Post by Robert Waller on Nov 21, 2020 17:34:15 GMT
The New Town of Crawley, designated in January 1947, formed a red blot on the county landscape to many Sussex residents’ minds. With its large London overspill population and predominance of local authority housing, it contrasted sharply with the affluent middle-class norms of Sussex. Its political impact, however, was for over 50 years limited because it did not yet truly have a seat of its own. Before 1974 the town was situated in Horsham constituency, and did not even earn a mention in the title. From then until 1983 there was a Horsham and Crawley seat (note the order of the names). In 1983 a seat called Crawley was created, but it still contained extraneous rural – and Conservative – elements in the form of five wards from the District of Mid Sussex. Then for 1997 the Boundary Commission at last granted the borough of Crawley a seat of its very own, and Labour won their first ever seat in West Sussex – though such was the magnitude of the Blairite landslide in that year they would have won it on the old boundaries. The sitting MP Nicholas Soames decamped to a much safer part of Sussex, and Labour’s Laura Moffatt cruised home easily by nearly 12,000 votes, with a larger than average increase in vote share.
However, even though Crawley constituency’s boundaries have remained coterminous with the local authority borough ever since 1997, it has become clear that Labour only tend to win the seat when they win the general election itself. Laura Moffatt’s majority dropped sharply in both 2001 and 2005, when it generated the closest result of any of the 650 seats – a lead of just 37 votes or 0.1% of the poll. Since 2010 Crawley has been won four times by the Conservative Henry Smith. His majority has never been less than 2.457 (2017) and in December 2019 he increased his lead to a comfortable 8,360. Labour would require a swing of over eight per cent to regain Crawley on current boundaries - which are very likely to be retained in the next review as it is currently within five per cent of the English norm.
Why has Crawley turned out to be – or perhaps turned into – a seat clearly on the Conservative side of marginal? The original idea of the New Town movement as envisaged by the Reith Committee was that they should be divided into neighbourhoods each of which would be socially mixed, rather than there being clearly working class and middle class ‘sides of town’. This never worked very well, and in Crawley the wards have distinct electoral characteristics and histories. Labour have usually won strongholds like Langley Green, Ifield, Broadfield (site of the football club) and a newer residential area, Bewbush in the west of the town, developed from the 1970s. On the other hand New Town neighbourhood wards such as Pound Hill and Furnace Green have tended to be Conservative, as has Three Bridges, which has the core of an older community surrounded in the New Town expansion. Moreover there has continued to be extensive private development in areas such as Forge Wood and Maidenbower, which is the strongest Tory ward of all.
Crawley’s growth has continued in recent years, and it has become far less of a stereotypical New Town. Its economic base is diverse and traditionally healthy, supporting a lower than average unemployment rate; Gatwick Airport is in the constituency, and provides many jobs. It has also seen a great change in housing tenure as and since the New Town Development Corporation homes have been sold off; in 1971 the borough had two-thirds of its housing stock in the public sector, in 1981 54%, and in 1991 just 30%; by 2011, the most recent census, the socially rented housing proportion was 23.9%. All in all, the secular trend has been politically rightwards, and although Labour can still control the borough council, it would seem that only a very substantial recovery to the strength of the ‘New Labour’ years will make them competitive in this seat in parliamentary terms, core Crawley though it may be.
