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Post by islington on Jul 2, 2021 16:31:03 GMT
Yes, and that also has the merit that no seat involves more than one split ward.
Batley was actually part of the Dewsbury seat from 1868 to 1918, so there's (remote) precedent.
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Post by minionofmidas on Jul 2, 2021 16:49:05 GMT
Yes, and that also has the merit that no seat involves more than one split ward. Batley was actually part of the Dewsbury seat from 1868 to 1918, so there's (remote) precedent. Andrew's preview from yesterday disagrees? (I don't know who's right.)
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jul 2, 2021 17:05:50 GMT
Yes, and that also has the merit that no seat involves more than one split ward. Batley was actually part of the Dewsbury seat from 1868 to 1918, so there's (remote) precedent. Andrew's preview from yesterday disagrees? (I don't know who's right.) I was going to say the same but I checked the Vision of Britain site and still don't know who's right!
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jul 2, 2021 17:07:34 GMT
Henry Pelling supports islington. The maps of the area are very confusing
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Post by islington on Jul 2, 2021 17:14:43 GMT
Here's the 1867 Commission's map including Batley in the newly-created Dewsbury seat (outlined in red). This was implemented by the 1868 Boundaries Act.
And here it is again, in a map from c1895, having survived unaltered the huge boundary upheaval of 1885.
This arrangement lasted until 1918 when the Batley & Morley seat was created.
(I'm afraid I missed the said preview. Which Andrew?)
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Post by minionofmidas on Jul 2, 2021 17:21:01 GMT
Andrew's preview from yesterday disagrees? (I don't know who's right.) I was going to say the same but I checked the Vision of Britain site and still don't know who's right! Technically both are right, though I am sad to say that really andrewteale is wrong. Remember that until 1918 all boroughs (bar Bristol, Norwich and Nottingham, bemusingly) were also part of a county constituency - though only certain classes of property owners got an additional county vote. The newly created borough of Dewsbury, according to the 1868 act, consisted of the Townships of Dewsbury, Batley, and Soothill (never heard of it). It was retained unchanged in 1885. Batley MB and indeed Dewsbury MB were also part of the Morley county constituency from 1885, legally speaking, but... (Of course, how far did the Township of Batley extend in 1868? No idea.) (Also, ninja'd)
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Post by islington on Jul 2, 2021 18:12:55 GMT
I was going to say the same but I checked the Vision of Britain site and still don't know who's right! Technically both are right, though I am sad to say that really andrewteale is wrong. Remember that until 1918 all boroughs ( bar Bristol, Norwich and Nottingham, bemusingly) were also part of a county constituency - though only certain classes of property owners got an additional county vote. The newly created borough of Dewsbury, according to the 1868 act, consisted of the Townships of Dewsbury, Batley, and Soothill (never heard of it). It was retained unchanged in 1885. Batley MB and indeed Dewsbury MB were also part of the Morley county constituency from 1885, legally speaking, but... (Of course, how far did the Township of Batley extend in 1868? No idea.) (Also, ninja'd) We are wandering slightly from the subject of the thread, which obviously is entirely without precedent on this site, but the bit in bold is actually less bemusing than it might seem at first.
Exeter was also in this category, in addition to Bristol, Norwich and Nottingham; also Lichfield until it was abolished as a Parliamentary Borough in 1885.
What these places had in common is that they were counties corporate, which meant that in strict terms they were not part of the parent counties with which they might normally be associated. There were actually 17 counties corporate in England at the time of the Great Reform Act and it was a long-standing grievance that although possession of a 40/- freehold was otherwise a national franchise conferring a county vote, if the said freehold were located within a county corporate, the freeholder did not necessarily get a vote in respect of it because, strictly speaking, it was not within the boundary of any county represented in Parliament.
There were exceptions: the charters of Canterbury and Poole provided that their county corporate status did not apply for electoral purposes, so any 40/- freeholders in their areas could vote as part of Kent and Dorset; in York a similar provision applied in respect of part of the county corporate, the Ainsty, but not the city proper. And in five counties corporate, the issue did not arise because their electoral franchise, as boroughs, in addition to the usual mess of borough-voting qualifications prior to 1832, included any 40/- freeholders within their area.
