Post by Robert Waller on Jul 24, 2023 13:26:19 GMT
The New Town of Crawley, designated in January 1947, formed a red blot on the county landscape to many Sussex residents’ minds. With its large London overspill population and predominance of local authority housing, it contrasted sharply with the affluent middle-class norms of Sussex. Its political impact, however, was for over 50 years limited because it did not yet truly have a seat of its own. Before 1974 the town was situated in Horsham constituency, and did not even earn a mention in the title. From then until 1983 there was a Horsham and Crawley seat (note the order of the names). In 1983 a seat called Crawley was created, but it still contained extraneous rural – and Conservative – elements in the form of five wards from the District of Mid Sussex. Then for 1997 the Boundary Commission at last granted the borough of Crawley a seat of its very own, and Labour won their first ever seat in West Sussex – though such was the magnitude of the Blairite landslide in that year they would have won it on the old boundaries. The sitting MP Nicholas Soames decamped to a much safer part of Sussex, and Labour’s Laura Moffatt cruised home easily by nearly 12,000 votes, with a larger than average increase in vote share.
However, even though Crawley constituency’s boundaries have remained coterminous with the local authority borough ever since 1997, it has become clear that Labour only tend to win the seat when they win the general election itself. Laura Moffatt’s majority dropped sharply in both 2001 and 2005, when it generated the closest result of any of the 650 seats – a lead of just 37 votes or 0.1% of the poll. Since 2010 Crawley has been won four times by the Conservative Henry Smith. His majority has never been less than 2.457 (2017) and in December 2019 he increased his lead to an apparently comfortable 8,360. Labour would require a swing of over eight per cent to regain Crawley on current boundaries - which are again retained in the final report of the 2023 review as it ws within five per cent of the English norm they applied.
Why has Crawley turned out to be – or perhaps turned into – a seat clearly on the Conservative side of marginal? The original idea of the New Town movement as envisaged by the Reith Committee was that they should be divided into neighbourhoods each of which would be socially mixed, rather than there being clearly working class and middle class ‘sides of town’. This never worked very well, and in Crawley the wards have distinct electoral characteristics and histories. Labour have usually won strongholds like Langley Green, Ifield, Broadfield (site of the football club) and a newer residential area, Bewbush in the west of the town, developed from the 1970s. There is a substantial Asian (mainly Muslim) minority, 15% overall and increasing to over 30% as one gets nearer to Gatwick Airport, in Langley Green for example. Social renting is still well above average, especially in the west and south west sectors, reaching a peak in Broadfield. On the other hand New Town neighbourhood wards such as Pound Hill and Furnace Green have tended to be Conservative, as has Three Bridges, which has the core of an older community surrounded in the New Town expansion. Moreover there has continued to be extensive private development in areas such as Forge Wood and Maidenbower, which is the strongest Tory ward of all, with little or no social renting in its 2021 census Output Areas.
Crawley’s growth has continued in recent years, and it has become far less of a stereotypical New Town. Its economic base is diverse and traditionally healthy, supporting a lower than average unemployment rate; Gatwick Airport is in the constituency, and provides many jobs. It has also seen a great change in housing tenure as and since the New Town Development Corporation homes have been sold off; in 1971 the borough had two-thirds of its housing stock in the public sector, in 1981 54%, and in 1991 just 30%; by 2021, the most recent census, the socially rented housing proportion was 22.9%. All in all, the secular trend was for a long time politically rightwards. However Labour have often controlled the borough council, and with a very substantial recovery to the strength of the ‘New Labour’ years they can again be competitive in this seat in parliamentary terms. This seems to be precisely what is happening in the run up to a likely 2024 general election.
In May 2023, for example, Labour won eight of the Crawley council wards up for election compared with just four for the Tories. What is more, they gained Pound Hill North & Forge Wood, their first victory in any Pound Hill contest since 1996 – one year before Tony Blair came to power – an interesting harbinger? The Conservative group leader only held on in Furnace Green by under 150 votes. Overall, Labour secured 11,354 votes across the 12 Crawley wards compared with 9,025 for the Conservatives, who came first only in Maidenbower, Three Bridges, Furnace Green and Pound Hill South & Worth. Only 31 March 2023 Henry Smith, aged 53, announced he would not be contesting Crawley again.
