Stourbridge

[iang]

Like the constituencies of Dudley as a whole, Stourbridge is a relatively modern creation, having only existed in modern times since 1997, when the boundaries of all the Dudley seats were comprehensively re-drawn. (A Stourbridge constituency did exist from 1918 until 1950, with a varied political history). In relatively recent times, the town was twinned with Halesowen to produce a seat that was Conservative throughout its history, marginally so in 1974 (especially in October when John Stokes’s majority fell below a thousand), but otherwise pretty safe, with the Conservative vote usually hovering around the 50% mark. It might have been expected that Stourbridge, once given its own seat, would remain comfortably Conservative, but like so many other such seats, it was Labour during the Blair years, emphatically enough until 2005, when the Labour majority sank to 1%. Margot James took the seat fairly easily in 2010 for the Conservatives, and the Conservative majority has increased significantly in each election since, even in the 2017 “wobble”. Margot James stood down in 2019, a pro-European out of step with her party both nationally and locally, but her successor, Suzanne Webb (keeping therefore an unbroken history of female representation since the seat’s reconstruction in 1997) had the same experience as many local seats – the highest ever winning vote in the division (60%) and the highest ever majority (30%).

Like many other areas of the Black Country, Stourbridge is historically associated with one particular industry – in its case, glass making. It lies (particularly if we are talking about Stourbridge town itself) right at the edge of the West Midlands conurbation, and there is much green space both within the seat and just outside. The Clent Hills lie a few miles to the south and Kinver Edge (not to be confused with Kinder Scout, scene of the famous 1932 Mass Trespass), a few miles to the west. The town centre has one of those typically midlands situations of being entirely encircled by dual carriageway, but if you can get off the ring road and into Stourbridge, it is pleasant enough. It is also something of an educational centre. The town boasts one of the top Sixth Form colleges in the whole country in King Edward’s Stourbridge, once a boys’ grammar school that educated luminaries ranging form David Garrick the actor to Robert Plant, and it still retains something of a grammar school ethos. It also has one of the very few state boarding schools in the country in the shape of Old Swinford Hospital School, dating back to the seventeenth century.

As the above perhaps suggests, this is pretty middle-class territory. Dudley is the most affluent of the Black Country boroughs, and Stourbridge provides much of its suburban – indeed, in places like Pedmore, almost semi-rural – fringe. Of the six wards that make up Stourbridge constituency, five are in Dudley’s twelve most affluent wards of twenty-four. Norton is third, Pedmore fifth, Amblecote seventh, Wollaston and Stourbridge Town tenth, and Lye twelfth. Only Cradley and Foxcote comes outside the top half, and that is in fourteenth. So if Stourbridge itself is not necessarily more affluent than Kingswinford or Halesowen, the eponymous seat is much more consistently well off than Dudley South, where the more central Dudley wards like Netherton balance Kingswinford, or Halesowen and Rowley, where the Sandwell wards of Rowley balance Halesowen.

It is a very white seat, as perhaps reflects its position on the fringes of Dudley, distanced from the heart of the Black Country (and Dudley is the whitest Black Country borough). Overall, the seat is 92% white, with only the more Dudley central wards of Cradley and Lye falling below 90% (and then in both cases, only to 84% white). Like virtually all the Black Country, and despite its MP, it was another Leave constituency, if by not quite as much as many of its neighbours, the Leave vote of 63% being relatively low in comparison to several adjacent seats. The percentage of those in professional and managerial work at 26% is not quite as high as might be expected, although conversely the figure for those in elementary work is low at around 10%. It scores highest for skilled traders, the occupation of 13% of the constituency, ranking 157th in the list of Parliamentary seats, and reflecting like again many neighbouring constituencies, the Black Country manufacturing tradition. The percentage without educational qualifications at 27.6% is high (117th highest), and just under 22% of the population of the seat have degree qualifications or equivalent, making it 395th in the list of Parliamentary seats. But it is a fairly heavily owner-occupied seat – 72% of the population own their homes, and 16% are in social housing, above and below both national and regional averages respectively. So overall, this is a more traditionally Tory seat than the likes of its neighbours, still less the likes of Walsall North or West Bromwich West.