The 1832 Act maintained the 40/- freehold as a national county qualification and addressed the long-standing grievance about counties corporate by providing that in most cases, 40/- freeholders within a county corporate could vote in the relevant division of the parent county - in other words, it applied the arrangement that already existed in Canterbury and Poole. However, the 1832 Act also provided that no elector could vote twice in respect of a single holding, and that if the holding was located in a borough and qualified him (it was always 'him' back then) for both the borough and the county, then the borough qualification took priority and he could not vote in the county in respect of that holding.
But since the 1832 Act also continued the 40/- freehold as a borough-voting qualification in the five corporate counties where it already existed, this meant that there was no point in assigning these five boroughs to any county since anyone with a county-voting qualification would also qualify to vote for the borough and this borough entitlement would override the county entitlement. Therefore these five boroughs were omitted from the schedule in the 1832 Act which assigned the other twelve corporate counties (for electoral purposes only) to a county division.
It was a live issue at the time, shown by the fact that when, later in the 1830s, Berwick was made an 18th county corporate, great care was taken to stipulate that for electoral purposes it would remain within the county division of N Northumberland.
When Lichfield was abolished in 1885 it was assigned to the relevant division of Staffs but the other four maintained their special status outside any Parliamentary County until 1918, when the expansion of the franchise meant that the old property qualifications were no longer relevant and all Parliamentary Boroughs ceased to be part of Parliamentary Counties.
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Post by andrewteale on Jul 2, 2021 18:21:05 GMT
This was the 1885 Commission map for the Morley seat: It would appear that I got that one wrong.
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Post by islington on Jul 2, 2021 20:06:35 GMT
This was the 1885 Commission map for the Morley seat: It would appear that I got that one wrong. Thanks for the map, which nicely illustrates the point minionofmidas was making. The Parliamentary Borough of Dewsbury, shown in grey (and note the same outline as in the two maps I posted) was also part of the Morley Division of Yorkshire; so that anyone with a 40/- freehold within the borough but not qualified as a borough voter (usually because of not being resident) might have somewhere to exercise his county vote (for which residence was not required). The map also shows a similar relationship between the Parliamentary Borough of Wakefield and the Normanton Division of Yorkshire. These arrangements seem strange to our modern minds but they make sense in a system where voting depended on property qualifications that differed between counties and boroughs. So andrewteale was not wrong, strictly speaking, to say that Batley was in the Morley seat from 1885; but only in the sense that the whole of the Dewsbury seat was included. In practice, the number of county votes cast in respect of holdings in Parliamentary Boroughs was very small and for most practical purposes it probably makes more sense to treat them as separate non-overlapping areas. They were usually shown that way on contemporary maps, and even the census (a highly official document) gives the population of county divisions exclusive of any boroughs they contain. The official names, too, almost always reflect the area outside any boroughs.
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Post by andrew111 on Jul 4, 2021 10:50:09 GMT
Is splitting four Kirklees wards beyond the pale? Colne Valley as per BCE Huddersfield as per BCE less Fenay Bridge area of Almondbury (AL06, AL07, AL08); electorate 71558. Batley & Spen current seat less Norristhorpe area of Heckmondwike ward (HE05, HE06); electorate 76386. Dewsbury as per BCE, plus Fenay Bridge, less Heckmondwike "proper", plus north part of Kirkburton ward (Flockton etc., KB04, KB07, KB10). Electorate 70495. Ossett & Denby Dale as per BCE, less Flockton etc. Electorate 71595. Obviously you could just take more of one of Almondbury or Dalton into Dewsbury rather than splitting them both, so it could just be three, but that'd take the Dewsbury seat deeper into Huddersfield. Looks possible, but it is not the "Fenay Bridge area" which extends on both sides of the beck which bounds those polling districts. It is however the Lepton Ward of Kirkburton Parish Council..
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Post by andrew111 on Jul 4, 2021 11:55:19 GMT
Say, like this ...?
Inelegant? Certainly. But it does the business with only two splits.
That looks like 3 ward splits to me.. Heckmondwike, Dalton and Almondbury where it looks like you took AL08?
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Post by islington on Jul 4, 2021 18:38:08 GMT
Say, like this ...?
Inelegant? Certainly. But it does the business with only two splits.
That looks like 3 ward splits to me.. Heckmondwike, Dalton and Almondbury where it looks like you took AL08? No, Almondbury wholly in Huddersfield in this plan. But anyway, I'm switching allegiance to the superior plan, also involving only two splits, suggested by East Anglian Lefty on Friday.
