Post by Robert Waller on Oct 15, 2022 19:59:23 GMT
Ynys Mon, the island of Anglesey, is a very unusual constituency in a number of ways. Despite what some might well consider the long overdue decision to challenge the over-representation of Wales in the current set of boundary reviews, which has resulted in a reduction from 40 to 32 Westminster constituencies, the provisional proposals suggested that it should be retained without alteration. This was despite its electorate in March 2021, the date used to determine the target number, being just 52,415. This is over 20,000 fewer than the UK Electoral Quota, which was 73,393. Ynys Mon was deemed to fulfil the “special geographical considerations”. This was despite its separation from the mainland of north west Wales being as little as 250 metres at the narrowest point of the Menai Strait, and the existence of the well established Britannia bridge (rail, Robert Stephenson, opened 1850 ) and Menai Suspension Bridge (road, Thomas Telford, 1826). There have in the past been suggestions that the island could practically be paired with parts of the mainland, say the town of Bangor to form a constituency within the regular numerical range. It could therefore be argued that voters here have been fortunate.
The second area of distinctiveness lies in Ynys Mon’s electoral history, favouring several different parties and remaining a genuine three way marginal. Indeed during a long era of the island’s political history, a fourth party was more than competitive as well. It elected Liberals from 1868 to 1951, with only the brief interlude of an Independent Labour member from 1918 to 1923. The last of its Liberal MPs was David Lloyd George’s daughter Megan (1929-51); she later became a Labour member elsewhere (Carmarthen 1957-66). On Anglesey, the Liberals and their allies and successors have finished fourth, or worse, in each election since 1970. Lady Megan was beaten by Labour’s Cledwyn Hughes in 1951. He went on to be Welsh Secretary under Harold Wilson; but was unable to hand over his seat on his retirement in 1979 when it was gained by Keith Best, the first explicit Conservative (or Tory) to represent the island since 1725. Best’s tenure (though not, it turned out, his whole career) ended in 1987 in disgrace and conviction for multiple BT share applications, and yet another party seized the representation of Ynys Mon.
This was Plaid Cymru, in the shape of Ieuan Wyn Jones, who went in to be leader of his party from 2000 to 2012. After his retirement from Westminster to focus on the newly created National Assembly for Wales in 2001, though, he too (like Cledwyn Hughes) could not pass the seat on to a successor from his own party, and it returned to Labour. Despite frequent predictions of a regain, Plaid Cymru has not won Ynys Mon since. At first sight this is odd. Unlike the Scottish case, Welsh political nationalism has been strongly correlated with the speaking of the language. Plaid have only been able to win consistently in majority Welsh speaking areas. Yet that is exactly what this north western corner is, and they have had a lock on the mainland seats based on Caernarfon and Meirionnydd since 1974. Ynys Mon was registered as 57% Welsh speaking in the 2011 census, only a slight fall since 1981 (66%). Yet when Ieuan Wyn Jones’s successor Albert Owen in turn retired in 2019, Labour was supplanted not by the Nationalists but by that unionist party, the Conservatives, and by a candidate who was born in England and openly admitted not being able to speak Welsh – Virginia Crosbie. How can this turn of events be explained?
In fact, the Welsh language issue cuts two ways. Although more than half the Census respondents may have said they can speak it, those for whom it is their first or preferred tongue will be fewer. Evidence for this may be that Plaid Cymru’s basic support seems to be somewhere between 27% and 33%, which is what they have achieved in each of the six general elections between 2001 and 2019. Ieuan Wyn Jones is the only candidate who has ever exceeded this baseline, but we know that the island is a place where personal and incumbency votes can build up, as seen with the slump in party share following not only his retirement but those of Cledwyn Hughes and Albert Owen (Keith Best’s case was somewhat different). There is clearly some resentment by English speakers of the possibility of aggressive and exclusive linguistic nationalism, however disavowed by Plaid Cymru itself. Thus the Conservatives can win when they are much the stronger of the two main ‘unionist’ (or English speaking?) parties nationally, as in 1983, 1987 and 2019. It may also have helped them that Ynys Mon voted, if only by a narrow margin, for Brexit in 2016, 51% to 49%; UKIP had beaten the Liberal Democrats to fourth place in 2015 and 2017, comfortably so in the former year, polling over 5,000 votes and nearly 15%.
