Rutherglen and Hamilton West

[Robert Waller]

Rutherglen was honoured as a Royal Burgh as long ago as 1126, but it has increasingly suffered something of a raw deal as far as recognition is concerned. As the centuries have passed it has become overshadowed by its near neighbour, Glasgow, which was not elevated to the same royal status until 1450. By 1911, fuelled by the Industrial Revolution, Glasgow’s population had surpassed 1 million and its suburban built up area became contiguous with Rutherglen’s much smaller urban unit. Nevertheless, Rutherglen did retain a Westminster parliamentary seat from 1918 to 1983. Then from 1983 to 2005 it was renamed as Glasgow Rutherglen, a nomenclature which explicitly demoted the town to be a sub-section of the city, this indeed being a reflection of the local government reorganisation which had abolished the separate Rutherglen council and from 1975 incorporated the burgh as part of Glasgow. It was liberated in 1996, though, but now disappeared anonymously into the new South Lanarkshire unitary authority. Since 2005 Rutherglen has been paired with another larger community, Hamilton, under the lines of the current seat. However, there is a strong hope on the horizon that its former independence may be again celebrated, at least in a constituency title.

Despite its individual history, Rutherglen is now very much within the orbit of Glasgow. Is hard to see where the city stops and the town itself begins, particularly adjacent to the Glasgow neighbourhood of Kings Park. Many Rutherglen residents commute into the former ‘second city of the Empire’. There are plenty of attractive owner occupied residential streets in Rutherglen itself, for example around Parkhill Drive, Woodside Avenue and Coldstream Drive, and its professional and managerial percentage is higher than average for the seat, especially in Rutherglen South ward. However Rutherglen only has a population of around 27,000 and is thus a minority of the seat, despite its name taking precedence in the title. Also included is the town of Cambuslang (30,000), the Blantyre ward (17.000), and parts of three Hamilton wards: North & East, West & Earnock, and South. Like Rutherglen, Cambuslang has an industrial past (coal, iron, steel, and from 1946 to 2005 a Hoover Factory) but now depends more on Glasgow commuting and the M74 corridor; it is a little further from the former but has better access to the latter, for example the large Clydesmill industrial estate, and the Westburn Road estate on the other (south) side of the Clyde.

Blantyre ward is by some way the most working class part of the Rutherglen & Hamilton West constituency. Less than one seventh of its adult population holds a university degree. Under one tenth of workers are in the AB socio-economic categories. It also has a clear plurality of Catholics. It is also unusual in being the only ward wholly in the seat that gave a plurality of first preferences to Labour in the South Lanarkshire unitary authority elections in May 2022, with nearly 45% compared with 42% for the SNP. Labour were also ahead in Hamilton South, but only a minority of that ward around Meikle Earnock and the western half of Fairhill is included in Rutherglen & Hamilton West. By contrast almost all of Hamilton West & Earnock ward is in this constituency, where the SNP took over 10% more first preferences than Labour. The Nationalists won all the other South Lanarkshire wards in the seat as well, with Labour second in all except the anomalous Rutherglen South where the Liberal Democrats finished second with over 29% of the vote - by far their best performance anywhere in the authority. The Conservatives’ best showing in this constituency was just under 13% in Cambuslang West.

This 2022 pattern is typical of recent contests for Westminster representation in Rutherglen & Hamilton West: the Liberal Democrats, with a Rutherglen base, finished second in its first general election in 2005, but have done poorly since and only just saved their deposit in 2019 (they had failed to do so in 2017 and 2015). The Conservatives have never broken 20% in the seat as presently constituted, even though they held Rutherglen between 1931 and 1945 and between 1951 and 1964. However it is one of the six that Labour gained in the first Corbyn election of 2017, and for two years Ged Killen interrupted Margaret Ferrier’s tenure as MP. She regained Rutherglen & Hamilton West with a modest 5% swing in December 2019, and has subsequently been suspended by the SNP for breaches of covid regulations and currently sits as an Independent. Whether or not this will weaken the SNP’s chances of holding the seat with a different candidate is unclear, but in any case Rutherglen & Hamilton West ranks as their 4th most vulnerable seat on actual 2019 results to a Labour challenge.