2011 Census
Owner-occupied 59.0% 490/650
Private rented 14.5% 301/650
Social rented 23.9% 127/650
White 79.9% 527/650
Black 3.3% 132/650
Asian 13.0% 89/650
Managerial & professional 28.8%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.2%
Degree level 21.5% 456/650
No qualifications 20.1% 452/650
Students 6.2% 443/650
Age 65+ 12.6% 555/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 57.0% 438/573
Private rented 20.1% 201/573
Social rented 22.9% 96/573
White 73.4%
Black 4.5%
Asian 15.4%
Managerial & professional 28.7% 381/573
Routine & Semi-routine 27.8% 151/573
Degree level 27.6% 405/573
No qualifications 17.9% 283/573
General election 2019: Crawley
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Henry Smith 27,040 54.2 +3.6
Labour Peter Lamb 18,680 37.4 -8.3
Liberal Democrats Khalil Yousuf 2,728 5.5 +1.7
Green Iain Dickson 1,451 2.9 +2.9
C Majority 8,360 16.8 +11.9
Turnout 50,103 67.2 -1.2
Conservative hold
Swing +5.9 Lab to C
However, even though Crawley constituency’s boundaries have remained coterminous with the local authority borough ever since 1997, it has become clear that Labour only tend to win the seat when they win the general election itself. Laura Moffatt’s majority dropped sharply in both 2001 and 2005, when it generated the closest result of any of the 650 seats – a lead of just 37 votes or 0.1% of the poll. Since 2010 Crawley has been won four times by the Conservative Henry Smith. His majority has never been less than 2.457 (2017) and in December 2019 he increased his lead to a comfortable 8,360. Labour would require a swing of over eight per cent to regain Crawley on current boundaries - which are very likely to be retained in the next review as it is currently within five per cent of the English norm.
Why has Crawley turned out to be – or perhaps turned into – a seat clearly on the Conservative side of marginal? The original idea of the New Town movement as envisaged by the Reith Committee was that they should be divided into neighbourhoods each of which would be socially mixed, rather than there being clearly working class and middle class ‘sides of town’. This never worked very well, and in Crawley the wards have distinct electoral characteristics and histories. Labour have usually won strongholds like Langley Green, Ifield, Broadfield (site of the football club) and a newer residential area, Bewbush in the west of the town, developed from the 1970s. On the other hand New Town neighbourhood wards such as Pound Hill and Furnace Green have tended to be Conservative, as has Three Bridges, which has the core of an older community surrounded in the New Town expansion. Moreover there has continued to be extensive private development in areas such as Forge Wood and Maidenbower, which is the strongest Tory ward of all.
Crawley’s growth has continued in recent years, and it has become far less of a stereotypical New Town. Its economic base is diverse and traditionally healthy, supporting a lower than average unemployment rate; Gatwick Airport is in the constituency, and provides many jobs. It has also seen a great change in housing tenure as and since the New Town Development Corporation homes have been sold off; in 1971 the borough had two-thirds of its housing stock in the public sector, in 1981 54%, and in 1991 just 30%; by 2011, the most recent census, the socially rented housing proportion was 23.9%. All in all, the secular trend has been politically rightwards, and although Labour can still control the borough council, it would seem that only a very substantial recovery to the strength of the ‘New Labour’ years will make them competitive in this seat in parliamentary terms, core Crawley though it may be.
2011 Census
Owner-occupied 59.0% 490/650
Private rented 14.5% 301/650
Social rented 23.9% 127/650
White 79.9% 527/650
Black 3.3% 132/650
Asian 13.0% 89/650
Managerial & professional 28.8%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.2%
Degree level 21.5% 456/650
No qualifications 20.1% 452/650
Students 6.2% 443/650
Age 65+ 12.6% 555/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 57.0% 438/573
Private rented 20.1% 201/573
Social rented 22.9% 96/573
White 73.4%
Black 4.5%
Asian 15.4%
Managerial & professional 28.7% 381/573
Routine & Semi-routine 27.8% 151/573
Degree level 27.6% 405/573
No qualifications 17.9% 283/573
General election 2019: Crawley
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Henry Smith 27,040 54.2 +3.6
Labour Peter Lamb 18,680 37.4 -8.3
Liberal Democrats Khalil Yousuf 2,728 5.5 +1.7
Green Iain Dickson 1,451 2.9 +2.9
C Majority 8,360 16.8 +11.9
Turnout 50,103 67.2 -1.2
Conservative hold
Swing +5.9 Lab to C