Nevertheless, it does feel like a surprise whenever the Tories take this seat. After all, they have no local election base to speak of. In the most recent elections for the local council, which is actually called Isle of Anglesey, they returned no councillors at all. The scores were Plaid Cymru 22, Independent 10, Labour 3, Liberal Democrat 1. It is possible that some of the Independents may actually be closet Conservatives by that is by no means certain. No-one has taken a council seat under the Conservative label since 2008. Council elections clearly have a strong personal element here and are of limited help in assessing the internal political patterns within the island. However clues are also available from the varying linguistic mosaic. The nationalists will be stronger in those parts with a higher Welsh speaking element. At the time of the last census, the Isle of Anglesey county council was rather helpfully divided in 40 small wards.
statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Welsh-Language/Census-Welsh-Language/welshspeakers-by-ediv-2011census
These figures reveal that the heartlands of the Welsh language here are generally in the interior of Ynys Mon, such as the town of Llangefni (which includes the Cefni, Tudur and Cyngar wards in the list above, the only ones categorized as over 80% Welsh-speaking) and villages like Llanfihangel Ysgeifiog and Llangristiolus, which is where Bodfordd ward is located, both well over 70%. There can be no surprise, then, that Plaid easily won the larger Cefni ward covering the whole of Llangefni by two to one over their nearest challengers in May 2022 (re-warding now means there are only 14 larger wards. The concordance is here (partly; there have been further ward boundary changes):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Anglesey_County_Council#Electoral_divisions
The Nationalists also dominated other ‘inland’ wards like Canolbarth Mon (Central Anglesey) and Talybolion.
By contrast, a much less Welsh speaking area is clearly the largest town on the island, the port and ferry terminal of Holyhead. Here there is a linkage between the 39% Welsh speaking figure and the fact that most of Labour’s councillors sit for wards on Holyhead Island, Ynys Gybi and Tref Gybi. Another clue is that of the five secondary schools on Ynys Mon/Anglesey, the only one where a majority of lessons and exams are in English is the one in Holyhead, even though it is now called Ysgol Uwchradd Caergybi instead of Holyhead County School. It claims that 12% of its pupils speak Welsh fluently and 4% have it as their first language, which is extremely low for the island and the former Gwynedd. Contrast Ysgol Gyfun Llangefni where over 70% spoke Welsh at home in 2018. Labour will of course also get a reasonable proportion of votes in Welsh speaking areas, just as the Liberals used to.
Identifying strong sources for the Conservatives must be rather indirect, but the clues point to the areas, largely on the coast, where the main economic base is tourism and where there are many second homes and retirement settlements. The number of these should not be underestimated. Ynys Mon only ranks 29th out of the current 40 Welsh seats for ‘born in Wales’, and 29% of residents in 2011 were actually born in England. The population is notably aged, in the top decile for those over 65 years and even higher, 20th out of 650 in the UK, for those retired. The lowest of the former wards as far as Welsh speaking is concerned are Beaumaris and Rhosneigr, on the east and west coasts respectively. Rather appropriately, Beaumaris is the site of the magnificent castle commissioned by Edward I to bring and secure English influence again the rebellious Welsh at the end if the 13th century. Even the name is Norman French. Holidaymakers from the days when the British seaside was a major and affordable attraction will remember Red Wharf Bay, Benllech Bay, Penmon Point and Puffin Island, Moelfre and round to Cemaes Bay. The Menai Strait communities also have a less Welsh feel, including Llanfair PG, with the suspicion that it lengthened its name further artificially to attract tourists; all the same, Plaid Cymru won the ward that contains it, with the compact name of Aethwy, in 2022. The one Liberal Democrat councillor on the island sits for the ward dominated by the town of Amlwch, something of a hybrid place - having been created originally as a port outlet for copper mining but now more tourist oriented.
