Post by Pete Whitehead on Jul 8, 2023 18:01:28 GMT
The South West Hertfordshire constituency was first created in 1950, largely out of the old Watford constituency and at that time it formed a complete doughnut surrounding Watford, comprising the Watford Rural district and neighbouring Urban Districts like Bushey and Rickmansworth.
Watford Rural District itself was formed of three detached parts with Abbots Langley to the North of Watford, Aldenham parish (Radlett) to the East and Watford Rural Parish to the South. As such the seat comprised the whole of the current Three Rivers district together with Bushey and Aldenham in Hertsmere and Nash Mills now in Dacorum (then part of Abbots Langley). Aldenham departed to South Hertfordshire in 1974 and there followed significant boundary changes in 1983 which changed the orientation of the seat.
Bushey joined the rest of Hertsmere while Abbots Langley and Leavesden were added to Watford. In compensation, the seat moved North to take a number of wards from the Dacorum district and Hemel Hempstead constituency – the town of Berkhamsted and its suburb Northchurch, the small town of Kings Langley and the villages of Bovingdon and Chipperfield.
In 1997 the seat lost further Three Rivers wards and gained more from Dacorum. The suburban areas of Carpenders Park and Oxhey Hall to the South of Watford were donated to that constituency along with Langleybury to the North while Bedmond was moved into St Albans. In their place the town of Tring and the villages of Aldbury and Wigginton were added from West Hertfordshire. West Hertfordshire indeed would have been a far more apt name for this constituency at this point as it covered the entire Western edge of the county and almost the entire boundary with Buckinghamshire.
Now major boundary changes as a result of the creation of a new seat in West Hertfordshire substantially reverse previous boundary changes. All the areas included in the Watford and St Albans seats are brought back into this seat reuniting all of Three Rivers again in a single seat for the first time in 30 years. Indeed, the initial proposals of the Boundary Commission suggested renaming this seat to Three Rivers but as this was felt to have little resonance beyond the local area, the SW Hertfordshire name is retained. To make room for all these new voters, the entirety of the Dacorum section of the seat is removed to a new Harpenden & Berkhamsted seat, but Kings Langley moves in from Hemel Hempstead
Of the original SW Herts, the core remained the Rickmansworth ‘conurbation’ which includes the separate parishes of Croxley Green and Chorleywood and the ultra-wealthy Moor Park estate. There are some relatively grotty parts of Rickmansworth, in Mill End in the West of the town and beyond that in Maple Cross, but the Rickmansworth Town ward includes some wealthy neighbourhoods as well as the town centre and has remained solidly in Tory hands despite the Liberal dominance of Three Rivers which started there.
Chorleywood is even more desirable and a much more uniformly middle-class area. Though the Lib Dems are strong in Chorleywood village, there is a massive Tory lead in the swathe of large, detached housing which links Chorleywood with Rickmansworth and is now part of the Chorleywood North and Sarratt ward. This ward also includes Loudwater, reputedly the area with the highest concentration of millionaires in the country.
The private estate of Moor Park and the suburb of Eastbury (functionally a part of Northwood) will have a decent proportion of millionaires too. All this area is close to the border with Greater London and at the outer end of ‘Metroland’ with Metropolitan line stations in Moor Par, Rickmansworth, Chorleywood and Croxley Green.
Croxley Green is itself an area of relatively modest housing and middle incomes and has for long been an area of great Lib Dem dominance in local elections (albeit lately assailed by the Green party) as, in this part of the seat are Mill End and Maple Cross. Moor Park & Eastbury by contrast has remained a formidable Tory stronghold, their margins of victory not even dented by the fact that nearly half the population here is of Asian (mostly Indian) origin.
All in all, it isn’t difficult to see why this constituency has a solid Conservative voting record over 70 years.
There is however one area which is an outlier. The large LCC overspill estate of South Oxhey, South of Watford, is one of the most deprived areas in the whole of Hertfordshire. It consists overwhelmingly of council-built housing and even after decades of right to buy nearly half the housing is still council owned. Some of this is quite grim including low-rise tenement flats and still some pre-fabs from the late 1940s. Needless to say, South Oxhey is the one Labour stronghold in this constituency and used to vote monolithically for that party. There was some loss of support during the late Blair/Brown years and both the Conservatives and Lib Dems became competitive in some of the wards. Additionally, this became an area of considerable BNP strength with that party winning at district level and, in 2009, winning the county council seat covering the whole estate.
