Post by iang on May 2, 2020 19:50:14 GMT
If West Bromwich East is a seat of two halves, then Warley is more reminiscent of Caesar’s Gaul, containing three distinct areas. First, there is Bearwood, the Borough of Sandwell’s other middle-class enclave along with Great Barr in WBE. Then there is the area in between Bearwood and Oldbury, the wards of Langley and Bristnall, predominantly white and generally decent semi-detached housing as you head down the Wolverhampton Road from the boundary with Birmingham towards the M5 motorway junction. Then there is the “inner city” area of Smethwick itself, historically more Birmingham than Black Country, briefly notorious in political history, and different in kind to the other parts of the seat.
This is essentially the old Smethwick seat. It is different from the old Warley East, abolished in 1997, just by the addition of Langley ward, which had been part of Warley West. Warley East in turn was created in the 1974 redistribution basically in succession to Smethwick. As such, since 1945, it has almost continuously been represented by just three Labour MPs – Patrick Gordon-Walker from 1945 to 64, Andrew Faulds the actor from 1966 to 1997, and John Spellar, swopping over from the abolished Warley West, since then. It has also been represented by two other MPs since World War Two. One, Alfred Dobbs, set an unwanted record, surely never to be broken, for the briefest tenure of any British MP, ever. Elected in the 1945 Labour landslide, he was killed in a car accident the following day. The other, and the only non-Labour MP to represent this constituency or its predecessors in modern times, was local primary head teacher and Alderman Peter Griffiths, elected in 1964. The details of the story are probably too well known to extensively recount here, but in a massive deviation from the national trend, Griffiths took the seat from Gordon Walker (whose vote had been slightly but steadily declining from its peak in 1945), using local fears of increasing “coloured” immigration to the area, and helped by a notorious local if unofficial slogan associating the Labour Party with these fears. His representation prompted a visit to Smethwick from Malcolm X, less than a fortnight before his assassination. There is now a blue plaque in Marshall Street commemorating the visit, and brief film footage can be found on YouTube. Griffiths’ tenure was to be brief, losing to Andrew Faulds in 1966. He was to return to Parliament in 1979 representing Portsmouth North for eighteen years, without the controversy of his earlier career.
To return to the nature of the current seat. Bearwood, as stated above, is one of Sandwell’s few middle class enclaves. It is just across the border from Birmingham, separated by the Hagley Road, the main route from Eastern Birmingham into the city centre. It is almost a suburb of Harborne, and given that Bearwood High Street is a pretty good example of the decline of British retail, one imagines many local residents head for Harborne for shopping. Much of the housing is terraced, but long and high terraces, “deceptively spacious” in that famous estate agent phrase, and significantly enough cheaper than paying Harborne prices. This area, along with the Great Barr wards, have significantly the best educational qualifications in the Borough. Abbey Ward is by far the highest with 34% of residents possessing Level 4 qualifications or better, with Old Warley Ward effectively joint second with Great Barr on 21%. (The other Great Barr wards of Newton and Charlemont come in joint 4th on 19%). Yet overall, Warley has 33% with no qualifications at all, ranking as high (or low) as 26th of all Parliamentary constituencies in this regard. Unsurprisingly therefore, the figure for those in elementary work (16%) and process, plant or machine operatives (11%) are also high, in both cases ranking Warley as 47th in the list of Parliamentary constituencies. The Smethwick wards have high levels of those without qualifications, and in elementary work, although not as high as predominantly white “council estate” wards elsewhere in the Borough like Friar Park or Princes End. Areas of Smethwick are significantly more deprived – the Soho/Victoria ward has the highest level of lone parenthood in Sandwell, with 13% of households made up of lone parents with dependent children, and another Smethwick ward, St Paul’s is third on that list.