For all the efforts above, the political makeup of Anglesey / Ynys Mon remains complex and rather opaque. There are clearly personal factors influencing elections at both local and parliamentary level, with evidence of a somewhat larger than average incumbency effect. This is literally an insular place. It is one of the top ten constituencies in the United Kingdom for those possessing no passport: no fewer than 29% in 2011. This is partly a function of the age structure, but also an odd mixture of deep Welsh rural commitment and incomers who find this part of Britain more attractive than more distant climes over a broader starch of sea. For outsiders it seems more remote now with the decline in tourism within Britain and a lower proportion travelling along the A5 to Holyhead and by the ferry to Ireland, given the availability and hence prevalence of relatively cheap flights. One feels that elections in this still under-sized seat will continue to spring surprises, at least to those of us who are strangers living off the island.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 22.4% 42/650
Owner-occupied 68.5% 266/650
Private rented 14.1% 331/650
Social rented 14.7% 365/650
White 98.2% 83/650
Black 0.1% 615/650
Asian 0.7% 588/650
Welsh speaking 57.2% 3/40
Born in Wales 66.4% 29/40
No passport 28.9% 8/650
Managerial & professional 28.3%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.9%
Employed in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply 2.9% 5/650
Retired 20.0% 19/650
Degree level 26.1% 309/650
No qualifications 24.2% 285/650
Students 6.7% 337/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 68.5% 215/573
Private rented 15.9% 392/573
Social rented 15.6% 266/573
White 98.1%
Black 0.2%
Asian 0.6%
Managerial & professional 30.3% 333/573
Routine & Semi-routine 25.8% 221/573
Degree level 32.3% 277/573
No qualifications 18.0% 276/573
2019 General election: Ynys Môn
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Virginia Crosbie 12,959 35.5 +7.7
Labour Mary Roberts 10,991 30.1 ―11.8
Plaid Cymru Aled ap Dafydd 10,418 28.5 +1.1
Brexit Party Helen Jenner 2,184 6.0 N/A
C Majority 1,968 5.4
Turnout 36,552 70.4 ―0.2
2019 Registered electors 51,925
Conservative gain from Labour
Swing 9.8 Lab to C
The second area of distinctiveness lies in Ynys Mon’s electoral history, favouring several different parties and remaining a genuine three way marginal. Indeed during a long era of the island’s political history, a fourth party was more than competitive as well. It elected Liberals from 1868 to 1951, with only the brief interlude of an Independent Labour member from 1918 to 1923. The last of its Liberal MPs was David Lloyd George’s daughter Megan (1929-51); she later became a Labour member elsewhere (Carmarthen 1957-66). On Anglesey, the Liberals and their allies and successors have finished fourth, or worse, in each election since 1970. Lady Megan was beaten by Labour’s Cledwyn Hughes in 1951. He went on to be Welsh Secretary under Harold Wilson; but was unable to hand over his seat on his retirement in 1979 when it was gained by Keith Best, the first explicit Conservative (or Tory) to represent the island since 1725. Best’s tenure (though not, it turned out, his whole career) ended in 1987 in disgrace and conviction for multiple BT share applications, and yet another party seized the representation of Ynys Mon.