This is reflected in the relative stability of the seat at local level. In the 2004 all ups elections following re-warding, Labour led in Cradley and Foxcote ward, the Lib Dems in Wollaston, the Conservatives in the other four. In Stourbridge itself, the Lib Dems were strong in the late 1990s, winning Norton and Wollaston and Stourbridge Town regularly. But by 2004, they had been driven out of Norton and were down to one councillor in Wollaston, and like elsewhere in Dudley, their challenge was fading. The Conservatives have won every single year since in Norton, and have never lost in Pedmore, even in the worst of the Major years. Wollaston has been more marginal, with Labour winning in 2012 and a 2013 by-election, and in recent years the Conservative majorities here have been always tight, but since that 2012/13 aberration, the Conservatives have had a permanent dominance of the Stourbridge wards. Amblecote has been Labour occasionally, but the Conservatives won it in 2004, and have usually won it since, although in 2014 it was the one Stourbridge ward to fall to UKIP. Lye, known for its Balti restaurants and a striking WW1 memorial at the parish church, is usually Labour although the Conservatives took it in 2004 and held a seat in their best year of 2008, and Cradley has been consistently Labour. Normally four-two to the Conservatives then, and that would seem to reflect the seat as a whole fairly well, with four Labour wins in 2012, in the worst years of the Coalition, Labour’s best in recent times.

So overall, a rather more typical Conservative seat than some of the adjacent ones, but part of the first ever Conservative clean sweep of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. Suzanne Webb, like her colleagues, sits on a very comfortable majority indeed. In the past, this might have seemed the most naturally Tory of the Dudley constituencies. In the modern, post “Red Wall” era, that might not so obviously be the case, but it would take a revival in Labour’s fortunes akin to the Blair years for to threaten the Conservatives now.

[iainbhx]

I should declare a mild interest in this one, I was brought up in Stourbridge and lived there until I was 18 and left for university, I was a King Edwards pupil and I still have a few relatives there and my oldest friend lives there, so I'm still in touch to an extent with the place.

Like most of the Black Country Boroughs, it's a odd place, each of them are quite distinctive but it is certainly one of the more middle class ones and always has been. It has had a Waitrose since the mid 70's, I worked there as a Saturday boy for three years whilst in the Fifth and Sixth Form, I think the only time my parents shopped there was when I had a discount, otherwise they went to Sainsers in Kidderminster. Stourbridge was a two supermarket town - Waitrose and an incredibly rancid KwikSave - which in some ways sums it up. It absolutely loathed being placed in Dudley and even now 50 years on, there's a reasonable number of people who would see it returned to Worcestershire - some of which weren't born at the time. Of course, in the traditional way, we don't like Halesowen much either, "too close to Birmingham, too far from God" is how my old headmaster used to put it.

The glass reputation is amusing, there was very little glass produced in the old municipal borough of Stourbridge, some was produced in Oldswinford back in the day, but the glass that made Stourbridge's name was mainly produced in Amblecote, Audnam and Wordsley. Wordsley would, in some ways be a better fit for the Stourbridge seat than some of the wards, but there again so would the two Hagley wards from Bromsgrove. Of course, the glass museum used to be in a wing of the Old Council House in Mary Stevens Park, I used to pop in sometimes on the way home from sixth form - partly for my artistic sensibilities and partly because there was quite a good cottage around the back.

No mention of Stourbridge should be made without a mention of Ernest Stevens, he made a fortune out of holloware and donated much of it in memory of his wife, three large parks, a smaller ornamental gardens, a maternity home (now a hospice), the site for the Glassboys ground, the Carlisle Hall (long since gone under the Fire Station) etc. In fact thanks to Ernest Stevens, Stourbridge really should have a bigger reputation for pots and pans than glass.

I very much agree that the constituency is fundamentally Tory, but there is a solid seam of working class Tories in the area which is what makes it so, the middle classes, especially the many Birmingham commuters are somewhat more flighty as you'd find if you canvassed somewhere like Beech Road in Norton where a very nice 4-bed Edwardian terrace will set you back 300k.

