Post by Robert Waller on Dec 10, 2022 21:08:43 GMT
Situated in the angle of the south bank of the mouth of the River Tyne and the North Sea, South Shields is many towns in one. It has in its time been a shipbuilding metropolis at the mouth of the Tyne (which ended with the closure of John Readhead & Sons in 1984), an active coal-mining community (ditto with the closure of Westoe Colliery in 1993) and a holiday resort on the North Sea – Sandhaven Beach was even awarded Sunday Times Beach of the Year in July 2022. With the decline of its traditional industries it has turned to a still more varied economy with a large number of commercial estates as well as the still active port around Tyne Dock. There is even an attempt to market South Tyneside for tourism as ‘Catherine Cookson Country’, after the Tyne Dock born romantic novelist.
www.visitsouthtyneside.co.uk/article/12722
The subject matter for academic articles nowadays …
www.jstor.org/stable/40572194
Its politics, however, have not generally been so varied. Labour has held the parliamentary seat continuously since 1935, and their percentage lead has never been less than the 16% recorded in 1959 in a straight fight with the Conservatives – which still translated into a numerical majority of just under 9,000. Even in December 2019, when Labour seats in the North East such as Blyth Valley, Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield were falling, Emma Lewell-Buck retained a near five figure lead, with a swing of just over 5% to the Tories, below the national and regional average. This was despite a pro-Brexit share of 62% in 2016; this was reflected in the Brexit party’s strong showing three and a half years later, 17%; South Shields voters did give Labour a strong nudge, but their historic aversion to the Conservatives was maintained.
This pattern is also to be found in local government contests within the South Shields seat. It is currently made up of ten wards of South Tyneside metropolitan borough council. In May 2022 Labour won seven of these. However the three they lost were divided between Greens (Beacon & Bents and West Park) and the Independent gain from Labour in Westoe. What is more, if we look at the seven wards Labour won in these most recent contests, the Tories were second only in three of them. The Greens were second in Biddick & All Saints and Simonside & Rekendyke. Independents were runners up in Whiteleas and in Harton. There really is an absence of a Conservative party tradition in South Shields. They had a long tradition of not contesting municipal elections in South Shields. For many years they stood as Progressives, an anti-Labour label also used in South Yorkshire and elsewhere. The last time Progressives returned any councillors in this constituency was in May 2008, when they took two of the more middle class wards, Harton and West Park. I cannot find evidence of any success of candidates under the official Conservative party label at all; the one ward in South Tyneside they have won on a number of occasions, Cleadon & East Boldon, is in Jarrow constituency – at present.
The reasons for the Labour dominance and Conservative unpopularity are not hard to find. Looking at the social and economic composition of the South Shields constituency, the overall pattern is clearly on the working class side of the mean. In the last available census figures for occupation, in 2011, only 22% were in the professional and managerial classes, and over 34% in routine and semi-routine jobs. The seat ranked in the bottom 100 for those possessing educational degrees and in the national top ten for those whose highest qualification is an apprenticeship. In the key housing tenure variables, the seat was in the top decile for the social rented housing sector, still over 30% in 2011 despite the relative decline in recent decade due to the sale of council housing and the absence of a new building programme.
The social rented housing is still very influential in the peripheral wards to the south and south west: in the 2011 census it accounted for 44% of the housing stock in Simonside & Rekendyke, 46% in Biddick & All Saints, 39% in Whiteleas, as well as over 29% in the ‘inner city’ Beacon & Bents. Owner occupation was over 60% only in Harton and West Park, and on the coast at Horsley Hill and further south in Whitburn & Marsden, but even in these it did not reach 70%. One other feature is that there are only one-tenth the national proportion of detached houses – two in a hundred rather than 20. This is due to the rather constricted availability of land in the wedge shaped seat squeezed between the sea and the river.
Something should also be said about the ethnic mixture in South Shields. There was a small but rather exotic ethnic minority community for many decades in the form of Yemenis, originally seafaring folk from the then British port of Aden.
www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/history-south-shields-yemeni-community-9678954
Later there was the development of another community in South Shields of Bangladeshis since the 1960s. The total Asian population in the constituency according to the recently released 2021 census figures is only 4.2%, but the Bangladeshis make up the majority (2.5%) of this figure, which is unusual outside Tower Hamlets in East London. The highest concentration of this settlement is in the Beacon & Bents ward, closest to corner where the Tyne and North Seat meet, in particular in the neighbourhoods in the social housing flats around Woodbine Street (where Asians are a majority) and in the older terraces near Salmon Street. The interesting ethnic mix does not seem to be substantial enough to make an impact on the South Shields constituency as a whole: Beacon & Bents was also gained by the Greens from Labour in both the 2019 and 2021 local elections, but they finished sixth and last in December 2019 with a share of only 3.4%.
In fact, one of the stronger Independent candidates anywhere in that general election took early three times as many votes. Geoff Thompson, a local businessman and founder of the Utilitiwise company, and also chairman of South Shields Football Club (who are at the third tier of non-league football and actually play within Jarrow constituency) took 3,658 votes (9.7%). It is possible that he may have got some intended for the Brexit candidate, Glenn Thompson; but he would also have offered another alternative to voting Conservative in this seat which seems so reluctant to favour the Tories.
