Tamworth

[John Chanin]

Tamworth’s main claim to importance came a long time ago - indeed a very long time ago as it was the base for kings Offa and Penda of the Mercian ascendency in the 600s and 700s. Following the statutory sacking by the Vikings it devolved into a small market town at the junction of the rivers Tame and Anker, albeit with a Norman castle overlooking the river, still in existence. The town was raised from its torpor by the development of the neighbouring coalfields in the 1800s, and the construction of the Birmingham-Fazeley and Coventry canals. But it was still a small market town in the early 1900s, and despite some development in the inter-war period, not much larger at the end of the second world war. Then things changed. There has been an enormous expansion of the town since the war, mainly Birmingham overspill, as it is well situated for commuting, and having absorbed the once separate settlement of Wilnecote it now has a population of 75,000. It is a little more middle-class than nearby towns on the coalfields, and there is a fair bit of council housing to the east of the town centre around Glascote and Stonydelph, and much working-class owner-occupation. Managerial workers exceed routine only in the southern wards of Trinity and Wilnecote, and education levels are low throughout, and in this it resembles the other industrial towns north and east of the Birmingham conurbation. Politically at local level it is more Conservative than these towns, with the Conservatives (and UKIP in mid-decade) winning most wards most of the time, with only Bolehall directly to the east of the town centre being reliably Labour.

Tamworth was split off from the by now enormous Lichfield & Tamworth seat in 1983, and was further reduced in size in 1997. However the town is still not large enough for a seat of its own, and 15,000 voters are included from Lichfield District amounting to about 20% of the seat. A quarter of these come from Fazeley, which is part of the Tamworth urban area, and very similar demographically and politically. The rest is however very Conservative and tips Tamworth to the right in an average year. Little Aston sits on the north side of Sutton Park, and is part of a continuous urban area with the very up market Four Oaks area of Sutton Coldfield and Streetly in Walsall District. Over half of the population here is managerial, with nearly half having degrees and no social rented housing at all. Stonnall, Shenstone, and Drayton Bassett with its theme park, are commuter villages and only very slightly less middle-class. There is also some sparsely populated countryside in the Mease Valley, north of the town. All this is territory where Conservative councillors are sometimes returned unopposed.

Since a parliamentary seat was first created based on Tamworth, the Conservatives have won except for 1997, 2001, and 2005 (when Labour held on narrowly). The Conservatives achieved a comfortable victory in 2010, extending their lead substantially in 2015, and again in 2019, achieving an enormous 20,000 majority, similar to other towns on the Birmingham periphery. It is hard to see Labour coming close here again any time soon, even if the EU dissipates as an issue (Tamworth voted 67% Leave at the referendum). MP here is former IT consultant, Christopher Pincher, who won the seat in 2010. 

The Boundary Commission have made only minor amendments here, splitting the Whittington & Streethay ward between Tamworth and Lichfield, to ensure both seats remain within acceptable limits.

Census data: Owner-occupied 71% (200/573 in England & Wales), private rented 11% (505th), social rented 18% (221st).
                      : White 97%, Black 1%, South Asian 1%, Mixed 1%, Other 1%
                      : Managerial & professional 31% (394th), Routine & Semi-routine 35% (162nd)
                      : Degree level 20%(466th), Minimal qualifications 43%(118th)
                      : Students 2.8% (378th), Over 65: 16% (345th)

	2010	%	2015	%	2017	%	2019	%
Conservative	21,238	45.8%	23,606	50.0%	28,748	61.0%	30,542	66.3%
Labour	15,148	32.7%	12,304	26.1%	16,401	34.8%	10,908	23.7%
Liberal Democrat	7,516	16.2%	1,427	3.0%	1,961	4.2%	2,426	5.3%
UKIP	2,253	4.9%	8,727	18.5%			814	1.8%
Green			1,110	2.4%			935	2.0%
Others	235	0.5%					431	0.9%
Majority	6,090	13.1%	11,302	24.0%	12,347	26.2%	19,634	42.6%

[matureleft]

Represented by Robert Peel through most of his parliamentary life and his Tamworth Manifesto is generally agreed to have set the direction of Conservatism for the next century and a half (though some on this site might argue that he was entirely wrong and would have wished Wellington's deep resistance to change to be the model!).

[John Chanin]

The town of Tamworth was very small in Peel’s day, and this was after the Great Reform Act. It had 2 members. I assume therefore that the parliamentary borough covered a wider area than the town, although I’ve no idea how to check this. Complicating this is that the castle was in Warwickshire, but the old town centre was in Staffordshire, until this was sorted sometime in the late 1800s after Peel was long gone. One for the antiquarians.