What makes Smethwick different from the rest of Warley, with a significant impact on the Parliamentary seat as a whole, is its ethnic makeup. Warley as a whole is 57% White British, well below the regional or Sandwell average, let alone national average. Smethwick “township” (the three inner city wards plus Abbey) is 62% NOT white British, the only township in Sandwell where the White British population is in a minority (West Bromwich is second at just under 60% White British, although for local government statistics, this does not include the very white ward by Sandwell standards of Friar Park). Smethwick, Soho Victoria and St Paul’s are three of only four wards in the whole authority where white British voters are a minority, overwhelmingly so in the latter two. But in contrast to most of the rest of Sandwell, this is one area where Muslims are in a majority, Soho/Victoria being 33% Muslim to 20% Hindu or Sikh, St Paul’s 30% to 26%. At national level, it is to be presumed that this variation makes relatively difference in terms of consolidating Warley’s position as a safe Labour seat. At local level, as we shall see, it has not always been as straightforward.
So let us turn to local politics. As said in the profiles for the West Bromwich seats, since 2010 and the Coalition, Sandwell as a whole has been monolithically Labour, but that hasn’t always been the case. In the 1980s, the Bearwood wards of Abbey and Old Warley were usually Conservative. Old Warley stayed (relatively) so, probably the second most likely Conservative Ward in Sandwell after Wednesbury North. Abbey, which by the late 80s still had Conservative councillors from the Griffiths days, began to be won by Labour from 1986, with Steve Eling, later Leader of the Council, the first Labour success in 1986. A particularly active and able group of Labour councillors turned this into a safe Labour Ward, even staying Labour in 1992 when far less likely wards tumbled, however briefly, into the blue column. Bristnall is also a ward which has been Conservative in a good year, like 2008, and one of its three members was Conservative in the all ups of 2004. Those all ups though gave a seemingly bizarre result in St Paul’s one of those disadvantaged and heavily BME wards in Smethwick, where two Conservatives topped the poll with around 1800 votes each. What made this result even more strange was that the third Conservative trailed in seventh from eight, with 600 plus votes. The reason? The first two Conservatives were Muslim, the third Sikh (Labour ran an entirely Sikh slate). This wasn’t the first time such a result had occurred – at the end of 1999, an Independent (Muslim) candidate had beaten the defending (Sikh) Labour candidate in a by election. It seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that, whatever the party labels, these were “Vote Muslim not Sikh” contests, where the perception was that the Sikh community was more favoured by the Labour Party.
So, with demographic change aiding the process, a safe Labour seat. Never has John Spellar’s vote dropped below 50% in Warley’s current incarnation, and only in 2010 did his majority fall below 30%. But at local level at least, several wards have dabbled in electing non-Labour councillors, and once things “return to normal”, the interest may be what happens in the Oldbury Council House rather more than Westminster.
This is essentially the old Smethwick seat. It is different from the old Warley East, abolished in 1997, just by the addition of Langley ward, which had been part of Warley West. Warley East in turn was created in the 1974 redistribution basically in succession to Smethwick. As such, since 1945, it has almost continuously been represented by just three Labour MPs – Patrick Gordon-Walker from 1945 to 64, Andrew Faulds the actor from 1966 to 1997, and John Spellar, swopping over from the abolished Warley West, since then. It has also been represented by two other MPs since World War Two. One, Alfred Dobbs, set an unwanted record, surely never to be broken, for the briefest tenure of any British MP, ever. Elected in the 1945 Labour landslide, he was killed in a car accident the following day. The other, and the only non-Labour MP to represent this constituency or its predecessors in modern times, was local primary head teacher and Alderman Peter Griffiths, elected in 1964. The details of the story are probably too well known to extensively recount here, but in a massive deviation from the national trend, Griffiths took the seat from Gordon Walker (whose vote had been slightly but steadily declining from its peak in 1945), using local fears of increasing “coloured” immigration to the area, and helped by a notorious local if unofficial slogan associating the Labour Party with these fears. His representation prompted a visit to Smethwick from Malcolm X, less than a fortnight before his assassination. There is now a blue plaque in Marshall Street commemorating the visit, and brief film footage can be found on YouTube. Griffiths’ tenure was to be brief, losing to Andrew Faulds in 1966. He was to return to Parliament in 1979 representing Portsmouth North for eighteen years, without the controversy of his earlier career.