There is some very mild succour for the Conservatives, though, in the revised boundary proposals. South Shields is slightly undersized, and one ward will be added. This is Cleadon & East Boldon, currently in Jarrow. It will be the most owner occupied of the eleven wards by far (91.3%) , the most professional and managerial (over 47%, more than twice the constituency’s average) and also the least Labour - who have only won it five times in the last 50 years (2011, 2014-16, 2018); the Conservatives were victorious in 2018 and 2021 and the Greens won a tight three way contest in 2022. Overall, though, Cleadon & East Boldon would scarcely have dented Labour's majority even in 2019.
With Labour the favourites to form the government after the nest general election for the first time for over a decade, there seems even less doubt that South Shields will contribute to its benches. If history had unfolded slightly differently they may have had a leader of that party as their MP, as in 2010 David Miliband was narrowly edged out by his own brother. Both of them as North London intellectuals had slightly odd seats, though Ed’s Doncaster North is even more plebeian and non-academic than South Shields. Arguably, though, David has a somewhat more rounded and less nerdy image, and seemed popular in South Shields before his departure from British politics which triggered the easily retained 2013 byelection; nevertheless there is no evidence to suggest the party under his leadership would have done significantly better in 2015. Nor despite its conspicuous loyalty to Labour has there been any attempt to add the tag of ‘David Miliband Country’ to the South Shields list of tourist attractions.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 18.3% 216/650
Owner-occupied 55.1% 541/650
Private rented 11.9% 468/650
Social rented 31.5% 42/650
White 94.6% 328/650
Black 0.4% 412/650
Asian 3.0% 307/650
Managerial & professional 22.2%
Routine & Semi-routine 34.2%
Degree level 18.6% 557 /650
Apprenticeship 5.8% 8/650
No qualifications 29.1% 120 /650
Students 7.4% 261/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 54.8% 461/573
Private rented 15.4% 418/573
Social rented 29.8% 33/573
White 92.5%
Black 0.6%
Asian 4.2%
Managerial & professional 24.2% 495/573
Routine & Semi-routine 29.8% 93/573
Degree level 25.3% 478/573
No qualifications 21.6% 137/573
General Election 2019: South Shields
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Emma Lewell-Buck 17,273 45.6 -15.9
Conservative Oni Oviri 7,688 20.3 -5.6
Brexit Party Glenn Thompson 6,446 17.0 New
Independent Geoff Thompson 3,658 9.7 New
Liberal Democrats William Shepherd 1,514 4.0 +2.3
Green Sarah McKeown 1,303 3.4 -0.1
Lab Majority 9,585 25.3 -10.3
2019 electorate 62,793
Turnout 37,882 60.3 -4.0
Labour hold
Swing 5.2 Lab to C
www.visitsouthtyneside.co.uk/article/12722
The subject matter for academic articles nowadays …
www.jstor.org/stable/40572194
Its politics, however, have not generally been so varied. Labour has held the parliamentary seat continuously since 1935, and their percentage lead has never been less than the 16% recorded in 1959 in a straight fight with the Conservatives – which still translated into a numerical majority of just under 9,000. Even in December 2019, when Labour seats in the North East such as Blyth Valley, Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield were falling, Emma Lewell-Buck retained a near five figure lead, with a swing of just over 5% to the Tories, below the national and regional average. This was despite a pro-Brexit share of 62% in 2016; this was reflected in the Brexit party’s strong showing three and a half years later, 17%; South Shields voters did give Labour a strong nudge, but their historic aversion to the Conservatives was maintained.
This pattern is also to be found in local government contests within the South Shields seat. It is currently made up of ten wards of South Tyneside metropolitan borough council. In May 2022 Labour won seven of these. However the three they lost were divided between Greens (Beacon & Bents and West Park) and the Independent gain from Labour in Westoe. What is more, if we look at the seven wards Labour won in these most recent contests, the Tories were second only in three of them. The Greens were second in Biddick & All Saints and Simonside & Rekendyke. Independents were runners up in Whiteleas and in Harton. There really is an absence of a Conservative party tradition in South Shields. They had a long tradition of not contesting municipal elections in South Shields. For many years they stood as Progressives, an anti-Labour label also used in South Yorkshire and elsewhere. The last time Progressives returned any councillors in this constituency was in May 2008, when they took two of the more middle class wards, Harton and West Park. I cannot find evidence of any success of candidates under the official Conservative party label at all; the one ward in South Tyneside they have won on a number of occasions, Cleadon & East Boldon, is in Jarrow constituency – at present.
The reasons for the Labour dominance and Conservative unpopularity are not hard to find. Looking at the social and economic composition of the South Shields constituency, the overall pattern is clearly on the working class side of the mean. In the last available census figures for occupation, in 2011, only 22% were in the professional and managerial classes, and over 34% in routine and semi-routine jobs. The seat ranked in the bottom 100 for those possessing educational degrees and in the national top ten for those whose highest qualification is an apprenticeship. In the key housing tenure variables, the seat was in the top decile for the social rented housing sector, still over 30% in 2011 despite the relative decline in recent decade due to the sale of council housing and the absence of a new building programme.