[matureleft]

Oct 5, 2020 15:13:04 GMT John Chanin said:

The town of Tamworth was very small in Peel’s day, and this was after the Great Reform Act. It had 2 members. I assume therefore that the parliamentary borough covered a wider area than the town, although I’ve no idea how to check this. Complicating this is that the castle was in Warwickshire, but the old town centre was in Staffordshire, until this was sorted sometime in the late 1800s after Peel was long gone. One for the antiquarians.

An excerpt from the History of Parliament referring to the redistribution of seats after the 1832 Reform Act. Before then Tamworth must have been tiny, a near rotten borough, and clearly under the thumb of a couple of families. Even afterwards the Peel interest was extremely important. One of Sir Robert's sons was MP from 1850 (when Sir Robert died) until 1880.

"By the Boundary Act the borough was duly enlarged from 0.3 to 17.9 square miles to include the whole ecclesiastical parish, containing ‘some 7,118 inhabitants’, which gave the new constituency 528 houses worth £10 or above and a registered electorate of 586. Both Members were returned unopposed at the 1832 general election, Peel having declared to Littleton, the Whig county Member, that ‘he should never attempt the second seat’ as he ‘valued peace, and the good will of his neighbours more than power in the borough’. At the dissolution of 1834, when Peel as the new premier issued his celebrated Tamworth manifesto, Townshend retired, having recently reacquired Tamworth Castle for his family, and was replaced by William Peel, who sat until 1837. Townshend’s cousin and heir Captain John Townshend was returned as a Liberal, 1847-53. Peel sat until his death in 1850, and members of his family represented the borough for much of the nineteenth century."

[finsobruce]

Oct 5, 2020 15:13:04 GMT John Chanin said:

The town of Tamworth was very small in Peel’s day, and this was after the Great Reform Act. It had 2 members. I assume therefore that the parliamentary borough covered a wider area than the town, although I’ve no idea how to check this. Complicating this is that the castle was in Warwickshire, but the old town centre was in Staffordshire, until this was sorted sometime in the late 1800s after Peel was long gone. One for the antiquarians.

Someone called Henry Wood (no, not that one) wrote a history of the municipality of Tamworth called "Borough by Prescription" (1959). Available online for a reasonable price...

[martinwhelton]

I suspect many of these West Midlands seats will see a substantial swing back to Labour above the national average if they get anywhere near a majority. Despite the hurdles Labour need to climb to win an overall majority this seat will be way outside any target list as things currently stands. It's a long way from those heady days back in 1996 when Labour won the South-East Stafforshire by-election on boundaries that were more unfavorable than the current ones. It is hard to believe that the neighboring Sutton Coldfield is now a more marginal seat than Tamworth

[John Chanin]

Oct 6, 2020 12:49:57 GMT martinwhelton said:

It is hard to believe that the neighboring Sutton Coldfield is now a more marginal seat than Tamworth

Strange times. But I’m sure Little Aston is still solidly behind the Conservatives.

[Sibboleth]

Oct 6, 2020 12:49:57 GMT martinwhelton said:

It is hard to believe that the neighboring Sutton Coldfield is now a more marginal seat than Tamworth

Well, it has a smaller majority. The 2019 election is already very much an historical thing, to be discussed in the past tense. But the really telling thing here is probably that a very different Labour Party to that of 2019 came nowhere close to winning in 2015.

[iainbhx]

Oct 6, 2020 13:03:55 GMT John Chanin said:

Oct 6, 2020 12:49:57 GMT martinwhelton said:

It is hard to believe that the neighboring Sutton Coldfield is now a more marginal seat than Tamworth

Strange times. But I’m sure Little Aston is still solidly behind the Conservatives.

When they elect the first Lichfield Soviet, Little Aston will still elect Tories or rather return them unopposed.

[Andrew_S]

Labour supporters in SE Staffs thought they might have won in 1992 if Little Aston, Shenstone and Stonnall had not been part of the constituency. They've never been happy with those areas being included in the seat since they have more in common with Lichfield and Sutton Coldfield. Tamworth arguably has more in common with Dordon and Grendon but they're in Warwickshire.

[Chris from Brum]

Oct 6, 2020 15:59:14 GMT iainbhx said:

Oct 6, 2020 13:03:55 GMT John Chanin said:

Strange times. But I’m sure Little Aston is still solidly behind the Conservatives.

