Post by East Anglian Lefty on Oct 27, 2021 15:54:17 GMT
The Harwich and North Essex seat was created in 2010 as the successor to North Essex. That seat formed a doughnut around Colchester and had been Conservative since its creation in 1997. The Fifth Periodical Boundary Review removed the south-western section of the constituency around Tiptree, whilst adding Harwich from the former Harwich constituency (the bulk of which formed the new Clacton seat.)
These changes cannot be said to have made the seat more cohesive. At the most basic level, the constituency is not contiguous by road, since the areas on the western bank of the River Colne (Rowhedge, Fingringhoe and Mersea Island) cannot be reached from the rest of the constituency without passing through Colchester. Moreover, the ferryport of Harwich fits poorly with the rural satellites of Colchester which make up the rest of the seat. It's very much a seat created to make the neighbouring seats work better and this is likely to continue, as the provisional recommendations remove the discontinous portion of the seat but replace it with western portions of Colchester which have poor ties to most of the rest of the constituency.
Harwich was a medieval borough and has a background as a naval town, since the Stour Estuary forms an excellent natural harbour. It was a major naval base in the World Wars and the town's dockyard was active into the nineteenth century. There is still a ferry connection to Hook of Holland, although the long-term prospects of this service are uncertain and the service to Esbjerg was withdrawn a few years ago. The service is primarily propped up by freight users and there were plans to augment this with a container port terminal at Bathside Bay. However, the planning permission required the developers to first upgrade the A120, which made the scheme uneconomic and now that Thames Gateway is on-stream it's unlikely the project will come to fruition.
At a local level, Harwich's wards (one of which is shared with the former company town of Parkeston) are all held by Labour, but it's politically competitive and that local dominance is chiefly due to an effective local Labour Party, centred around Ivan Henderson, who was MP for Harwich 1997-2005. In addition to the Tories, UKIP have also got decent results here in the past and I would assume the town returned a healthy Leave vote.
A branch line connects Harwich (and the rather grandly named Harwich International station at Parkeston) to the mainline to Norwich at Manningtree. Manningtree is by some accounts the smallest town in the country, but that's only true if you think that the parish boundaries bear any relationship to the real extent of the town, which they very much do not. In actuality Manningtree forms a single settlement with the neighbouring villages of Mistley and Lawford. Lawford used to have a strong railway vote and accordingly was once the strongest Labour ward in the Tendring district. That hasn't been the case for several decades now, but it still returns somewhat better Labour results than the rest of the constituency.
This is very much not true of the villages further west in the Stour Valley. This area, often known as Constable Country after the 19th century landscape painter, is monolithically Conservative. It's a landscape of pleasant and very prosperous villages with social diversity limited to a hidden-away close or two of council housing in each village, which in most cases was originally built for agricultural labourers.
South of Manningtree, the constituency skirts the eastern edge of Colchester, on its path to meeting the Colne at Wivenhoe. Like Harwich, Wivenhoe was historically a shipbuilding town, although in its case the vessels in question were yachts and the local captains were once highly sought after as skippers during Cowes Week. The last yard didn't close until the 1980s, but it ceased to define the town a couple of generations earlier. These days it is much better known as the location of the University of Essex, whose main campus sits in Wivenhoe Park, between Wivenhoe and Colchester. These days more students reside in Colchester than in Wivenhoe, but there's still a decent amount of accommodation on campus and not all of the undergraduates have yet been priced out of Wivenhoe itself.
Wivenhoe has a somewhat bohemian reputation with all the accoutrements that suggests (large numbers of resident artists, an excellent bookshop, a nice Syrian cafe, a very pleasant community-run pub, etc. etc.) Its voting record also reflects that, as it has voted Labour more often than not in the past two decades. At a local level it has made a rapid turn to the Lib Dems in the past few years, who have somewhat confusingly managed to mobilise NIMBY opinion behind them and against a scheme they presided over whilst they led the borough council. In general elections it's still probably Labour who are the main challenger to the Tories here, although the Lib Dems (and indeed the Greens) have better prospects with the promiscuous progressives of Wivenhoe than they do with the pocketbook voters of Harwich.
Passing through the village of Alresford (mostly 1960s bungalows and the major Lib Dem stronghold in the constituency) we come to the fishing port of Brightlingsea. This used to be an island and the locals still resent the fact it isn't any more. I could make the usual inbreeding jokes for a couple of paragraphs, but instead I'll just say that whilst it's usually Tory, it's a fairly working-class town and given to a decent level of political volatility.
There's much less volatility on the other side of the river. Rowhedge is marginal, but usually votes Labour in local elections and is at worst competitive in national elections, whilst Mersea Island is even more Conservative than Constable Country. Unlike Brightlingsea, it actually is an island at high tide. There's been a causeway linking it to the mainland for about 1300 years and some day they will reconcile themselves to this. Historically the local economy was centred around fishing and whilst that is much diminished, the oyster fisheries remain nationally well-known.
Overall this is a prosperous area of pleasant villages and small towns. Whilst Labour can hold a narrow lead in most of the towns in good years, that's always likely to be outweighed by an immense Conservative lead in the villages and in better Conservative years they can sweep the towns too. In every election since its creation, the Tory majority has been over 10,000 and Labour have held second place (though they've made some frankly shocking decisions about candidate selection in some of those elections.) Looking forward, this isn't very much reason to expect that overall political picture to change.