There has been a lot of housing built over the years, Norton was originally just the Norton Road and a few streets off it, the 1930s saw some council house building in High Park (which Norton people would say was in Wollaston) and some development along the Broadway, hence the very 30's council flats there and the private houses between the Broadway and the Norton Road. Then in the 1940's and 50's, the large Norton Estate was built - all very good quality council houses and most of them snapped up by their tenants in the 1980's. I lived in one until I was 4 and then we moved up the hill to the new private development off Clent View Road - where my parents paid the princely sum of £1,500 for their new house and I sold it 40 years later for £150k. The sixties saw a lot of private development in Norton - Clent View, The Links at the back of the Golf Course and various bits of infill. As did the 70's with the New Inns Estate, the old Mere Pool infill and around the back of Mary Stevens Park. Most of the rest of unbuilt on Norton is safe in the clutches of the Green Belt now. I'm personally amazed that it every flirted with the LibDems but I remember the calibre of the Tory councillors which was piss poor, the ones that removed the LibDems were much, much better. Norton is almost entirely suburban in nature, the whole ward now contains only three pubs, two of which I wouldn't be seen dead in (I may technically still be barred from the Greyhound) and the third of which would be an in extremis move. There is one very small parade of shops and four takeaways - two of which are on the border with Pedmore.

Pedmore is probably wealthier overall than Norton, but has Pedmore Fields to drag it down, there's been a lot in infill housing there as well, especially between the Hagley Road and the Worcester Road, but old Pedmore and Oldswinford are generally far better off than old Norton. But the infill is much of a muchness and Pedmore Fields is a larger council estate with a lot of retained properties and some significant problems. Unlike Norton, Pedmore does contain some parades of shops in several locations and a wider selection of bad pubs often serving poor food, but otherwise it is very suburban in nature. When Communism comes, Pedmore will still elect a Tory to the Local Soviet.

(to be continued)

[iainbhx]

Wollaston & Stourbridge Town is a very mixed ward - it's gradually moved to being residential over the years, but there used to be a substantial number of industrial jobs in the ward and there are still a few in the last remaining industrial estate off Lowdnes Road (although I give that five years at best). My dad started work at the rolling mills on Bowling Green Road, which are now standard issue new build cheaper private housing. It includes the town centre based inside the concrete collar with contains a very mixed set of retail opportunities, my recent walks through have noted some brave attempts at independent shops, but its getting very charity shop outside of the Ryemarket, The other supposed focal point, the Crown Centre remains a home for a large Tesco and not a lot else. The area immediately to the west of it is regarded as Stourbridge Town as well, the bits off Worcester Street are very nice and very tory, the bits off Enville Street are close packed terraces. There are pockets of social housing, two high rises by the ring road, some flats off Mamble Road and a couple of small inter-war council estates. There are also a lot of pubs, some of them are very good pubs and about every sixth Sunday after I have tidied my parents grave at the Crem, I can be found in the Royal Exchange on Enville St or the Duke William on Coventry Street depending if I want pie and peas or a cheese and black pudding cob. The rest of the ward is Wollaston, which has its own small but fairly thriving shopping centre, there's a mix of old private housing, the large Wollaston Farm council estate and newer infill replacing things like the Judge holloware factory. There's a distinct lack of green space, it should be a Labour ward really, but a mix of Black Country Toryism, Dudley Hate and that the Farm has been hard to drag to the polls for the last 50 years have kept the Tories competitive and now winning there.