However, that would not be to take into account the significant changes recommended by the Scottish Boundary Commission. The split in all Hamilton’s wards illustrates the way the boundary at that (south east) end of the constituency is very ‘bitty’. The proposals, initial and revised, are that Hamilton will be the core of a new seat, Hamilton & Clyde Valley, which takes 26% of the current electorate of Rutherglen & Hamilton West. The remainder (Rutherglen, Cambuslang ad Blantyre) is to be joined by 10,630 voters in the South Lanarkshire ward of Bothwell & Uddingston, currently in Lanark & Hamilton East. This will make a difference to the political balance. Bothwell & Uddingston is decidedly upscale socially and economically compared with the other wards in this constituency, harbouring a large amount of newish private housing, and in electoral terms it is a three way marginal. In May 2022 its first preferences went as follows: 32% to the SNP, 30% to Labour, 28% to the Conservatives. The Tories finished second in Lanark & Hamilton East in the 2019 general election, but as they are a distant third in Rutherglen & Hamilton West; and as Labour has won it as recently as 2017, it may be that ‘unionist’ tactical voting may come into play in the redrawn seat.

There is unionist feeling here. Unlike other Lanarkshire seats, Rutherglen & Hamilton West is estimated to have voted clearly (55%) against Scottish independence in 2014. With the widely publicized problems affecting the elected as SNP MP, and in the context of an apparent Labour revival, at least in some Scottish opinion polls as well as south of the border, the new seat must be regarded as a marginal and a major target if Labour is to get anywhere near an overall majority in the Commons. Finally, it might be noted that in an age and a review given to the lengthening of constituency names, it is now proposed that the successor to Rutherglen & Hamilton West should be called just plain Rutherglen, even though the town of that name is very much at an end and a (north west) corner of the seat geographically.
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/revised_constituency_maps/rutherglen.pdf
Maybe that is an omen too, as the Nationalists never won or came near to winning the constituency bearing that plain name. Can Labour have a future as well as a past in Scottish elections? Rutherglen will be a key test.

2011 Census

Age 65+ 15.2% 440/650
Owner-occupied 65.3% 375/650
Private rented 7.4% 641/650
Social rented 26.7% 89/650
White 97.0% 224/650
Black 0.4% 416/650
Asian 2.2% 350/650
Born in Scotland 92.4% 6/650
Managerial & professional 26.8%
Routine & Semi-routine 31.0%
Degree level 19.7% 530/650
No qualifications 31.4% 67/650
Students 6.4% 392/650

General Election 2019: Rutherglen and Hamilton West

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

SNP Margaret Ferrier 23,775 44.2 +7.2
Labour Co-op Gerard Killen 18,545 34.5 -3.0
Conservative Lynne Nailon 8,054 15.0 −4.5
Liberal Democrats Mark McGeever 2,791 5.2 +1.0
UKIP Janice MacKay 629 1.2 +0.3

SNP Majority 5,230 9.7

2019 electorate 80,918

Turnout 53,794 66.5 +3.0

SNP gain from Labour Co-op

Swing 5.1 Lab to SNP

[stb12]

Rutherglen Town Hall has a Union Jack flying on top of it, just to add to the unionist feel

[Max]

Remembering Tommy McAvoy's immortal response to being accused of being "a Glaswegian Stalinist thug" - "I'm not from Glasgow, I'm from Rutherglen!"

[batman]

To be fair, there is very little which can accurately be described as Stalinist about Tommy McAvoy's politics.

[ntyuk1707]

Worth noting that this seat is not, to the best of my knowledge, a particularly strong unionist seat as has been claimed by Robert.

In the 2014 independence referendum, the Rutherglen and Cambuslang count area had the highest 'Yes' vote in South Lanarkshire at 49.9% Yes, 50.1% No, but because postal voters were mixed in from across the council area which was more no-leaning as a whole, the Cambuslang-Rutherglen count area likely voted marginally Yes.

The remainder of the constituency was counted within the Hamilton, Larkhall, Blantyre and Bothwell count area which voted over 54.9% No, however at the 2022 council elections, the two wards in that count area which overlapped with this constituency were the wards with the highest support for pro-independence parties.

So it is more accurate to say this constituency very marginally rejected independence in 2014 with approximately 51% of voters voting No to independence, but the seat does have a lower ceiling of support for the SNP than other parts of the Greater Glasgow area, similar to the Airdrie & Shotts constituency in North Lanarkshire.

At the 2017 general election, this constituency was won by Labour with a majority of just 265 votes (0.5% majority) alongside 6 other Scottish seats. In that election year, a 1.5% swing from the SNP to Labour would have yielded a total of 15 Scottish seats for Labour. 

So a Labour majority of over 5% here could set the SNP into severe panic by signalling a comeback for Labour in their Scottish central belt heartlands, and given the fact that Labour cut the SNP down to a 8% majority in the 2021 Airdrie and Shotts by-election when the SNP were nearly 10 points higher in the polls and Labour nearly 10 points lower, a Labour win seems likely here in the event of a by-election.

Touching on boundary changes: Hamilton West & Earnock ward is set to be removed from this constituency and replaced with the more affluent commuter ward of Uddington & Bothwell, shoring up the pro-UK vote in the constituency and improving Labour's prospects of a gain at the next UK general election.