.

There has only been a Manchester Central seat in England since 1974, a contrast with the situation in other major cities such as Edinburgh, Sheffield or Leeds. It was created from the entirety of the former Manchester Cheetham division, and it was that constituency's MP, Harold Lever, who became Manchester Central's inaugural MP; and from a majority of the former Manchester Exchange constituency. Since then, the constituency has grown considerably in electorate, but it has been a safe Labour seat throughout its history as Manchester Central. Its predecessors were safe Labour seats since WWII as well. It is not that hard to see why. Although Manchester's city centre has some desirable owner-occupied flats and houses, some being conversions of previously industrial buildings, it is surrounded by inner city deprivation, and some of the very poorest parts of Greater Manchester are to be found in this seat. The city centre is very unusual in being contiguous with a completely separate municipality, the city of Salford, whose traditional centre has some almost desolate areas not far from Manchester's gleaming and apparently thriving centre. The River Irwell forms the boundary between the two cities. Cheetham departed the constituency in 1997 and up to now has been in Blackley & Broughton, meaning that this constituency has only contained areas any distance from the city centre in an easterly and a southerly direction; however, in the proposed boundary changes almost the entirety of the section of the seat south-west of the city centre itself departs to help form a new Manchester Rusholme constituency, and Cheetham is to be restored to it. Therefore, this seat while including the city centre itself might just as easily be renamed Manchester North-East, especially as one of the areas which are now to be included, Failsworth, is not only some distance away from the city centre, it is not even in the city of Manchester. However, whatever its boundaries have been, this is for the most part a mostly deprived and very working-class seat. It is also notably multiethnic with most BAME voters tending to be of Pakistani heritage, particularly in Cheetham, which was once a working-class Jewish area but no longer has a Jewish population, although its Jewish Museum, housed in a former Sephardi synagogue on Cheetham Hill, continues to thrive. Cheetham is one of a remarkably large number of areas in this proposed new constituency which has in the past given its name to a constituency of its own.

To the east of the city centre, there has been considerable redevelopment, not least the construction of the City of Manchester Stadium, nowadays Manchester City's home ground. The redevelopment has done little to change electoral politics in what remains an overwhelmingly working-class area. In either a due easterly, south-easterly or north-easterly direction from the city centre can be found Clayton and Openshaw, Miles Platting and Newton Heath (the latter being the former name and location of what is now Manchester United), and Ancoats and Beswick. Clayton and Openshaw is a mostly white working-class area. It has seen a rare instance of Labour losing an election in recent years; an Independent very narrowly gained the seat from Labour in a by-election, only to behave in an extremely erratic fashion, refusing to recognise Manchester Council as a legitimate local authority, and attempting to invoice shops and other businesses he visited for large amounts of money if they insisted he wear a mask. He has now departed the scene and Labour easily won the by-election (concurrent with the 2021 main local elections) caused by his resignation (he never actually used the word resign, leaving it up to the city's Chief Executive to deem him to have done so). The other wards named are overwhelmingly Labour at all levels, although Ancoats, once one of the most grindingly poor areas of any British city, has seen some executive dwellings spring up in recent years. Ancoats saw a rare Liberal Democrat by-election win in the run-up to the 2022 main elections, but Labour once again won it in those elections in May. Openshaw previously gave its name to a parliamentary constituency, and  before 1950, there were also Clayton and Platting constituencies in the city. It may not come as much of a surprise to note that all these were safe Labour seats at the time of their abolition, too.

The city centre itself is divided between two council wards, Deansgate and Piccadilly, although both contain other elements too. Although these wards contain the most expensive and perhaps in many people's eyes desirable residential properties, Labour is not negligible anywhere, and prevails in both wards - the Conservatives these days are weak almost throughout the city of Manchester itself, and cannot really aspire to win any of its wards despite sporadic efforts to take one ward, Brooklands, well to the south-west of here, and it is mainly the Greens and the Liberal Democrats who provide the bulk of what opposition there is in most wards, mostly the Liberal Democrats, although in some wards the Conservatives have at least managed to stay in second place. Many Conservatives without doubt commute to this constituency to work, but few live here. The old City Centre ward saw some rather narrow Labour majorities over the Liberal Democrats in the past, but just as has been the case in much of Britain the Lib Dems lost a great deal of ground in the city when they went into coalition with the Conservatives, a party few Mancunians wish to vote for, and now the city centre wards are at worst comfortable enough for Labour, at best very solid - Labour won very easily in Piccadilly ward in the 2021 local elections, for example.

The most obviously anomalous area of the new constituency will be Failsworth, which has the unusual distinction of never having given its name to a previous constituency, one might say for this seat. Failsworth, unlike the whole of the rest of the constituency, is not in the city of Manchester at all, and never has been, but instead is in the Borough of Oldham; however, between 1955 and 1983 it was included in the then Manchester Openshaw constituency. Failsworth has a mostly fairly working-class social composition, and is certainly not a favoured location for prosperous Manchester city commuters, but it does have a fair number of better-off semi-detached streets, which are largely absent from much of the rest of the constituency. In days gone by, the Tories would have been competitive in Failsworth in very bad Labour years; for example, in 2008, which was a pretty shaky mid-term election for the Labour government, the Tories actually managed to win both Failsworth wards. But in a normal or near-normal year Labour will still be quite some way ahead in Failsworth. In more recent years its wards have been won not by either Labour or the Conservatives, but by a local independent party - indeed, the Tories did not even stand there in last year's elections. In a general election it is fair to assume that there will remain a fairly coherent Conservative vote in the area, but it would be surprising indeed if they managed to outpoll Labour there. The addition of Failsworth (which may well prove puzzling to some local residents) may somewhat improve the profile of the Tories in the constituency, but it will not be anything like sufficient to end the long-term safe Labour alignment of Manchester Central as a parliamentary constituency.

[Pete Whitehead]

A couple of corrections though. Moston, though included in the current Manchester Central seat (slightly anomalously one might say), is under the revised proposals to be included in the reconstituted Manchester Blackely seat.
Also Failsworth was indeed part of the old Manchester Openshaw constituency (all of which will now be in this constituency I think) from 1955 to 1983.

[batman]

thanks Pete, wondered where Failsworth was in that period......will edit tomorrow to take those things into account.