Amblecote is a bit of an odd ward, at its core is about 60% of the old Amblecote UDC, which I think was the smallest UDC in the country and used to not have a council house but held its meetings in the Fish public house - which is now a chinese resto after being closed after yet another outburst of biker violence which ended in an involuntary amputation. I spent a while in the Dudley Archives tracking down the UDC election results to find that in the inter-war period and through into the fifties it was a dynastic council with only two actual opposed elections - it wasn't warded and elected en bloc. There again, it was very small, probably 85% of the housing hadn't been built then. Because this is New Build Land par excellence - the original core was along the high street and the Collis Street (worst chippy in the world) / Brettell Lane triangle, the immediate post war added a small council estate off Church Avenue. But since then *boom* massive amounts of building, nearly all of it private. You've had what I still call Pennfields but has now been called Withymoor village - a massive estate (about 3,500 houses) built over old open-cast mine workings some of which had been drift-mined before that. The "Shed disappears down mineshaft" was a staple headline of the local rag which my late mother worked for. It includes a huge Sainsers - which they used to use for training and was open at odd hours. There's lots of green space (they didn't dare built on those bits) and a very deep lake (there's a story about that as well) near the railway line. Whilst there is some light industry remaining, down by the canal, there has been more recent infill on various former industrial sites which have grown the ward and also on part of the site of the former Corbett Hospital which was much beloved by Stourbridge residents - there again if you've been to Russells Hall, you'd understand why, part of the site is now a mental health unit, part is an outpatient hospital and the rest is, yes, more new houses. It has been solidly Tory since its separation from Wollaston in 1982, Blair had it in his pomp for Labour for a brief period, but since then the only time it was lost was when there was a Kipper victory and when the Tories made the mistake of running an Asian Candidate who was also "proudly from Dudley". Has no good pubs, in fact, has very few pubs anyway, the Starving Rascal is about the best that's was left before COVID, but up in the north of the ward, the bliss that is the Bathams Brewery and its tap are just over the boundary.

[iang]

Jul 9, 2020 17:00:42 GMT iainbhx said:

Wollaston & Stourbridge Town is a very mixed ward - it's gradually moved to being residential over the years, but there used to be a substantial number of industrial jobs in the ward and there are still a few in the last remaining industrial estate off Lowdnes Road (although I give that five years at best). My dad started work at the rolling mills on Bowling Green Road, which are now standard issue new build cheaper private housing. It includes the town centre based inside the concrete collar with contains a very mixed set of retail opportunities, my recent walks through have noted some brave attempts at independent shops, but its getting very charity shop outside of the Ryemarket, The other supposed focal point, the Crown Centre remains a home for a large Tesco and not a lot else. The area immediately to the west of it is regarded as Stourbridge Town as well, the bits off Worcester Street are very nice and very tory, the bits off Enville Street are close packed terraces. There are pockets of social housing, two high rises by the ring road, some flats off Mamble Road and a couple of small inter-war council estates. There are also a lot of pubs, some of them are very good pubs and about every sixth Sunday after I have tidied my parents grave at the Crem, I can be found in the Royal Exchange on Enville St or the Duke William on Coventry Street depending if I want pie and peas or a cheese and black pudding cob. The rest of the ward is Wollaston, which has its own small but fairly thriving shopping centre, there's a mix of old private housing, the large Wollaston Farm council estate and newer infill replacing things like the Judge holloware factory. There's a distinct lack of green space, it should be a Labour ward really, but a mix of Black Country Toryism, Dudley Hate and that the Farm has been hard to drag to the polls for the last 50 years have kept the Tories competitive and now winning there.