When they elect the first Lichfield Soviet, Little Aston will still elect Tories or rather return them unopposed.

I was astonished to discover just how much of Little Aston is off-limits to Google StreetView. The answer is "most of it", including the very large Little Aston Park estate, including the golf club and the church.

[John Chanin]

Oct 6, 2020 17:23:21 GMT Chris from Brum said:

Oct 6, 2020 15:59:14 GMT iainbhx said:

When they elect the first Lichfield Soviet, Little Aston will still elect Tories or rather return them unopposed.

I was astonished to discover just how much of Little Aston is off-limits to Google StreetView. The answer is "most of it", including the very large Little Aston Park estate, including the golf club and the church.

The rich protect themselves very well.  For outsiders Little Aston is a place of gated mansions, and probably the richest place in the whole of the Midlands.  The bit of Four Oaks next to the park, which is similar, is also off limits to Google.

[Chris from Brum]

Oct 6, 2020 17:36:07 GMT John Chanin said:

Oct 6, 2020 17:23:21 GMT Chris from Brum said:

I was astonished to discover just how much of Little Aston is off-limits to Google StreetView. The answer is "most of it", including the very large Little Aston Park estate, including the golf club and the church.

The rich protect themselves very well.  For outsiders Little Aston is a place of gated mansions, and probably the richest place in the whole of the Midlands.  The bit of Four Oaks next to the park, which is similar, is also off limits to Google.

Can't stop the aerial view though.

[bungle]

Oct 6, 2020 12:49:57 GMT martinwhelton said:

It's a long way from those heady days back in 1996 when Labour won the South-East Stafforshire by-election on boundaries that were more unfavorable than the current ones.

I'm glad someone mentioned the 1996 SSE by-election as it is worth a nod in any profile of the Tamworth constituency. Like Dudley West it was just the type of test that Labour needed to pass - and pass well (which of course they did). It also showed that with one year to go to a General Election a swing of 22% to Labour showed something far more seismic was happening than mere 'mid term blues' or one-off protest votes.

I spent a day there doing some campaigning (I didn't live far away but I remember just how far some people had travelled to help - seemed crazy). From my quick whizz around the standard shopping mall town centre area I vividly recall an isolated and beleaguered Virginia Bottomley being largely ignored except for one voter who just gave the V sign.

From the housing estate I visited you could see the demographic who were switching - pretty close to those fabled depictions of Worcester Woman and Mondeo Man at the time, plus quite a few pensioners too. I imagine if I had gone back in 2019 I'd have had the door slammed in my face. It is a long road back for Labour in Tamworth - and elsewhere in Staffordshire/South Derbyshire/NW Leicestershire. The joy of these profiles is you can start to get a more granular sense of why.

[Andrew_S]

It's interesting IMO that in the 1950s Lichfield & Tamworth was a Labour seat while the Tories were winning big majorities nationally.

[John Chanin]

Oct 8, 2020 4:13:14 GMT Andrew_S said:

It's interesting IMO that in the 1950s Lichfield & Tamworth was a Labour seat while the Tories were winning big majorities nationally.

This was before the great expansion of Tamworth in the 1960s and 1970s.  Lichfield has also seen a lot of growth, almost all of it private.  A much higher proportion of the population would have been in Burntwood, an industrial town on the edge of the coalfield.  And prior to 1974 the seat included the fairly grim industrial town of Rugeley.  All three towns would have had a considerably less middle-class population than now, in an era when politics was mainly class-based.  Labour also won the mid-Staffordshire seat in the 1990s, which was basically Lichfield + Rugeley, in another well-known by-election.

The expansion of commuter towns and villages, with lots of private development catering to families moving from the rapidly emptying cities, of which this is an example, was a nationwide trend in the last third of the twentieth century. 

[Robert Waller]

2021 Census

Owner occupied 69.5% 183/573
Private rented 13.9% 486/573
Social rented 16.6% 232/573
White 94.7%
Black 0.7%
Asian 2.2%
(South Asian 1.6%)
Mixed 1.9%
Other 0.5%
Managerial & professional 29.3% 361/573
Routine & Semi-routine 30.0% 86/573
Degree level 24.3% 501/573
No qualifications 20.9% 159/573


2011 same criteria

Degree level 19.6% 466/573
No qualifications 25.9% 171/573

[Pete Whitehead]

2019 Notional results on new boundaries

Con	31803	66.6%
Lab	11105	23.3%
LD	2564	5.4%
Grn	984	2.1%
Oth	1263	2.6%
Majority	20698	43.4%