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Post by andrew111 on Jul 4, 2021 19:08:57 GMT
That looks like 3 ward splits to me.. Heckmondwike, Dalton and Almondbury where it looks like you took AL08? No, Almondbury wholly in Huddersfield in this plan. But anyway, I'm switching allegiance to the superior plan, also involving only two splits, suggested by East Anglian Lefty on Friday. OK, I guess you added DA04 to Kirkheaton to get that shape. Do we have numbers for Lefty's proposal? I doubt the new MP for Batley and Spen will like it..
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Post by islington on Jul 4, 2021 19:31:03 GMT
I make it -
Mirfield and Spen - 72169 Dewsbury and Batley - 70227 Ossett and Denby Dale - 71595
Huddersfield and Colne Valley as per the BCE.
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Post by minionofmidas on Jul 5, 2021 5:03:46 GMT
No, Almondbury wholly in Huddersfield in this plan. But anyway, I'm switching allegiance to the superior plan, also involving only two splits, suggested by East Anglian Lefty on Friday. OK, I guess you added DA04 to Kirkheaton to get that shape. Do we have numbers for Lefty's proposal? I doubt the new MP for Batley and Spen will like it.. i presume dewsbury & batley wd be notional labour though? Lots of new territory o/c.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 5, 2021 9:02:36 GMT
I don't think it would meet the 40% bar to be considered to have a presumptive claim on the seat, so there would have to be an open selection. And I would have to imagine that a lot of local councillors would be interested in the selection for a seat which would probably have the highest Asian share of the electorate aside from Bradford West.
Speaking of Bradford, I've just noticed that if you split Clayton & Fairweather Green and Thornton & Allerton into their component parts and put Clayton and Thornton with Bradford South and Fairweather Green and Allerton with Bradford West, you get a Bradford West with an electorate of 70769 and a South with an electorate of 69808. Both look more coherent on a map than the initial proposals and I see no obvious reason to believe they'd be pitchfork bait, so if anybody is sticking a submission in for the area, please feel free to steal that.
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Post by islington on Jul 5, 2021 9:15:21 GMT
I don't think it would meet the 40% bar to be considered to have a presumptive claim on the seat, so there would have to be an open selection. And I would have to imagine that a lot of local councillors would be interested in the selection for a seat which would probably have the highest Asian share of the electorate aside from Bradford West. Speaking of Bradford, I've just noticed that if you split Clayton & Fairweather Green and Thornton & Allerton into their component parts and put Clayton and Thornton with Bradford South and Fairweather Green and Allerton with Bradford West, you get a Bradford West with an electorate of 70769 and a South with an electorate of 69808. Both look more coherent on a map than the initial proposals and I see no obvious reason to believe they'd be pitchfork bait, so if anybody is sticking a submission in for the area, please feel free to steal that. EAL - Having enough on my plate elsewhere I've decided not to do a submission in Y&H but I was hoping you might, since your Kirklees suggestion is excellent and you want to do something about Wetherby.
As for Bradford, if you're OK with splitting wards surely the simplest and least disruptive solution is to hive off the PD tucked into the southeastern corner of Lt Horton ward (I've forgotten its number but you'll se the one I mean if you check a map). If you switch that single PD into Bradford S, with which it's a perfect fit, then the whole of the rest of Bradford can stay as it is.
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Post by andrew111 on Jul 5, 2021 9:39:46 GMT
OK, I guess you added DA04 to Kirkheaton to get that shape. Do we have numbers for Lefty's proposal? I doubt the new MP for Batley and Spen will like it.. i presume dewsbury & batley wd be notional labour though? Lots of new territory o/c. The new Dewsbury, losing Kirkburton and Denby Dale and gaining Heckmondwike looks safe Labour anyway, unless the fail to get the Asian vote back. Mirfield would be the only ward with Tory councillors. Coralling opposition voters into a Batley and Dewsbury seat is what gerrymandering is all about in the USA (not that I think the EC does that, but this option is likely to be favoured by the Tories)
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 5, 2021 9:40:02 GMT
I can muck around with spreadsheets and a map, but I don't know Yorkshire nearly well enough to want to make my own submission. I'm going to confine myself to the Eastern region (ignoring Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, because again I don't know the areas concerned) and possibly Northants if further experimentation produces an obviously better map than the initial proposals.
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Post by andrew111 on Jul 5, 2021 9:48:05 GMT
By the way there is already a split ward in Kirklees. There is a housing complex with about 50 electors in the mismatch shown below who vote in Huddersfield constituency but in Kirkburton ward www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/election-maps/gb/
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