Post by Robert Waller on Dec 6, 2022 19:08:55 GMT
Probably more people have seen the countryside of the large rural division of South West Norfolk than they realise. Although the classic TV comedy series Dad’s Army was clearly set on the coast of south east England, the sections out of studio were filmed in the heathland around the town of Thetford, where the cast stayed in the Bell Hotel. Some of the adventures of the local MP recently may remind us of the escapades of Walker, Pike, Godfrey and co, and Jones’s rattled cry of ‘Don’t panic!’ may have been very appropriate; but the constituency itself is likely to remain more loyal than her wider party did.
In fact, there are at least three distinct types of countryside in the SW Norfolk seat. The part around Thetford, which is the largest town (population over 24,000 following its expansion as a London overspill receptor in the 1960s and 1970s – it had little over 5,000 in 1961) is known as the Breckland. The local council is also so named; brecks are patches of rough sandy ground, poor for agricultural purposes though augmented with large tracts of pine trees in the 20th century, as in Thetford Forest. There is also a large military ‘no-go area’ rather like Salisbury Plain. It is easy to see why it was convenient to do the Dad’s Army location work here, though it really looks nothing like Kent or Sussex.
Secondly, the SW Norfolk constituency extends north westwards to include much of the low lying Norfolk Fen country. The main town here is Downham Market (10,000 residents), and the impression is very similar to the Cambridgeshire fenland seats just over the county boundary: immensely flat and low, with long straight roads and lanes punctuated by right angled turns, a lot of water and an enormous sky.
Finally, in the north east of the seat we find the third significant settlement, Swaffham (8,000). The terrain here is more typical central Norfolk rolling pasture and arable, corn and oak countryside, green and gold in summer and dotted with far more small villages and parish churches than might be expected, a legacy of Norfolk’s distant history as the economic heart of medieval and early modern England’s wool industry and agricultural production.
All these sections have been strongly Conservative in recent elections, but that has not always been the case. In fact, SW Norfolk has a fascinating electoral history, which will be unexpected to some. If we start with the 1945 general election, Labour’s Sidney Dye ousted the Conservative MP Somerset De Chair by a mere 53 vote margin. So far, no surprises; 1945 was a Labour landside, and more unlikely gains were made then with larger majorities. Further extremely close two-way contests followed. In 1950, Dye increased his lead to fully 260 votes. Then a Conservative farmer, Denys Bullard, gained South West by another three figure margin, 442, in 1951.
At this point, though, Norfolk started to ‘do different’. In 1955, when nationally the Tories again increased their overall majority to around 60 seats, Sidney Dye actually regained SW Norfolk, by 193. This was the fourth lead of less than 500 in a row. Dye died in December 1958, and the in the resulting byelection in March 1959 Labour’s Albert Hilton held it with the unprecedented lead of 1,354. What is more Hilton won in the general election later in 1959 too, with a majority back down to the accustomed wafer: 78 votes. By the national swing this shouldn’t have happened as Harold Macmillan presided over an increase of the Tory overall majority to around 100. In 1964, though, just when Harold Wilson came to power with a solid pro-Labour swing, the Conservatives actually gained SW Norfolk against the strong tide. Paul Hawkins won – by 123 votes! In 1966, again against the national movement to a Labour landslide, Hawkins increased his majority to a princely 775. At this point this constituency had recorded eight majorities since the war of less than 1,500 votes, seven of them less than 1,000, and had swung in a different direction from the rest of the country five times (not including the byelection).
How do we account for this extraordinary behaviour? The first thing to note is that both Sidney Dye and Albert Hilton were officials of the National Union of Agricultural Workers and had themselves been farm workers in Norfolk. The county had an unusually high degree of agricultural unionism compared with other parts of Britain, and the Labour party probably were stronger in Norfolk up to the 1960s than in any other rural area apart, possibly, from Highland crofters. Also, Norfolk has long been proud of its contrarian character, seen positively in the phrase ‘Norfolk do different’ and more negatively in the legend or myth about doctors certifying people as ‘normal for Norfolk’. However, in the period since the 1960s electoral politics really has been normalised. For example Paul Hawkins built up his majority after the first two narrow victories and by 1987 the new MP Gillian Shephard won a majority of over 20,000 for the Conservative party. She held on by 2,464 against the first Blair landslide in 1997. In December 2019 Liz Truss won by over 26,000 - and took a position of having the 11th safest Tory seat anywhere into her brief Premiership.
