Post by loderingo on Apr 30, 2020 21:55:56 GMT
In my description of Blaenau Gwent, I talked about the huge wave of immigration into the Welsh Valleys during the Industrial revolution. What I have not addressed until now is where those workers came from. While many workers initially came from the rural parts of Wales, later on there was a large movement of people from England and particularly North East Somerset. Indeed if you come from the Valleys and have an English surname there is a good chance you will be able to trace one or more lines of your family tree back to this seat. This seat itself has a long history of coal mining and was the centre of the Somerset Coalfield, which stretched towards Bath and the Bristol coalfield in the north and as far west as Nailsea in the North Somerset seat. Nevertheless the heart of the coalfield was Midsomer Norton, Radstock and surrounding villages.
There is some evidence of coal being dug in Roman times and certainly from medieval times but the pits were often of a small scale and often involved surface mining. As the Welsh deep mines developed, the new mine owners were able to tempt many workers across the Severn with the prospect of better wages. The coalfield reached its peak in the early twentieth century before going into decline from the 1930s with the last pit closing in the 1970s. The coalfield lead to the creation of infrastructure that would not otherwise have been needed in an otherwise rural area. The Somersetshire coal canal is being in the process of being restored. The Somerset and Dorset Joint railway, nicknamed the "Slow and Dirty" travelled through the coalfield and connected Bath with Bournemouth before being culled in the Beeching Axe. There has been a campaign to restore the line and there is a small steam heritage railway at Midsomer Norton.
It might be worth saying a bit at this point about the local MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. Rees-Mogg has sometimes been seen as old fashioned but he is unusually in having deep historical roots to the constituency he represents in parliament. The Mogg family were prominent local landowners and owned shares in some of the local coal mines. The Rees -Moggs were formed in 1805 when a poor Welsh cleric named Rees married a Mogg heiress. The family home is at Cameley one of the mining villages.
Beyond coal, the seat also has other points of interest. In the west, the seat has more rural aspect. The Chew Valley reservoir was created in 1950 and is the 5th largest artificial body of water in the UK. It is a very popular spot for trout fishing. Also in the Chew Valley is Stanton Drew, which has a number of neolithic stone circles. The great circle is the 2nd largest in Britain after Avebury.
In the north of the seat Keynsham is between Bristol and Bath and is known for its former Frys then Cadburys chocolate factory. After Cadbury was taken over by Kraft the factory was controversially closed down and is now going to be redeveloped. In the East of the seat, the Bathavon wards cover a number of small villages in the outer orbit of Bath
The North East Somerset was created in 2010 as the successor seat to the old Wansdyke seat, which had also included a portion of what is now the Kingswood seat. That in turn was created in 1983 from the old North Somerset seat. That seat was much larger, stretching from Bathavon to Portishead and included portions of both the current North East Somerset and North Somerset seats.
The Wansdyke seat was held by Jack Aspinwall, previously one term MP for Kingswood from 1983 to 1992 with fairly comfortable majorities (13,000 in 1992). In 1997 a huge 15% swing saw Dan Norris beat new candidate Mark Prisk (later MP for Hertford) by 5,500 votes. Norris' majority dwindled to 2,000 by 2005 and the boundary changes meant the new North East Somerset seat was already notionally Tory for 2010. Rees-Mogg took the seat by 5,000 votes and in each subsequent election his majority has been in 5 figures (14,729 in 2019).
This doesn't tell the whole story, however. In the Brexit referendum, BANES was perhaps one of the most politically divided authorities in the country. The Bath half is estimated to have voted 32% remain, while North East Somerset is estimated to have voted 51% leave. Within that I suspect that the strongest remain areas would have been the villages around Bath, while the Norton Radstock area would have been for leave. The latter area is where Labour have their greatest strength.
In 2019 BANES council voted 37 LDs, 11 Conservative, 5 Labour and 6 Independent. The LDs swept Bath and also did well in the North East Somerset part winning the ward where Rees-Mogg lives. This led to perhaps some overexcitement over the general election. The LDs did get a large swing to them but Rees-Mogg's majority went up even as his vote % dropped due a more evenly split opposition. The final split was Con 50.4%, Lab 24.2%, LD 22.1%
This might be a seat worth keeping an eye on in the longer term to see if we see a "Bath effect" as we have seen a "Brighton effect".
