Post by andrewteale on Apr 20, 2020 22:13:58 GMT
There has been a Bolton West constituency since 1950, when the old two-seat borough of Bolton was divided into two single-member constituencies. However, its boundaries haven't been particularly stable over the years.
Until 1983 the Bolton West seat was entirely within the old Bolton county borough and was a mix of areas, from the affluent suburbs of Heaton, Lostock and Smithills to the millworkers' Coronation Streets of Halliwell and Rumworth. This resulted in a polarised constituency with an unusual electoral history, thanks to an anti-Labour electoral pact between the Conservatives and the Liberals. In the elections from 1951 to 1959 the Liberals didn't contest Bolton East, while the Tories gave the Liberal candidate Arthur Holt a free run against Labour in Bolton West. The pact worked in that Labour were shut out, but broke down in the 1960s. The Conservatives intervened in 1964, Arthur Holt fell to third place with 25%, and Labour gained the seat. The Liberals haven't got anywhere near winning Bolton West since.
From then on Bolton West turned from a Labour-Liberal marginal into a Labour-Tory marginal, which generally voted with the national tide but often had small majorities. The Conservatives gained the seat in 1970, and Tory MP Robert Redmond held on by 603 votes in February 1974 before Labour's Ann Taylor gained Bolton West eight months later by 906 votes. Her majority fell to 600 votes in the 1979 general election which brought Thatcher to power.
THe 1983 redistribution was particularly radical in the towns north of Manchester, with the two seats covering Bolton county borough replaced by three seats covering Bolton metropolitan borough. So far as this affected Bolton West, strongly-Labour (and by now increasingly Pakistani) areas near the town centre were moved into the new seats of Bolton North East and South East, and replaced by the towns of Blackrod, Horwich and Westhoughton which had previously been the major part of the Westhoughton constituency. The result was effectively a new seat, and it was projected to be safely Conservative. Ann Taylor moved (unsuccessfully) to the new Bolton North East, leaving an open seat which was duly picked up by Tory candidate Tom Sackville with a strong majority of over 7,000.
Sackville was run quite close in the 1992 election, finishing with a majority of 1,079 over Labour candidate Clifford Morris, of whom more later. More favourable boundary changes for the 1997 election, which moved Morris' strongly-Labour Halliwell ward into Bolton North East, might have given Sackville some hope of a fourth term had the Major government not made such a complete hash of things; but in the end he was swept away in the Blair landslide by Labour's Ruth Kelly. Kelly was heavily pregnant at the time, and eleven days after the election she had her first child - a boy.
Ruth Kelly climbed the ministerial greasy pole and entered cabinet in December 2004 as education secretary. A few months later, her majority over the Conservatives was cut to 2,064 at the 2005 general election. Kelly by this time was becoming a controversial figure in what is always a high-profile department, and the controversies followed her to two other Cabinet positions. She left the political frontline in 2008, and retired from the Commons in 2010.
THis retirement must have caused some alarm in Labour ranks, as they had to defend a marginal seat where local election results had been patchy at best. In 2004 the Labour Party had won just one council seat in the entire constituency (in Atherton). The party had managed to shore up its Bolton West majority with a boundary review, which moved the divided but generally Conservative Hulton ward out of the seat and replaced it with the town of Atherton, and the party had gained some council seats here over the 2005-10 parliament. The Laour party selected Julie Hilling, an Atherton-based youth worker, to hold the seat against a challenge from Tory candidate Susan Williams, a former leader of Trafford council. In one of the closest results of the 2010 general election, Hilling held Bolton West for Labour with a majority of just 92 votes.
That was the first of three consecutive photofinishes in Bolton West. The Conservatives finally broke though in 2015, Chris Green defeating Hilling by 801 votes; a rematch in 2017 saw his majority increase to 936, and a second rematch in 2019 saw a huge swing to Green who prevailed with a majority of 8,855 over Hilling. It's a result that breaks the mould, as 8,855 is the largest majority in the history of the Bolton West seat. What happened?