Therefore not only is SW Norfolk no longer anywhere near marginal, but it now appears to be among the safest Tory seats in Britain. This can be understood if we look at its demographic characteristics. By the time of the 2011 census only 2,067 people were listed as employed in agriculture, forestry or fishing, just 4% of all workers. Nearly twice as many were in public administration and defence. Not only is there the Stanford Training Area in the Breckland as mentioned above, but RAF Marham is in the constituency. The USAAF base at Lakenheath is just over the Suffolk border and there are an unusually large number of residents in this seat born in North America. Many British forces veterans have also settled in Norfolk. More important in explaining the extremely strong Conservative share in 2019 were the educational statistics: the number of residents with degrees ranks 538th out of the 573 seats in England and Wales. There are relatively very few full time students. The seat is older than average and has very few ethnic minority residents, and that has hardly changed over the past 10 years. It is actually well on the working class side of the occupational analysis. Connected to all this was a Leave majority over Remain in the 2016 referendum of almost exactly two to one. A long term trend to the Conservatives was given a supercharged boost in the Boris ‘get Brexit done’ election.
Initially the expansion of Thetford may have led some to believe that it may give succour to a Labour revival, but more likely it was part of the process by which SW Norfolk came to vote on national lines, as the urban proportion of the seat has increased.
www.keystonetrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/thetfordprofile.pdf
True, five of Labour’s six seats in Breckland council currently (December 2022) represent Thetford wards, but five of these were gains in 2022 itself, including a 398-383 win in a straight fight in a byelection in the engagingly named Thetford Boudica ward in mid July (with a predictably low turnout of 21%). The western half of Thetford was still recording a social housing proportion of over 30% in the 2100 census. But all the other wards were won by the Tories save an Independent coming top of the poll in the three councillor Swaffham. The two Green victories on Breckland are not within the SW seat.
Over in the ‘Fens’ sector, which is part of the King’s Lynn & West Norfolk council area, there were a large number of Independent victories in May 2019, but no party returned councillors apart from the Conservative. Unfortunately local government boundary changes mean that there is no longer a ward with the wondrous name of Wimbotsham with Fincham Wissey. In the most recent local contests, the Norfolk county council elections of May 2021, Labour held Thetford West but the Conservatives won all six other divisions entirely within the SW seat easily, including Thetford East. In The Brecks, for example, they took 71% in a four way contest, which is an impressive show of strength.
With the kind of dominance the Conservatives have built up over the decades in this quadrant of the county, boundary changes cannot make a significant difference to the safety of the representation. What is more, the revised proposals of November 2022 reduced the recommended changes to South West Norfolk constituency only being changed from the existing boundary to realign to new local government ward boundaries.
The MP’s truncated term as Prime Minister may not have been either heroic or triumphant, but South West Norfolk should pose no problem for her if she wishes to remain in the Commons, or for another Conservative candidate if she should decide to move on. Those days of dramatically close and even quixotic results seem long past, as much coloured by nostalgia and historical distance as was Dad’s Army itself.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 20.9% 101/650
Owner-occupied 68.1% 280/650
Private rented 16.0% 234/650
Social rented 13.4% 418/650
White 97.2% 205/650
Black 0.5% 378/650
Asian 0.9% 551/650
Born in N America/Caribbean 2.5% 18/650
Managerial & professional 25.7%
Routine & Semi-routine 32.2%
Employed in agriculture 4.2% 39/650
Degree level 17.7% 575/650
No qualifications 29.1% 121/650
Students 5.1% 629/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 67.1% 256/573
Private rented 19.3% 232/573
Social rented 13.6% 353/573
White 96.2%
Black 0.5%
Asian 0.9%
Managerial & professional 27.6% 418/573
Routine & Semi-routine 29.8% 91/573
Degree level 22.5% 538/573
No qualifications 23.7% 73/573
General Election 2019: South West Norfolk
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Liz Truss 35,507 69.0 +6.2
Labour Emily Blake 9,312 18.1 −9.7
Liberal Democrats Josie Ratcliffe 4,166 8.1 +3.6
Green Pallavi Devulapalli 1,645 3.2 New
Monster Raving Loony Earl Elvis of Outwell 836 1.6 New
C Majority 26,195 50.9 +15.9
2019 electorate 78,455
Turnout 51,466 65.6 −1.7
Conservative hold
Swing 8.0 Lab to C
In fact, there are at least three distinct types of countryside in the SW Norfolk seat. The part around Thetford, which is the largest town (population over 24,000 following its expansion as a London overspill receptor in the 1960s and 1970s – it had little over 5,000 in 1961) is known as the Breckland. The local council is also so named; brecks are patches of rough sandy ground, poor for agricultural purposes though augmented with large tracts of pine trees in the 20th century, as in Thetford Forest. There is also a large military ‘no-go area’ rather like Salisbury Plain. It is easy to see why it was convenient to do the Dad’s Army location work here, though it really looks nothing like Kent or Sussex.