Since ward boundary changes in 2014 parts of the estate have been included in wards with other areas where they are outvoted by more middle-class areas but the single unified South Oxhey ward has reverted to its former status as a Labour stronghold. UKIP did well here in 2015, winning 30% and had they stood in 2014 and run a half-competent campaign they might have won it then, but inevitably they have faded here too now.
The areas coming into the seat are for the most part wards which give the Lib Dems their majority on Three Rivers. Abbots Langley and Leavesden, North of Watford, were not part of the original core of Liberal strength in Three Rivers but have become pretty much their safest area in local elections now. Oxhey Hall, the South of Watford is similarly safe for them while neighbouring Carpenders Park is a Tory stronghold. Given that the Lib Dems only won 16% in Watford constituency at the last election, it doesn’t look like much of that local Lib Dem vote would have carried across to general election voting. Meanwhile (and despite its proximity and similarity to Abbots Langley) the Lib Dems have never made any impact in Kings Langley – even in 2023 when they stormed to majority control of Dacorum council.
One might think that given the Lib Dem strength in Three Rivers, bringing it all together in a single seat provides them with a plum target. You might be right and certainly some of their strongest local areas in Abbots Langley may help them. On the other hand, the Lib Dems are quite as strong now in the areas departing, in Berkhamsted and Tring and some of the strongest Tory wards within the existing SW Herts are in Three Rivers.
The Lib Dems have never seriously challenged here in a general election though they have got up to around the 30% mark in decent years for them like 1983, 1987, 2005 and 2010. Since the last of those elections, they have not come better than third and were in fourth place behind UKIP in 2015 and fourth again in 2019 with just over 10%. Of course, in that election the incumbent David Gauke was defending his seat as an Independent and ran an energetic campaign which produced probably the best result for any of the many defectors who sought re-election then (given he had no ‘major’ party backing.)
He must have won over a large part of the potential Lib Dem vote as well as a certain number of ‘moderate’, Remain supporting Conservatives and evidently a substantial tactical Labour vote. Still the Conservatives enjoyed a five-figure majority as they have done in all the post-Blair elections and this will likely remain safe for the new MP, Gagan Mohindra. Any notional result though is heavily skewed not only by the Gauke vote but by the fact that all the incoming wards were previously in Conservative/Labour battlegrounds so the tactical situation will be very different.
Watford Rural District itself was formed of three detached parts with Abbots Langley to the North of Watford, Aldenham parish (Radlett) to the East and Watford Rural Parish to the South. As such the seat comprised the whole of the current Three Rivers district together with Bushey and Aldenham in Hertsmere and Nash Mills now in Dacorum (then part of Abbots Langley). Aldenham departed to South Hertfordshire in 1974 and there followed significant boundary changes in 1983 which changed the orientation of the seat.
Bushey joined the rest of Hertsmere while Abbots Langley and Leavesden were added to Watford. In compensation, the seat moved North to take a number of wards from the Dacorum district and Hemel Hempstead constituency – the town of Berkhamsted and its suburb Northchurch, the small town of Kings Langley and the villages of Bovingdon and Chipperfield.
In 1997 the seat lost further Three Rivers wards and gained more from Dacorum. The suburban areas of Carpenders Park and Oxhey Hall to the South of Watford were donated to that constituency along with Langleybury to the North while Bedmond was moved into St Albans. In their place the town of Tring and the villages of Aldbury and Wigginton were added from West Hertfordshire. West Hertfordshire indeed would have been a far more apt name for this constituency at this point as it covered the entire Western edge of the county and almost the entire boundary with Buckinghamshire.
Now major boundary changes as a result of the creation of a new seat in West Hertfordshire substantially reverse previous boundary changes. All the areas included in the Watford and St Albans seats are brought back into this seat reuniting all of Three Rivers again in a single seat for the first time in 30 years. Indeed, the initial proposals of the Boundary Commission suggested renaming this seat to Three Rivers but as this was felt to have little resonance beyond the local area, the SW Hertfordshire name is retained. To make room for all these new voters, the entirety of the Dacorum section of the seat is removed to a new Harpenden & Berkhamsted seat, but Kings Langley moves in from Hemel Hempstead
Of the original SW Herts, the core remained the Rickmansworth ‘conurbation’ which includes the separate parishes of Croxley Green and Chorleywood and the ultra-wealthy Moor Park estate. There are some relatively grotty parts of Rickmansworth, in Mill End in the West of the town and beyond that in Maple Cross, but the Rickmansworth Town ward includes some wealthy neighbourhoods as well as the town centre and has remained solidly in Tory hands despite the Liberal dominance of Three Rivers which started there.