Amblecote is a bit of an odd ward, at its core is about 60% of the old Amblecote UDC, which I think was the smallest UDC in the country and used to not have a council house but held its meetings in the Fish public house - which is now a chinese resto after being closed after yet another outburst of biker violence which ended in an involuntary amputation. I spent a while in the Dudley Archives tracking down the UDC election results to find that in the inter-war period and through into the fifties it was a dynastic council with only two actual opposed elections - it wasn't warded and elected en bloc. There again, it was very small, probably 85% of the housing hadn't been built then. Because this is New Build Land par excellence - the original core was along the high street and the Collis Street (worst chippy in the world) / Brettell Lane triangle, the immediate post war added a small council estate off Church Avenue. But since then *boom* massive amounts of building, nearly all of it private. You've had what I still call Pennfields but has now been called Withymoor village - a massive estate (about 3,500 houses) built over old open-cast mine workings some of which had been drift-mined before that. The "Shed disappears down mineshaft" was a staple headline of the local rag which my late mother worked for. It includes a huge Sainsers - which they used to use for training and was open at odd hours. There's lots of green space (they didn't dare built on those bits) and a very deep lake (there's a story about that as well) near the railway line. Whilst there is some light industry remaining, down by the canal, there has been more recent infill on various former industrial sites which have grown the ward and also on part of the site of the former Corbett Hospital which was much beloved by Stourbridge residents - there again if you've been to Russells Hall, you'd understand why, part of the site is now a mental health unit, part is an outpatient hospital and the rest is, yes, more new houses. It has been solidly Tory since its separation from Wollaston in 1982, Blair had it in his pomp for Labour for a brief period, but since then the only time it was lost was when there was a Kipper victory and when the Tories made the mistake of running an Asian Candidate who was also "proudly from Dudley". Has no good pubs, in fact, has very few pubs anyway, the Starving Rascal is about the best that's was left before COVID, but up in the north of the ward, the bliss that is the Bathams Brewery and its tap are just over the boundary.

I misread some of my own notes, so there are some corrections made to the section on local elections. Do you have any local knowledge of why we collapsed so sharply in Stourbridge / Dudley as a whole. The rot seems to have set in long before coalition

[iainbhx]

Jul 9, 2020 17:24:24 GMT iang said:

I misread some of my own notes, so there are some corrections made to the section on local elections. Do you have any local knowledge of why we collapsed so sharply in Stourbridge / Dudley as a whole. The rot seems to have set in long before coalition

Not really, the rise and fall of the Norton Liberals mainly happened when was working well away from the midlands and the one thing that wasn't discussed at home was politics, my late father was a solid Labour man but kept quiet to keep the peace at home, although he did come and campaign for me a couple of times in 2006, my mother was a firm believer in the virtues of Enoch but was suspicious that he might be a bit leftish. The seats fell in 1994,1995 and 1996 which was not uncommon at the time and as I understand it there was a big row about a large infill development near Mary Stevens Park and the threat to the Mere Centre - which was eventually removed and was eventually built on. Two of the three councillors were regarded by local Tories as not very good and one was widely regarded as being "too close to developers". The Libs all got a couple of terms and then lost in the all ups of 2004, it was about that sort of time that I started having to go over roughly weekly to deal with stuff that my parents could not longer manage and I noticed that Focus sort of disappeared after 2006. Certainly the new breed of Norton Tory was much more efficient and hard working and it was a pleasure to serve with Angus Adams on CENTRO.

I get the feeling that the Kingswinford collapse was down to Loreley moving to Solihull. Wollaston was always about June Collins, who was a very popular shop-keeper in Wollaston who seemed to be on first name terms with half the ward.

Anyway, to the remaining wards.

The old Lye and Wollescote ward fitted together every well, it contains The Lye which has many fine pubs of which I recommend the Windsor Castle and the Shovel to you with Wollescote which is a mix of council estate and the cheaper end of the private market. It also includes some of the roughest bits of the 'bridge, mainly the joy that is Hungary Hill and its appurtenances - which has been dodgy since the 50's. There's a lot of proper jobs in this ward, although rather less than there used to be and The Lye has a busy commercial centre which includes a number of Asian shops. Unlike other Stourbridge wards, it has a significant BAME population mainly made up of Bangladeshis who are well organised politically. Given the pretty appalling turnout generally, the substantial Asian vote can make the difference here and in its replacement. It will probably stay Labour but watch the candidates carefuily.

Foxcote and Cradley is a very badly named ward (which is why they renamed it) - as everyone will tell you, there's no such place as Foxcote, there's a Foxcote Farm and Foxcote Lane but nowhere you'd call Foxcote, High Town and Colley Gate would have probably been a better name. There are substantial proper jobs in the Hayes which keeps people busy. There's a reasonable amount of social housing here but not as much as before they redeveloped the Tanhouse estate demolishing delightful tower blocks (cracking views, full of scutters another fine example of streets in the sky). There are no good pubs, there are some pretty bad pubs in Colley Gate. This ward should have been more competitive for the Tories than it turned out to me. There has been some moderate infill because of easy access to Cradley Heath station, there are plans for a large amount of housing on Foxcote Farm which are very unpopular, mainly for NIMBY reasons but also because access is not going to be very good. I suspect that Labour's long run here is about to be seriously challenged.