Secondly, the SW Norfolk constituency extends north westwards to include much of the low lying Norfolk Fen country. The main town here is Downham Market (10,000 residents), and the impression is very similar to the Cambridgeshire fenland seats just over the county boundary: immensely flat and low, with long straight roads and lanes punctuated by right angled turns, a lot of water and an enormous sky.
Finally, in the north east of the seat we find the third significant settlement, Swaffham (8,000). The terrain here is more typical central Norfolk rolling pasture and arable, corn and oak countryside, green and gold in summer and dotted with far more small villages and parish churches than might be expected, a legacy of Norfolk’s distant history as the economic heart of medieval and early modern England’s wool industry and agricultural production.
All these sections have been strongly Conservative in recent elections, but that has not always been the case. In fact, SW Norfolk has a fascinating electoral history, which will be unexpected to some. If we start with the 1945 general election, Labour’s Sidney Dye ousted the Conservative MP Somerset De Chair by a mere 53 vote margin. So far, no surprises; 1945 was a Labour landside, and more unlikely gains were made then with larger majorities. Further extremely close two-way contests followed. In 1950, Dye increased his lead to fully 260 votes. Then a Conservative farmer, Denys Bullard, gained South West by another three figure margin, 442, in 1951.
At this point, though, Norfolk started to ‘do different’. In 1955, when nationally the Tories again increased their overall majority to around 60 seats, Sidney Dye actually regained SW Norfolk, by 193. This was the fourth lead of less than 500 in a row. Dye died in December 1958, and the in the resulting byelection in March 1959 Labour’s Albert Hilton held it with the unprecedented lead of 1,354. What is more Hilton won in the general election later in 1959 too, with a majority back down to the accustomed wafer: 78 votes. By the national swing this shouldn’t have happened as Harold Macmillan presided over an increase of the Tory overall majority to around 100. In 1964, though, just when Harold Wilson came to power with a solid pro-Labour swing, the Conservatives actually gained SW Norfolk against the strong tide. Paul Hawkins won – by 123 votes! In 1966, again against the national movement to a Labour landslide, Hawkins increased his majority to a princely 775. At this point this constituency had recorded eight majorities since the war of less than 1,500 votes, seven of them less than 1,000, and had swung in a different direction from the rest of the country five times (not including the byelection).
How do we account for this extraordinary behaviour? The first thing to note is that both Sidney Dye and Albert Hilton were officials of the National Union of Agricultural Workers and had themselves been farm workers in Norfolk. The county had an unusually high degree of agricultural unionism compared with other parts of Britain, and the Labour party probably were stronger in Norfolk up to the 1960s than in any other rural area apart, possibly, from Highland crofters. Also, Norfolk has long been proud of its contrarian character, seen positively in the phrase ‘Norfolk do different’ and more negatively in the legend or myth about doctors certifying people as ‘normal for Norfolk’. However, in the period since the 1960s electoral politics really has been normalised. For example Paul Hawkins built up his majority after the first two narrow victories and by 1987 the new MP Gillian Shephard won a majority of over 20,000 for the Conservative party. She held on by 2,464 against the first Blair landslide in 1997. In December 2019 Liz Truss won by over 26,000 - and took a position of having the 11th safest Tory seat anywhere into her brief Premiership.