This is the point where Cliff Morris needs to come back into the story. Morris became leader of Bolton council following the 2006 elections, at which a minority Lib Dem administration was defeated, and stayed in that role for nearly twelve years as controversy after controversy, scandal after scandal piled up around how Bolton Labour were running the town. The most notorious was probably the Asons Solicitors affair, in which the council's cabinet used emergency powers to give a grant to a firm of personal injury lawyers which subsequently went bust very publicly. (The council did get the money back, just before the administrators swooped in.) However, the last straw as far as this constituency was concerned was probably the proposal to redevelop Hulton Park for housing and as a championship-standard golf course, something which went down like a cup of cold sick in nearby Westhoughton. The 2018 and 2019 local elections saw Labour lose seats in Bolton by the bucketload, including all of the four wards in this constituency which they were defending in 2019. Following that double catastrophe, Bolton is now the only metropolitan borough in the north of England being run by the Conservatives (who are the second-largest group on a hung council).
The seven wards in the current Bolton West are a diverse bunch at local election time. The Conservatives are capable of winning up to three wards here, but their only reliable area is Heaton and Lostock. This is a filthy rich area full of million-pound houses: Heaton and Lostock was one of only a handful of wards in Greater Manchester which did not vote for Andy Burnham in the 2017 mayoral election. The neighbouring Smithills ward, which is the only other part of Bolton proper in the seat, is more mixed but generally middle-class. At local election time it's Bolton's longest-standing Liberal Democrat ward, but this can be overstated: the Lib Dems polled more votes in Smithills at the 2015 local elections than they did in the entire Bolton West constituency at the 2015 general election on the same day.
Of the towns in the seat outside Bolton, Horwich (a former railway centre on the southern slopes of Winter Hill) was a Lib Dem hotspot up until 2010 when Labour started to win the ward. In 2019 the two wards covering Horwich and nearby Blackrod fell to a brand-new localist party, Horwich and Blackrod First. There has been a lot of redevelopment in Horwich in recent years; with large numbers of new houses going up on the former Loco Works site keep an eye out for demographic change here. Westhoughton and Atherton are former coalmining towns (the Pretoria Pit explosion in December 1910 killed more men from Westhoughton than the First World War did). Atherton follows the usual coalfield pattern in local elections of Labour versus Independent, the independents winning there more often than not; but Westhoughton can turn in big Lib Dem scores if Labour are having a bad time. In the 2019 local elections the Liberal Democrats would almost certainly have carried Bolton West if they had found a candidate for Atherton, which is one indicator of how weird Bolton's politics is at the moment.
Despite all this local election weirdness, Chris Green is as stated sitting on a very safe Conservative majority. Unless there are major boundary changes or Labour can somehow find their mojo again in the former coalfields, he would appear to be safe in post for some while yet.
Until 1983 the Bolton West seat was entirely within the old Bolton county borough and was a mix of areas, from the affluent suburbs of Heaton, Lostock and Smithills to the millworkers' Coronation Streets of Halliwell and Rumworth. This resulted in a polarised constituency with an unusual electoral history, thanks to an anti-Labour electoral pact between the Conservatives and the Liberals. In the elections from 1951 to 1959 the Liberals didn't contest Bolton East, while the Tories gave the Liberal candidate Arthur Holt a free run against Labour in Bolton West. The pact worked in that Labour were shut out, but broke down in the 1960s. The Conservatives intervened in 1964, Arthur Holt fell to third place with 25%, and Labour gained the seat. The Liberals haven't got anywhere near winning Bolton West since.
From then on Bolton West turned from a Labour-Liberal marginal into a Labour-Tory marginal, which generally voted with the national tide but often had small majorities. The Conservatives gained the seat in 1970, and Tory MP Robert Redmond held on by 603 votes in February 1974 before Labour's Ann Taylor gained Bolton West eight months later by 906 votes. Her majority fell to 600 votes in the 1979 general election which brought Thatcher to power.
THe 1983 redistribution was particularly radical in the towns north of Manchester, with the two seats covering Bolton county borough replaced by three seats covering Bolton metropolitan borough. So far as this affected Bolton West, strongly-Labour (and by now increasingly Pakistani) areas near the town centre were moved into the new seats of Bolton North East and South East, and replaced by the towns of Blackrod, Horwich and Westhoughton which had previously been the major part of the Westhoughton constituency. The result was effectively a new seat, and it was projected to be safely Conservative. Ann Taylor moved (unsuccessfully) to the new Bolton North East, leaving an open seat which was duly picked up by Tory candidate Tom Sackville with a strong majority of over 7,000.
Sackville was run quite close in the 1992 election, finishing with a majority of 1,079 over Labour candidate Clifford Morris, of whom more later. More favourable boundary changes for the 1997 election, which moved Morris' strongly-Labour Halliwell ward into Bolton North East, might have given Sackville some hope of a fourth term had the Major government not made such a complete hash of things; but in the end he was swept away in the Blair landslide by Labour's Ruth Kelly. Kelly was heavily pregnant at the time, and eleven days after the election she had her first child - a boy.