Chorleywood is even more desirable and a much more uniformly middle-class area. Though the Lib Dems are strong in Chorleywood village, there is a massive Tory lead in the swathe of large, detached housing which links Chorleywood with Rickmansworth and is now part of the Chorleywood North and Sarratt ward. This ward also includes Loudwater, reputedly the area with the highest concentration of millionaires in the country.
The private estate of Moor Park and the suburb of Eastbury (functionally a part of Northwood) will have a decent proportion of millionaires too. All this area is close to the border with Greater London and at the outer end of ‘Metroland’ with Metropolitan line stations in Moor Par, Rickmansworth, Chorleywood and Croxley Green.
Croxley Green is itself an area of relatively modest housing and middle incomes and has for long been an area of great Lib Dem dominance in local elections (albeit lately assailed by the Green party) as, in this part of the seat are Mill End and Maple Cross. Moor Park & Eastbury by contrast has remained a formidable Tory stronghold, their margins of victory not even dented by the fact that nearly half the population here is of Asian (mostly Indian) origin.
All in all, it isn’t difficult to see why this constituency has a solid Conservative voting record over 70 years.
There is however one area which is an outlier. The large LCC overspill estate of South Oxhey, South of Watford, is one of the most deprived areas in the whole of Hertfordshire. It consists overwhelmingly of council-built housing and even after decades of right to buy nearly half the housing is still council owned. Some of this is quite grim including low-rise tenement flats and still some pre-fabs from the late 1940s. Needless to say, South Oxhey is the one Labour stronghold in this constituency and used to vote monolithically for that party. There was some loss of support during the late Blair/Brown years and both the Conservatives and Lib Dems became competitive in some of the wards. Additionally, this became an area of considerable BNP strength with that party winning at district level and, in 2009, winning the county council seat covering the whole estate.
Since ward boundary changes in 2014 parts of the estate have been included in wards with other areas where they are outvoted by more middle-class areas but the single unified South Oxhey ward has reverted to its former status as a Labour stronghold. UKIP did well here in 2015, winning 30% and had they stood in 2014 and run a half-competent campaign they might have won it then, but inevitably they have faded here too now.
The areas coming into the seat are for the most part wards which give the Lib Dems their majority on Three Rivers. Abbots Langley and Leavesden, North of Watford, were not part of the original core of Liberal strength in Three Rivers but have become pretty much their safest area in local elections now. Oxhey Hall, the South of Watford is similarly safe for them while neighbouring Carpenders Park is a Tory stronghold. Given that the Lib Dems only won 16% in Watford constituency at the last election, it doesn’t look like much of that local Lib Dem vote would have carried across to general election voting. Meanwhile (and despite its proximity and similarity to Abbots Langley) the Lib Dems have never made any impact in Kings Langley – even in 2023 when they stormed to majority control of Dacorum council.
One might think that given the Lib Dem strength in Three Rivers, bringing it all together in a single seat provides them with a plum target. You might be right and certainly some of their strongest local areas in Abbots Langley may help them. On the other hand, the Lib Dems are quite as strong now in the areas departing, in Berkhamsted and Tring and some of the strongest Tory wards within the existing SW Herts are in Three Rivers.
The Lib Dems have never seriously challenged here in a general election though they have got up to around the 30% mark in decent years for them like 1983, 1987, 2005 and 2010. Since the last of those elections, they have not come better than third and were in fourth place behind UKIP in 2015 and fourth again in 2019 with just over 10%. Of course, in that election the incumbent David Gauke was defending his seat as an Independent and ran an energetic campaign which produced probably the best result for any of the many defectors who sought re-election then (given he had no ‘major’ party backing.)
He must have won over a large part of the potential Lib Dem vote as well as a certain number of ‘moderate’, Remain supporting Conservatives and evidently a substantial tactical Labour vote. Still the Conservatives enjoyed a five-figure majority as they have done in all the post-Blair elections and this will likely remain safe for the new MP, Gagan Mohindra. Any notional result though is heavily skewed not only by the Gauke vote but by the fact that all the incoming wards were previously in Conservative/Labour battlegrounds so the tactical situation will be very different.