Therefore not only is SW Norfolk no longer anywhere near marginal, but it now appears to be among the safest Tory seats in Britain. This can be understood if we look at its demographic characteristics. By the time of the 2011 census only 2,067 people were listed as employed in agriculture, forestry or fishing, just 4% of all workers. Nearly twice as many were in public administration and defence. Not only is there the Stanford Training Area in the Breckland as mentioned above, but RAF Marham is in the constituency. The USAAF base at Lakenheath is just over the Suffolk border and there are an unusually large number of residents in this seat born in North America. Many British forces veterans have also settled in Norfolk. More important in explaining the extremely strong Conservative share in 2019 were the educational statistics: the number of residents with degrees ranks 538th out of the 573 seats in England and Wales. There are relatively very few full time students. The seat is older than average and has very few ethnic minority residents, and that has hardly changed over the past 10 years. It is actually well on the working class side of the occupational analysis. Connected to all this was a Leave majority over Remain in the 2016 referendum of almost exactly two to one. A long term trend to the Conservatives was given a supercharged boost in the Boris ‘get Brexit done’ election.
Initially the expansion of Thetford may have led some to believe that it may give succour to a Labour revival, but more likely it was part of the process by which SW Norfolk came to vote on national lines, as the urban proportion of the seat has increased.
www.keystonetrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/thetfordprofile.pdf
True, five of Labour’s six seats in Breckland council currently (December 2022) represent Thetford wards, but five of these were gains in 2022 itself, including a 398-383 win in a straight fight in a byelection in the engagingly named Thetford Boudica ward in mid July (with a predictably low turnout of 21%). The western half of Thetford was still recording a social housing proportion of over 30% in the 2100 census. But all the other wards were won by the Tories save an Independent coming top of the poll in the three councillor Swaffham. The two Green victories on Breckland are not within the SW seat.
Over in the ‘Fens’ sector, which is part of the King’s Lynn & West Norfolk council area, there were a large number of Independent victories in May 2019, but no party returned councillors apart from the Conservative. Unfortunately local government boundary changes mean that there is no longer a ward with the wondrous name of Wimbotsham with Fincham Wissey. In the most recent local contests, the Norfolk county council elections of May 2021, Labour held Thetford West but the Conservatives won all six other divisions entirely within the SW seat easily, including Thetford East. In The Brecks, for example, they took 71% in a four way contest, which is an impressive show of strength.
With the kind of dominance the Conservatives have built up over the decades in this quadrant of the county, boundary changes cannot make a significant difference to the safety of the representation. What is more, the revised proposals of November 2022 reduced the recommended changes to South West Norfolk constituency only being changed from the existing boundary to realign to new local government ward boundaries.
The MP’s truncated term as Prime Minister may not have been either heroic or triumphant, but South West Norfolk should pose no problem for her if she wishes to remain in the Commons, or for another Conservative candidate if she should decide to move on. Those days of dramatically close and even quixotic results seem long past, as much coloured by nostalgia and historical distance as was Dad’s Army itself.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 20.9% 101/650
Owner-occupied 68.1% 280/650
Private rented 16.0% 234/650
Social rented 13.4% 418/650
White 97.2% 205/650
Black 0.5% 378/650
Asian 0.9% 551/650
Born in N America/Caribbean 2.5% 18/650
Managerial & professional 25.7%
Routine & Semi-routine 32.2%
Employed in agriculture 4.2% 39/650
Degree level 17.7% 575/650
No qualifications 29.1% 121/650
Students 5.1% 629/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 67.1% 256/573
Private rented 19.3% 232/573
Social rented 13.6% 353/573
White 96.2%
Black 0.5%
Asian 0.9%
Managerial & professional 27.6% 418/573
Routine & Semi-routine 29.8% 91/573
Degree level 22.5% 538/573
No qualifications 23.7% 73/573
General Election 2019: South West Norfolk
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Liz Truss 35,507 69.0 +6.2
Labour Emily Blake 9,312 18.1 −9.7
Liberal Democrats Josie Ratcliffe 4,166 8.1 +3.6
Green Pallavi Devulapalli 1,645 3.2 New
Monster Raving Loony Earl Elvis of Outwell 836 1.6 New
C Majority 26,195 50.9 +15.9
2019 electorate 78,455
Turnout 51,466 65.6 −1.7
Conservative hold
Swing 8.0 Lab to C