The social rented housing is still very influential in the peripheral wards to the south and south west: in the 2011 census it accounted for 44% of the housing stock in Simonside & Rekendyke, 46% in Biddick & All Saints, 39% in Whiteleas, as well as over 29% in the ‘inner city’ Beacon & Bents. Owner occupation was over 60% only in Harton and West Park, and on the coast at Horsley Hill and further south in Whitburn & Marsden, but even in these it did not reach 70%. One other feature is that there are only one-tenth the national proportion of detached houses – two in a hundred rather than 20. This is due to the rather constricted availability of land in the wedge shaped seat squeezed between the sea and the river.
Something should also be said about the ethnic mixture in South Shields. There was a small but rather exotic ethnic minority community for many decades in the form of Yemenis, originally seafaring folk from the then British port of Aden.
www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/history-south-shields-yemeni-community-9678954
Later there was the development of another community in South Shields of Bangladeshis since the 1960s. The total Asian population in the constituency according to the recently released 2021 census figures is only 4.2%, but the Bangladeshis make up the majority (2.5%) of this figure, which is unusual outside Tower Hamlets in East London. The highest concentration of this settlement is in the Beacon & Bents ward, closest to corner where the Tyne and North Seat meet, in particular in the neighbourhoods in the social housing flats around Woodbine Street (where Asians are a majority) and in the older terraces near Salmon Street. The interesting ethnic mix does not seem to be substantial enough to make an impact on the South Shields constituency as a whole: Beacon & Bents was also gained by the Greens from Labour in both the 2019 and 2021 local elections, but they finished sixth and last in December 2019 with a share of only 3.4%.
In fact, one of the stronger Independent candidates anywhere in that general election took early three times as many votes. Geoff Thompson, a local businessman and founder of the Utilitiwise company, and also chairman of South Shields Football Club (who are at the third tier of non-league football and actually play within Jarrow constituency) took 3,658 votes (9.7%). It is possible that he may have got some intended for the Brexit candidate, Glenn Thompson; but he would also have offered another alternative to voting Conservative in this seat which seems so reluctant to favour the Tories.
There is some very mild succour for the Conservatives, though, in the revised boundary proposals. South Shields is slightly undersized, and one ward will be added. This is Cleadon & East Boldon, currently in Jarrow. It will be the most owner occupied of the eleven wards by far (91.3%) , the most professional and managerial (over 47%, more than twice the constituency’s average) and also the least Labour - who have only won it five times in the last 50 years (2011, 2014-16, 2018); the Conservatives were victorious in 2018 and 2021 and the Greens won a tight three way contest in 2022. Overall, though, Cleadon & East Boldon would scarcely have dented Labour's majority even in 2019.
With Labour the favourites to form the government after the nest general election for the first time for over a decade, there seems even less doubt that South Shields will contribute to its benches. If history had unfolded slightly differently they may have had a leader of that party as their MP, as in 2010 David Miliband was narrowly edged out by his own brother. Both of them as North London intellectuals had slightly odd seats, though Ed’s Doncaster North is even more plebeian and non-academic than South Shields. Arguably, though, David has a somewhat more rounded and less nerdy image, and seemed popular in South Shields before his departure from British politics which triggered the easily retained 2013 byelection; nevertheless there is no evidence to suggest the party under his leadership would have done significantly better in 2015. Nor despite its conspicuous loyalty to Labour has there been any attempt to add the tag of ‘David Miliband Country’ to the South Shields list of tourist attractions.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 18.3% 216/650
Owner-occupied 55.1% 541/650
Private rented 11.9% 468/650
Social rented 31.5% 42/650
White 94.6% 328/650
Black 0.4% 412/650
Asian 3.0% 307/650
Managerial & professional 22.2%
Routine & Semi-routine 34.2%
Degree level 18.6% 557 /650
Apprenticeship 5.8% 8/650
No qualifications 29.1% 120 /650
Students 7.4% 261/650
2021 Census
Owner occupied 54.8% 461/573
Private rented 15.4% 418/573
Social rented 29.8% 33/573
White 92.5%
Black 0.6%
Asian 4.2%
Managerial & professional 24.2% 495/573
Routine & Semi-routine 29.8% 93/573
Degree level 25.3% 478/573
No qualifications 21.6% 137/573
General Election 2019: South Shields
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Emma Lewell-Buck 17,273 45.6 -15.9
Conservative Oni Oviri 7,688 20.3 -5.6
Brexit Party Glenn Thompson 6,446 17.0 New
Independent Geoff Thompson 3,658 9.7 New
Liberal Democrats William Shepherd 1,514 4.0 +2.3
Green Sarah McKeown 1,303 3.4 -0.1
Lab Majority 9,585 25.3 -10.3
2019 electorate 62,793
Turnout 37,882 60.3 -4.0
Labour hold
Swing 5.2 Lab to C