Post by YL on Jul 7, 2023 17:58:28 GMT
This constituency forms a strip along the eastern side of Sheffield, from Tinsley and the Meadowhellhall shopping centre in the north to Mosborough in the south. It was renamed from Sheffield Attercliffe in 2010, although the boundary changes then were minor and actually restored parts of Attercliffe to the constituency. The latest boundary changes are also minor and add Woodthorpe and Yorkshire's other Richmond, which had been in Sheffield Heeley since 1974.
Sheffield Attercliffe was created in 1885, and originally covered a much smaller area around Attercliffe itself and Darnall. It had an interesting by-election in 1909 which elected Sheffield's first Labour MP, and has been Labour ever since except for 1918 and 1931. Clive Betts, previously Leader of Sheffield City Council, has been the MP since 1992.
The biggest addition to the Attercliffe constituency occurred in 1974. In the 1960s there were competing proposals for New Town style developments for people moving out of older areas of Sheffield. One was to extend Gainsborough as a New Town, but the other one, which prevailed, was to annex an area from Derbyshire including the mining villages of Beighton and Mosborough, and to expand them as an urban extension called the Mosborough Townships, with a deliberate mix of private and council housing. This area annexed from Derbyshire also included some areas which were already de facto Sheffield suburbs, and was added to Sheffield Attercliffe; it is now covered by the wards of Mosborough, Beighton and Birley, and thus contains more than half of the electorate current South East constituency.
Further north, the old core of the constituency roughly corresponds to the modern Darnall ward. This area includes the former steel making heartland in the Don valley around Attercliffe itself, and it lost a lot of population in the slum clearance era, in particular leaving Attercliffe almost entirely depopulated. The remaining areas of housing, in particular Darnall itself and the Tinsley area close to Meadowhall and the eponymous M1 viaduct which causes high levels of pollution, are now one of the more heavily Asian parts of Sheffield.
Between Darnall and the Derbyshire areas is an earlier addition to Sheffield, in the shape of much of what was the Handsworth Urban District until annexed just after the First World War; it was added to Sheffield Attercliffe when constituency boundaries eventually caught up in 1950. This includes the whole of Woodhouse ward, which covers Woodhouse itself, a former village long since merged into the urban area, and most of Handsworth. Handsworth is one of two Sheffield suburbs (the other is Grenoside) with a tradition of sword dancing. Next to Woodhouse, this part of the constituency also includes the eastern part of Richmond ward, which includes the rest of Handsworth as well as the Woodthorpe cottage estate and neighbouring Richmond.
Overall the constituency has a working class demographic, but except for Darnall and a few pockets elsewhere it is not strikingly deprived. The proportion with higher education qualifications is well below average and those with no qualifications above average; the main Mosborough Townships wards of Beighton and Mosborough are the best educated, but still don't reach average levels. Ethnicity figures show the constituency as slightly more Asian than average, but this hides a divide between the majority-minority Darnall ward and the rest of the constituency, which is largely white.
In local elections, Darnall, Birley and Woodhouse wards have mostly been fairly reliable for Labour, though all of these areas have deserted the party in either the late 1960s or the late 1990s or both. Beighton and Mosborough, though, have recently taken to voting Lib Dem at local level. UKIP often had quite high vote shares in most of these wards; there is also some Tory potential, especially in the Mosborough Townships, and in the 2019 General Election this had the highest Tory vote share of the five seats with Sheffield in the name.
2019 notional result (Rallings & Thrasher):
Lab 21923 (46.7%)
Con 16709 (35.6%)
Brexit Party 5032 (10.7%)
Lib Dem 2186 (4.7%)
Green 80 (0.2%)
Other 966 (2.1%)
Lab majority 5214 (11.1%)
Sheffield Attercliffe was created in 1885, and originally covered a much smaller area around Attercliffe itself and Darnall. It had an interesting by-election in 1909 which elected Sheffield's first Labour MP, and has been Labour ever since except for 1918 and 1931. Clive Betts, previously Leader of Sheffield City Council, has been the MP since 1992.
The biggest addition to the Attercliffe constituency occurred in 1974. In the 1960s there were competing proposals for New Town style developments for people moving out of older areas of Sheffield. One was to extend Gainsborough as a New Town, but the other one, which prevailed, was to annex an area from Derbyshire including the mining villages of Beighton and Mosborough, and to expand them as an urban extension called the Mosborough Townships, with a deliberate mix of private and council housing. This area annexed from Derbyshire also included some areas which were already de facto Sheffield suburbs, and was added to Sheffield Attercliffe; it is now covered by the wards of Mosborough, Beighton and Birley, and thus contains more than half of the electorate current South East constituency.
Further north, the old core of the constituency roughly corresponds to the modern Darnall ward. This area includes the former steel making heartland in the Don valley around Attercliffe itself, and it lost a lot of population in the slum clearance era, in particular leaving Attercliffe almost entirely depopulated. The remaining areas of housing, in particular Darnall itself and the Tinsley area close to Meadowhall and the eponymous M1 viaduct which causes high levels of pollution, are now one of the more heavily Asian parts of Sheffield.
Between Darnall and the Derbyshire areas is an earlier addition to Sheffield, in the shape of much of what was the Handsworth Urban District until annexed just after the First World War; it was added to Sheffield Attercliffe when constituency boundaries eventually caught up in 1950. This includes the whole of Woodhouse ward, which covers Woodhouse itself, a former village long since merged into the urban area, and most of Handsworth. Handsworth is one of two Sheffield suburbs (the other is Grenoside) with a tradition of sword dancing. Next to Woodhouse, this part of the constituency also includes the eastern part of Richmond ward, which includes the rest of Handsworth as well as the Woodthorpe cottage estate and neighbouring Richmond.
Overall the constituency has a working class demographic, but except for Darnall and a few pockets elsewhere it is not strikingly deprived. The proportion with higher education qualifications is well below average and those with no qualifications above average; the main Mosborough Townships wards of Beighton and Mosborough are the best educated, but still don't reach average levels. Ethnicity figures show the constituency as slightly more Asian than average, but this hides a divide between the majority-minority Darnall ward and the rest of the constituency, which is largely white.
In local elections, Darnall, Birley and Woodhouse wards have mostly been fairly reliable for Labour, though all of these areas have deserted the party in either the late 1960s or the late 1990s or both. Beighton and Mosborough, though, have recently taken to voting Lib Dem at local level. UKIP often had quite high vote shares in most of these wards; there is also some Tory potential, especially in the Mosborough Townships, and in the 2019 General Election this had the highest Tory vote share of the five seats with Sheffield in the name.
2019 notional result (Rallings & Thrasher):
Lab 21923 (46.7%)
Con 16709 (35.6%)
Brexit Party 5032 (10.7%)
Lib Dem 2186 (4.7%)
Green 80 (0.2%)
Other 966 (2.1%)
Lab majority 5214 (11.1%)