Ruth Kelly climbed the ministerial greasy pole and entered cabinet in December 2004 as education secretary. A few months later, her majority over the Conservatives was cut to 2,064 at the 2005 general election. Kelly by this time was becoming a controversial figure in what is always a high-profile department, and the controversies followed her to two other Cabinet positions. She left the political frontline in 2008, and retired from the Commons in 2010.
THis retirement must have caused some alarm in Labour ranks, as they had to defend a marginal seat where local election results had been patchy at best. In 2004 the Labour Party had won just one council seat in the entire constituency (in Atherton). The party had managed to shore up its Bolton West majority with a boundary review, which moved the divided but generally Conservative Hulton ward out of the seat and replaced it with the town of Atherton, and the party had gained some council seats here over the 2005-10 parliament. The Laour party selected Julie Hilling, an Atherton-based youth worker, to hold the seat against a challenge from Tory candidate Susan Williams, a former leader of Trafford council. In one of the closest results of the 2010 general election, Hilling held Bolton West for Labour with a majority of just 92 votes.
That was the first of three consecutive photofinishes in Bolton West. The Conservatives finally broke though in 2015, Chris Green defeating Hilling by 801 votes; a rematch in 2017 saw his majority increase to 936, and a second rematch in 2019 saw a huge swing to Green who prevailed with a majority of 8,855 over Hilling. It's a result that breaks the mould, as 8,855 is the largest majority in the history of the Bolton West seat. What happened?
This is the point where Cliff Morris needs to come back into the story. Morris became leader of Bolton council following the 2006 elections, at which a minority Lib Dem administration was defeated, and stayed in that role for nearly twelve years as controversy after controversy, scandal after scandal piled up around how Bolton Labour were running the town. The most notorious was probably the Asons Solicitors affair, in which the council's cabinet used emergency powers to give a grant to a firm of personal injury lawyers which subsequently went bust very publicly. (The council did get the money back, just before the administrators swooped in.) However, the last straw as far as this constituency was concerned was probably the proposal to redevelop Hulton Park for housing and as a championship-standard golf course, something which went down like a cup of cold sick in nearby Westhoughton. The 2018 and 2019 local elections saw Labour lose seats in Bolton by the bucketload, including all of the four wards in this constituency which they were defending in 2019. Following that double catastrophe, Bolton is now the only metropolitan borough in the north of England being run by the Conservatives (who are the second-largest group on a hung council).
The seven wards in the current Bolton West are a diverse bunch at local election time. The Conservatives are capable of winning up to three wards here, but their only reliable area is Heaton and Lostock. This is a filthy rich area full of million-pound houses: Heaton and Lostock was one of only a handful of wards in Greater Manchester which did not vote for Andy Burnham in the 2017 mayoral election. The neighbouring Smithills ward, which is the only other part of Bolton proper in the seat, is more mixed but generally middle-class. At local election time it's Bolton's longest-standing Liberal Democrat ward, but this can be overstated: the Lib Dems polled more votes in Smithills at the 2015 local elections than they did in the entire Bolton West constituency at the 2015 general election on the same day.
Of the towns in the seat outside Bolton, Horwich (a former railway centre on the southern slopes of Winter Hill) was a Lib Dem hotspot up until 2010 when Labour started to win the ward. In 2019 the two wards covering Horwich and nearby Blackrod fell to a brand-new localist party, Horwich and Blackrod First. There has been a lot of redevelopment in Horwich in recent years; with large numbers of new houses going up on the former Loco Works site keep an eye out for demographic change here. Westhoughton and Atherton are former coalmining towns (the Pretoria Pit explosion in December 1910 killed more men from Westhoughton than the First World War did). Atherton follows the usual coalfield pattern in local elections of Labour versus Independent, the independents winning there more often than not; but Westhoughton can turn in big Lib Dem scores if Labour are having a bad time. In the 2019 local elections the Liberal Democrats would almost certainly have carried Bolton West if they had found a candidate for Atherton, which is one indicator of how weird Bolton's politics is at the moment.
Despite all this local election weirdness, Chris Green is as stated sitting on a very safe Conservative majority. Unless there are major boundary changes or Labour can somehow find their mojo again in the former coalfields, he would appear to be safe in post for some while yet.