Quarry Bonk and Dudley Wood - I don't really know the Dudley Wood end of the ward at all, I had a friend a KES who lived in Dudley Wood but I can't go off forty year old impressions, Quarry Bonk, sorry Bank, is where my mother grew up before they moved to Wall Heath in the 1950's and hence for reasons the family doctors was on the Thorns Road. It contains one of the smaller Mary Stevens parks, the huge and lovely Saltwells nature reserve - a few bits of industry and a declining commercial centre along the High Street. I certainly got the impression that this was an area in decline back in the 80's and it hasn't got much better since. The Church Tavern on Quarry Bonk High Street used to be grand, but I haven't been in since a Great Aunts wake in 2003. Very Strong Kipper vote here, but one of those places where Tory might just be a step too far. Quarry Bonk is sort of Stourbridge, Dudley Wood isn't. I'd lose this ward for Wordsley but the boundary is, ahem, sub-par.

[Robert Waller]

2011 Census

Age 65+ 18.2% 222/650
Owner-occupied 71.8% 168/650
Private rented 10.0% 575/650
Social rented 15.9% 327/650
White 91.9% 396/650
Black 0.6 % 324/650
Asian 5.5% 206/650
Managerial & professional 28.9%
Routine & Semi-routine 28.4%
Degree level 21.9% 440/650
No qualifications 27.6% 154/650
Students 6.5% 375/650

2021 Census

Owner occupied 70.6% 158/573
Private rented 14.1% 479/573
Social rented 15.4% 276/573
White 87.7%
Black 1.1%
Asian 8.0%
Managerial & professional 31.1% 313/573
Routine & Semi-routine 26.3% 202/573
Degree level 27.5% 408/573
No qualifications 21.1% 152/573



General Election 2019: Stourbridge

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Conservative Suzanne Webb 27,534 60.3 +5.8
Labour Pete Lowe 13,963 30.6 -7.7
Liberal Democrats Chris Bramall 2,523 5.5 +3.2
Green Andi Mohr 1,048 2.3 +1.3
Independent Aaron Hudson 621 1.4

C Majority 13,571 29.7 +13.5

Turnout 45,689 65.4 -1.8

Conservative hold

Swing 6.7 Lab to C

[Pete Whitehead]

The West Midlands region is losing two seats in total and both abolished seats are effectively within the broadly defined Black Country area. Essentially the Sandwell/Dudley pairing goes from 7 seats to 6 and Walsall and Wolverhampton are paired with 5 seats replacing the current 6.

There are no changes from the initial to the revised proposals in the constituencies covering Dudley (as opposed to those covering Sandwell) so these seem likely to come to pass.

Stourbridge is only just under quota and most of the boundary changes affecting the seat are due to the need to redraw neighbouring seats. In total just under 20,000 voters are lost to Halesowen in the wards of Cradley & Foxcote and Quarry Bank & Dudley Wood and just over 20,000 gained from Dudley South in Brierley Hill and Netherton, Woodside & St Andrews. The departing wards are the most Labour leaning within this seat and the wards to be added usually have a similar political affiliation. In 2019 the Conservative lead was graeter in the incoming wards so the notional majority is increased a bit but despite the large number of voters moving in and out, these changes overall are likley to be neutral



Notional result 2019 on the proposed new boundaries

Con	28242	62.8%
Lab	12660	28.1%
LD	2501	5.6%
Grn	1154	2.6%
Oth	429	1.0%
Majority	15582	34.6%

[iainbhx]

Would agree with that Pete, although the two incoming wards are quite variable depending on candidate. If I was going off feel rather than your numbers based approach, I would say there‘s a very small benefit to Labour but it would be lot less than the majority. Turnout may drop slightly as well.

Even off the 2022 results this would be a decent CON HOLD,