These changes cannot be said to have made the seat more cohesive. At the most basic level, the constituency is not contiguous by road, since the areas on the western bank of the River Colne (Rowhedge, Fingringhoe and Mersea Island) cannot be reached from the rest of the constituency without passing through Colchester. Moreover, the ferryport of Harwich fits poorly with the rural satellites of Colchester which make up the rest of the seat. It's very much a seat created to make the neighbouring seats work better and this is likely to continue, as the provisional recommendations remove the discontinous portion of the seat but replace it with western portions of Colchester which have poor ties to most of the rest of the constituency.
Harwich was a medieval borough and has a background as a naval town, since the Stour Estuary forms an excellent natural harbour. It was a major naval base in the World Wars and the town's dockyard was active into the nineteenth century. There is still a ferry connection to Hook of Holland, although the long-term prospects of this service are uncertain and the service to Esbjerg was withdrawn a few years ago. The service is primarily propped up by freight users and there were plans to augment this with a container port terminal at Bathside Bay. However, the planning permission required the developers to first upgrade the A120, which made the scheme uneconomic and now that Thames Gateway is on-stream it's unlikely the project will come to fruition.
At a local level, Harwich's wards (one of which is shared with the former company town of Parkeston) are all held by Labour, but it's politically competitive and that local dominance is chiefly due to an effective local Labour Party, centred around Ivan Henderson, who was MP for Harwich 1997-2005. In addition to the Tories, UKIP have also got decent results here in the past and I would assume the town returned a healthy Leave vote.
A branch line connects Harwich (and the rather grandly named Harwich International station at Parkeston) to the mainline to Norwich at Manningtree. Manningtree is by some accounts the smallest town in the country, but that's only true if you think that the parish boundaries bear any relationship to the real extent of the town, which they very much do not. In actuality Manningtree forms a single settlement with the neighbouring villages of Mistley and Lawford. Lawford used to have a strong railway vote and accordingly was once the strongest Labour ward in the Tendring district. That hasn't been the case for several decades now, but it still returns somewhat better Labour results than the rest of the constituency.
This is very much not true of the villages further west in the Stour Valley. This area, often known as Constable Country after the 19th century landscape painter, is monolithically Conservative. It's a landscape of pleasant and very prosperous villages with social diversity limited to a hidden-away close or two of council housing in each village, which in most cases was originally built for agricultural labourers.
South of Manningtree, the constituency skirts the eastern edge of Colchester, on its path to meeting the Colne at Wivenhoe. Like Harwich, Wivenhoe was historically a shipbuilding town, although in its case the vessels in question were yachts and the local captains were once highly sought after as skippers during Cowes Week. The last yard didn't close until the 1980s, but it ceased to define the town a couple of generations earlier. These days it is much better known as the location of the University of Essex, whose main campus sits in Wivenhoe Park, between Wivenhoe and Colchester. These days more students reside in Colchester than in Wivenhoe, but there's still a decent amount of accommodation on campus and not all of the undergraduates have yet been priced out of Wivenhoe itself.
Wivenhoe has a somewhat bohemian reputation with all the accoutrements that suggests (large numbers of resident artists, an excellent bookshop, a nice Syrian cafe, a very pleasant community-run pub, etc. etc.) Its voting record also reflects that, as it has voted Labour more often than not in the past two decades. At a local level it has made a rapid turn to the Lib Dems in the past few years, who have somewhat confusingly managed to mobilise NIMBY opinion behind them and against a scheme they presided over whilst they led the borough council. In general elections it's still probably Labour who are the main challenger to the Tories here, although the Lib Dems (and indeed the Greens) have better prospects with the promiscuous progressives of Wivenhoe than they do with the pocketbook voters of Harwich.
Passing through the village of Alresford (mostly 1960s bungalows and the major Lib Dem stronghold in the constituency) we come to the fishing port of Brightlingsea. This used to be an island and the locals still resent the fact it isn't any more. I could make the usual inbreeding jokes for a couple of paragraphs, but instead I'll just say that whilst it's usually Tory, it's a fairly working-class town and given to a decent level of political volatility.
There's much less volatility on the other side of the river. Rowhedge is marginal, but usually votes Labour in local elections and is at worst competitive in national elections, whilst Mersea Island is even more Conservative than Constable Country. Unlike Brightlingsea, it actually is an island at high tide. There's been a causeway linking it to the mainland for about 1300 years and some day they will reconcile themselves to this. Historically the local economy was centred around fishing and whilst that is much diminished, the oyster fisheries remain nationally well-known.
Overall this is a prosperous area of pleasant villages and small towns. Whilst Labour can hold a narrow lead in most of the towns in good years, that's always likely to be outweighed by an immense Conservative lead in the villages and in better Conservative years they can sweep the towns too. In every election since its creation, the Tory majority has been over 10,000 and Labour have held second place (though they've made some frankly shocking decisions about candidate selection in some of those elections.) Looking forward, this isn't very much reason to expect that overall political picture to change.