To return to the nature of the current seat. Bearwood, as stated above, is one of Sandwell’s few middle class enclaves. It is just across the border from Birmingham, separated by the Hagley Road, the main route from Eastern Birmingham into the city centre. It is almost a suburb of Harborne, and given that Bearwood High Street is a pretty good example of the decline of British retail, one imagines many local residents head for Harborne for shopping. Much of the housing is terraced, but long and high terraces, “deceptively spacious” in that famous estate agent phrase, and significantly enough cheaper than paying Harborne prices. This area, along with the Great Barr wards, have significantly the best educational qualifications in the Borough. Abbey Ward is by far the highest with 34% of residents possessing Level 4 qualifications or better, with Old Warley Ward effectively joint second with Great Barr on 21%. (The other Great Barr wards of Newton and Charlemont come in joint 4th on 19%). Yet overall, Warley has 33% with no qualifications at all, ranking as high (or low) as 26th of all Parliamentary constituencies in this regard. Unsurprisingly therefore, the figure for those in elementary work (16%) and process, plant or machine operatives (11%) are also high, in both cases ranking Warley as 47th in the list of Parliamentary constituencies. The Smethwick wards have high levels of those without qualifications, and in elementary work, although not as high as predominantly white “council estate” wards elsewhere in the Borough like Friar Park or Princes End. Areas of Smethwick are significantly more deprived – the Soho/Victoria ward has the highest level of lone parenthood in Sandwell, with 13% of households made up of lone parents with dependent children, and another Smethwick ward, St Paul’s is third on that list.
What makes Smethwick different from the rest of Warley, with a significant impact on the Parliamentary seat as a whole, is its ethnic makeup. Warley as a whole is 57% White British, well below the regional or Sandwell average, let alone national average. Smethwick “township” (the three inner city wards plus Abbey) is 62% NOT white British, the only township in Sandwell where the White British population is in a minority (West Bromwich is second at just under 60% White British, although for local government statistics, this does not include the very white ward by Sandwell standards of Friar Park). Smethwick, Soho Victoria and St Paul’s are three of only four wards in the whole authority where white British voters are a minority, overwhelmingly so in the latter two. But in contrast to most of the rest of Sandwell, this is one area where Muslims are in a majority, Soho/Victoria being 33% Muslim to 20% Hindu or Sikh, St Paul’s 30% to 26%. At national level, it is to be presumed that this variation makes relatively difference in terms of consolidating Warley’s position as a safe Labour seat. At local level, as we shall see, it has not always been as straightforward.
So let us turn to local politics. As said in the profiles for the West Bromwich seats, since 2010 and the Coalition, Sandwell as a whole has been monolithically Labour, but that hasn’t always been the case. In the 1980s, the Bearwood wards of Abbey and Old Warley were usually Conservative. Old Warley stayed (relatively) so, probably the second most likely Conservative Ward in Sandwell after Wednesbury North. Abbey, which by the late 80s still had Conservative councillors from the Griffiths days, began to be won by Labour from 1986, with Steve Eling, later Leader of the Council, the first Labour success in 1986. A particularly active and able group of Labour councillors turned this into a safe Labour Ward, even staying Labour in 1992 when far less likely wards tumbled, however briefly, into the blue column. Bristnall is also a ward which has been Conservative in a good year, like 2008, and one of its three members was Conservative in the all ups of 2004. Those all ups though gave a seemingly bizarre result in St Paul’s one of those disadvantaged and heavily BME wards in Smethwick, where two Conservatives topped the poll with around 1800 votes each. What made this result even more strange was that the third Conservative trailed in seventh from eight, with 600 plus votes. The reason? The first two Conservatives were Muslim, the third Sikh (Labour ran an entirely Sikh slate). This wasn’t the first time such a result had occurred – at the end of 1999, an Independent (Muslim) candidate had beaten the defending (Sikh) Labour candidate in a by election. It seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that, whatever the party labels, these were “Vote Muslim not Sikh” contests, where the perception was that the Sikh community was more favoured by the Labour Party.
So, with demographic change aiding the process, a safe Labour seat. Never has John Spellar’s vote dropped below 50% in Warley’s current incarnation, and only in 2010 did his majority fall below 30%. But at local level at least, several wards have dabbled in electing non-Labour councillors, and once things “return to normal”, the interest may be what happens in the Oldbury Council House rather more than Westminster.