This was Plaid Cymru, in the shape of Ieuan Wyn Jones, who went in to be leader of his party from 2000 to 2012. After his retirement from Westminster to focus on the newly created National Assembly for Wales in 2001, though, he too (like Cledwyn Hughes) could not pass the seat on to a successor from his own party, and it returned to Labour. Despite frequent predictions of a regain, Plaid Cymru has not won Ynys Mon since. At first sight this is odd. Unlike the Scottish case, Welsh political nationalism has been strongly correlated with the speaking of the language. Plaid have only been able to win consistently in majority Welsh speaking areas. Yet that is exactly what this north western corner is, and they have had a lock on the mainland seats based on Caernarfon and Meirionnydd since 1974. Ynys Mon was registered as 57% Welsh speaking in the 2011 census, only a slight fall since 1981 (66%). Yet when Ieuan Wyn Jones’s successor Albert Owen in turn retired in 2019, Labour was supplanted not by the Nationalists but by that unionist party, the Conservatives, and by a candidate who was born in England and openly admitted not being able to speak Welsh – Virginia Crosbie. How can this turn of events be explained?
In fact, the Welsh language issue cuts two ways. Although more than half the Census respondents may have said they can speak it, those for whom it is their first or preferred tongue will be fewer. Evidence for this may be that Plaid Cymru’s basic support seems to be somewhere between 27% and 33%, which is what they have achieved in each of the six general elections between 2001 and 2019. Ieuan Wyn Jones is the only candidate who has ever exceeded this baseline, but we know that the island is a place where personal and incumbency votes can build up, as seen with the slump in party share following not only his retirement but those of Cledwyn Hughes and Albert Owen (Keith Best’s case was somewhat different). There is clearly some resentment by English speakers of the possibility of aggressive and exclusive linguistic nationalism, however disavowed by Plaid Cymru itself. Thus the Conservatives can win when they are much the stronger of the two main ‘unionist’ (or English speaking?) parties nationally, as in 1983, 1987 and 2019. It may also have helped them that Ynys Mon voted, if only by a narrow margin, for Brexit in 2016, 51% to 49%; UKIP had beaten the Liberal Democrats to fourth place in 2015 and 2017, comfortably so in the former year, polling over 5,000 votes and nearly 15%.
Nevertheless, it does feel like a surprise whenever the Tories take this seat. After all, they have no local election base to speak of. In the most recent elections for the local council, which is actually called Isle of Anglesey, they returned no councillors at all. The scores were Plaid Cymru 22, Independent 10, Labour 3, Liberal Democrat 1. It is possible that some of the Independents may actually be closet Conservatives by that is by no means certain. No-one has taken a council seat under the Conservative label since 2008. Council elections clearly have a strong personal element here and are of limited help in assessing the internal political patterns within the island. However clues are also available from the varying linguistic mosaic. The nationalists will be stronger in those parts with a higher Welsh speaking element. At the time of the last census, the Isle of Anglesey county council was rather helpfully divided in 40 small wards.
statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Welsh-Language/Census-Welsh-Language/welshspeakers-by-ediv-2011census
These figures reveal that the heartlands of the Welsh language here are generally in the interior of Ynys Mon, such as the town of Llangefni (which includes the Cefni, Tudur and Cyngar wards in the list above, the only ones categorized as over 80% Welsh-speaking) and villages like Llanfihangel Ysgeifiog and Llangristiolus, which is where Bodfordd ward is located, both well over 70%. There can be no surprise, then, that Plaid easily won the larger Cefni ward covering the whole of Llangefni by two to one over their nearest challengers in May 2022 (re-warding now means there are only 14 larger wards. The concordance is here (partly; there have been further ward boundary changes):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Anglesey_County_Council#Electoral_divisions
The Nationalists also dominated other ‘inland’ wards like Canolbarth Mon (Central Anglesey) and Talybolion.
By contrast, a much less Welsh speaking area is clearly the largest town on the island, the port and ferry terminal of Holyhead. Here there is a linkage between the 39% Welsh speaking figure and the fact that most of Labour’s councillors sit for wards on Holyhead Island, Ynys Gybi and Tref Gybi. Another clue is that of the five secondary schools on Ynys Mon/Anglesey, the only one where a majority of lessons and exams are in English is the one in Holyhead, even though it is now called Ysgol Uwchradd Caergybi instead of Holyhead County School. It claims that 12% of its pupils speak Welsh fluently and 4% have it as their first language, which is extremely low for the island and the former Gwynedd. Contrast Ysgol Gyfun Llangefni where over 70% spoke Welsh at home in 2018. Labour will of course also get a reasonable proportion of votes in Welsh speaking areas, just as the Liberals used to.