There is likely to be some impact on this seat from the next boundary review. The Bath seat is somewhat undersized and is likely to take back the Bathavon wards ending the inner/outer doughnut split as per York. In turn it wouldn't surprise me if this seat ends up taking a ward such as Stockland from Bristol as the commission will have to find a way to downsize the overly large Bristol West via transfers.
There is some evidence of coal being dug in Roman times and certainly from medieval times but the pits were often of a small scale and often involved surface mining. As the Welsh deep mines developed, the new mine owners were able to tempt many workers across the Severn with the prospect of better wages. The coalfield reached its peak in the early twentieth century before going into decline from the 1930s with the last pit closing in the 1970s. The coalfield lead to the creation of infrastructure that would not otherwise have been needed in an otherwise rural area. The Somersetshire coal canal is being in the process of being restored. The Somerset and Dorset Joint railway, nicknamed the "Slow and Dirty" travelled through the coalfield and connected Bath with Bournemouth before being culled in the Beeching Axe. There has been a campaign to restore the line and there is a small steam heritage railway at Midsomer Norton.
It might be worth saying a bit at this point about the local MP Jacob Rees-Mogg. Rees-Mogg has sometimes been seen as old fashioned but he is unusually in having deep historical roots to the constituency he represents in parliament. The Mogg family were prominent local landowners and owned shares in some of the local coal mines. The Rees -Moggs were formed in 1805 when a poor Welsh cleric named Rees married a Mogg heiress. The family home is at Cameley one of the mining villages.
Beyond coal, the seat also has other points of interest. In the west, the seat has more rural aspect. The Chew Valley reservoir was created in 1950 and is the 5th largest artificial body of water in the UK. It is a very popular spot for trout fishing. Also in the Chew Valley is Stanton Drew, which has a number of neolithic stone circles. The great circle is the 2nd largest in Britain after Avebury.
In the north of the seat Keynsham is between Bristol and Bath and is known for its former Frys then Cadburys chocolate factory. After Cadbury was taken over by Kraft the factory was controversially closed down and is now going to be redeveloped. In the East of the seat, the Bathavon wards cover a number of small villages in the outer orbit of Bath
The North East Somerset was created in 2010 as the successor seat to the old Wansdyke seat, which had also included a portion of what is now the Kingswood seat. That in turn was created in 1983 from the old North Somerset seat. That seat was much larger, stretching from Bathavon to Portishead and included portions of both the current North East Somerset and North Somerset seats.
The Wansdyke seat was held by Jack Aspinwall, previously one term MP for Kingswood from 1983 to 1992 with fairly comfortable majorities (13,000 in 1992). In 1997 a huge 15% swing saw Dan Norris beat new candidate Mark Prisk (later MP for Hertford) by 5,500 votes. Norris' majority dwindled to 2,000 by 2005 and the boundary changes meant the new North East Somerset seat was already notionally Tory for 2010. Rees-Mogg took the seat by 5,000 votes and in each subsequent election his majority has been in 5 figures (14,729 in 2019).
This doesn't tell the whole story, however. In the Brexit referendum, BANES was perhaps one of the most politically divided authorities in the country. The Bath half is estimated to have voted 32% remain, while North East Somerset is estimated to have voted 51% leave. Within that I suspect that the strongest remain areas would have been the villages around Bath, while the Norton Radstock area would have been for leave. The latter area is where Labour have their greatest strength.
In 2019 BANES council voted 37 LDs, 11 Conservative, 5 Labour and 6 Independent. The LDs swept Bath and also did well in the North East Somerset part winning the ward where Rees-Mogg lives. This led to perhaps some overexcitement over the general election. The LDs did get a large swing to them but Rees-Mogg's majority went up even as his vote % dropped due a more evenly split opposition. The final split was Con 50.4%, Lab 24.2%, LD 22.1%
This might be a seat worth keeping an eye on in the longer term to see if we see a "Bath effect" as we have seen a "Brighton effect".
There is likely to be some impact on this seat from the next boundary review. The Bath seat is somewhat undersized and is likely to take back the Bathavon wards ending the inner/outer doughnut split as per York. In turn it wouldn't surprise me if this seat ends up taking a ward such as Stockland from Bristol as the commission will have to find a way to downsize the overly large Bristol West via transfers.
