Post by doktorb🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ on Jul 22, 2023 19:21:46 GMT
From the 1930s onwards, there seemed to be on certainty with the parliamentary constituency of Burnley: it would be a Labour hold. The town and its eponymous borough are often thought of as synonyms for Labour voters and the word "Burnley" itself used as synecdoche for homogeneous working-class East Lancashire voters.
Burnley is not atypical for the towns along the "cotton thread" of Lancashire, the almost straight (if not very flat) line of towns running from the Pennines to the Ribble which provided so much industry, material and regional economy at the peak of the Industrial Revolution. Burnley folk have dirt under their fingernails and the town centre retains much of the feel of a post-industrial town struggling to move out from the shadows of its past. The factory buildings are still here, many converted, some boarded up, and the incredibly steep walk from Burnley's Manchester Road railway station provides a sweeping vista of the town's traditional architectural and economic past. One of the town's most striking landmarks is the chimney of the Queen Street Mill, built in 1894 and now open (sporadically and occasionally) as part of a museum. Passengers into Burnley's Central station (one of three railway stations pre-fixed "Burnley", and in this case, not accurately named) will travel over the town's other eye-catching local landmark, the 15-arch sandstone and redbrick viaduct, built for the East Lancashire Railway and still used by Northern trains into Colne, Accrington, Blackburn and Preston.
Labour's history with Burnley can be traced to the earliest years of its existence, and in 1910 Dan Irving became the first of the party's MPs. Irving had been unsuccessful in earlier election attempts in nearby constituencies and had associated with the National Socialist Party prior to his success here. It was Arthur Henderson who is the better known, and more historically significant, of Labour's MPs for Burnley and apart from one election defeat to Vice Admiral Gordon Campbell in 1931, the Labour Party soon had one stronghold in Burnley amongst many neighbouring others.
Two opposing political factors changed the landscape for Burnley in particular, and specifically the Labour Party's stronghold on the town and its parliamentary seat. As with neighbouring Pendle, the Liberal Democrats began winning local council elections and forming strong opposition to Labour's ruling groups. LibDems would take control of Burnley Council in 2008 having gained 5 Labour wards after successive minor gains in previous elections. Parallel to this local success, Gordon Birtwistle's local profile helped lift his party's fortunes in the parliamentary seat, taking the party of second place in 2005 and ultimately gaining the constituency in 2010.
On the other side of th the political spectrum was an increasing unease amongst some voters at the changing demography of the town and the wider borough. Burnley's Asian population is higher than the regional and national average and following EU expansion into central and eastern Europe, its white non-British population grew at a significant rate. In 2001, the BNP received 11% of the vote at the general election here and had 7 seats on the local council by 2003. UKIP won seats in the Padiham area at both local and County level, and race-riots which had dominated nearby Oldham soon spread across to Lancashire, Burnley in particular. Labour, rightly or wrongly associated with not always listening to concerns about immigration from both white and BAME countries, took the brunt of their voters' displeasure.
Burnley is a borough of many scattered towns across from the Accrington suburbs to the Pennine hills. This is a borough of owner-occupiers, and even today, little in the way of gentrification. Improved railway links to Manchester will, eventually, do good on the promise of making places like Burnley into affordable commuter towns, but rail links are only one part of a complex economic jigsaw. The central wards of Burnley are not the most economically confident, and while the stone terraces remain, so do rabbit warrens of 60s and 70s estates and boarded up businesses. Although there are manufacturing jobs here, local employment is increasingly retail, services and education. Growth in the manufacturing industry came most recently from the aerospace sector, including Safran Necelles, although job cuts of significant size are threatened. Burnley borough has strong commuter flows between it and its neighbours, including Pendle to the north. Eleven of Burnley's wards received assisted area status funding. Using 2018 figures, the borough of Burnley has 15% of its working age population in receipt of out of work benefits, one of the highest figures in Great Britain.
The parliamentary seat is now held by the Conservatives. The party was down at 10% at the 2005 election, marked by the intervention of a local independent. Things changed after the Brexit referendum. Two-thirds of Burnley voted Leave and by no coincidence did the Tory vote leapfrog the others in 2017 and 2019. Labour's Julie Cooper held on in 2017 with a 7.5% swing against her, the second push two-years later was closer to 10%. The Brexit Party stood here, as it did against almost all Labour MPs, at by taking 8.6%, took almost point-for-point the amount Cooper lost. Antony Higginbotham is the first Conservative MP here since Gerald Arbuthnot in the 1910s, who was killed at the Somme.