Identifying strong sources for the Conservatives must be rather indirect, but the clues point to the areas, largely on the coast, where the main economic base is tourism and where there are many second homes and retirement settlements. The number of these should not be underestimated. Ynys Mon only ranks 29th out of the current 40 Welsh seats for ‘born in Wales’, and 29% of residents in 2011 were actually born in England. The population is notably aged, in the top decile for those over 65 years and even higher, 20th out of 650 in the UK, for those retired. The lowest of the former wards as far as Welsh speaking is concerned are Beaumaris and Rhosneigr, on the east and west coasts respectively. Rather appropriately, Beaumaris is the site of the magnificent castle commissioned by Edward I to bring and secure English influence again the rebellious Welsh at the end if the 13th century. Even the name is Norman French. Holidaymakers from the days when the British seaside was a major and affordable attraction will remember Red Wharf Bay, Benllech Bay, Penmon Point and Puffin Island, Moelfre and round to Cemaes Bay. The Menai Strait communities also have a less Welsh feel, including Llanfair PG, with the suspicion that it lengthened its name further artificially to attract tourists; all the same, Plaid Cymru won the ward that contains it, with the compact name of Aethwy, in 2022. The one Liberal Democrat councillor on the island sits for the ward dominated by the town of Amlwch, something of a hybrid place - having been created originally as a port outlet for copper mining but now more tourist oriented.
For all the efforts above, the political makeup of Anglesey / Ynys Mon remains complex and rather opaque. There are clearly personal factors influencing elections at both local and parliamentary level, with evidence of a somewhat larger than average incumbency effect. This is literally an insular place. It is one of the top ten constituencies in the United Kingdom for those possessing no passport: no fewer than 29% in 2011. This is partly a function of the age structure, but also an odd mixture of deep Welsh rural commitment and incomers who find this part of Britain more attractive than more distant climes over a broader starch of sea. For outsiders it seems more remote now with the decline in tourism within Britain and a lower proportion travelling along the A5 to Holyhead and by the ferry to Ireland, given the availability and hence prevalence of relatively cheap flights. One feels that elections in this still under-sized seat will continue to spring surprises, at least to those of us who are strangers living off the island.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 22.4% 42/650
Owner-occupied 68.5% 266/650
Private rented 14.1% 331/650
Social rented 14.7% 365/650
White 98.2% 83/650
Black 0.1% 615/650
Asian 0.7% 588/650
Welsh speaking 57.2% 3/40
Born in Wales 66.4% 29/40
No passport 28.9% 8/650
Managerial & professional 28.3%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.9%
Employed in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply 2.9% 5/650
Retired 20.0% 19/650
Degree level 26.1% 309/650
No qualifications 24.2% 285/650
Students 6.7% 337/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 68.5% 215/573
Private rented 15.9% 392/573
Social rented 15.6% 266/573
White 98.1%
Black 0.2%
Asian 0.6%
Managerial & professional 30.3% 333/573
Routine & Semi-routine 25.8% 221/573
Degree level 32.3% 277/573
No qualifications 18.0% 276/573
2019 General election: Ynys Môn
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Virginia Crosbie 12,959 35.5 +7.7
Labour Mary Roberts 10,991 30.1 ―11.8
Plaid Cymru Aled ap Dafydd 10,418 28.5 +1.1
Brexit Party Helen Jenner 2,184 6.0 N/A
C Majority 1,968 5.4
Turnout 36,552 70.4 ―0.2
2019 Registered electors 51,925
Conservative gain from Labour
Swing 9.8 Lab to C