Although around no.100 on the Labour party’s target list by size of swing required, they now appear to be the favourites to regain Crawley after a 14 year gap – precisely the same period, of course since there was last a Labour Prime Minister in Downing Street. Keir Starmer seems at present to have reassembled the vote amassed by Tony Blair as a non-threatening (and non-socialist) alternative to a long standing and tired and threadbare looking Conservative government. Crawley may only be win by Labour when they win the general election as a whole – but they have won it when they do, as it were, and it looks like that will continue to happen.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 12.6% 555/650
Owner-occupied 59.0% 490/650
Private rented 14.5% 301/650
Social rented 23.9% 127/650
White 79.9% 527/650
Black 3.3% 132/650
Asian 13.0% 89/650
Managerial & professional 28.8%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.2%
Degree level 21.5% 456/650
No qualifications 20.1% 452/650
Students 6.2% 443/650
2021 Census
Age 65+ 13.3% 486/575
Owner occupied 57.0% 439/575
Private rented 20.1% 199/575
Social rented 22.9% 89/575
White 73.4% 447/575
Black 4.5% 144/575
Asian 15.4% 92/575
Managerial & professional 28.7% 390/575
Routine & Semi-routine 27.8% 145/575
Degree level 27.6% 409/575
No qualifications 17.8% 277/575
Students 5.9% 246/575
General election 2019: Crawley
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Henry Smith 27,040 54.2 +3.6
Labour Peter Lamb 18,680 37.4 -8.3
Liberal Democrats Khalil Yousuf 2,728 5.5 +1.7
Green Iain Dickson 1,451 2.9 +2.9
C Majority 8,360 16.8 +11.9
Turnout 50,103 67.2 -1.2
Conservative hold
Swing +5.9 Lab to C
No boundary changes
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_302_Crawley_Landscape.pdf
However, even though Crawley constituency’s boundaries have remained coterminous with the local authority borough ever since 1997, it has become clear that Labour only tend to win the seat when they win the general election itself. Laura Moffatt’s majority dropped sharply in both 2001 and 2005, when it generated the closest result of any of the 650 seats – a lead of just 37 votes or 0.1% of the poll. Since 2010 Crawley has been won four times by the Conservative Henry Smith. His majority has never been less than 2.457 (2017) and in December 2019 he increased his lead to an apparently comfortable 8,360. Labour would require a swing of over eight per cent to regain Crawley on current boundaries - which are again retained in the final report of the 2023 review as it ws within five per cent of the English norm they applied.
Why has Crawley turned out to be – or perhaps turned into – a seat clearly on the Conservative side of marginal? The original idea of the New Town movement as envisaged by the Reith Committee was that they should be divided into neighbourhoods each of which would be socially mixed, rather than there being clearly working class and middle class ‘sides of town’. This never worked very well, and in Crawley the wards have distinct electoral characteristics and histories. Labour have usually won strongholds like Langley Green, Ifield, Broadfield (site of the football club) and a newer residential area, Bewbush in the west of the town, developed from the 1970s. There is a substantial Asian (mainly Muslim) minority, 15% overall and increasing to over 30% as one gets nearer to Gatwick Airport, in Langley Green for example. Social renting is still well above average, especially in the west and south west sectors, reaching a peak in Broadfield. On the other hand New Town neighbourhood wards such as Pound Hill and Furnace Green have tended to be Conservative, as has Three Bridges, which has the core of an older community surrounded in the New Town expansion. Moreover there has continued to be extensive private development in areas such as Forge Wood and Maidenbower, which is the strongest Tory ward of all, with little or no social renting in its 2021 census Output Areas.
Crawley’s growth has continued in recent years, and it has become far less of a stereotypical New Town. Its economic base is diverse and traditionally healthy, supporting a lower than average unemployment rate; Gatwick Airport is in the constituency, and provides many jobs. It has also seen a great change in housing tenure as and since the New Town Development Corporation homes have been sold off; in 1971 the borough had two-thirds of its housing stock in the public sector, in 1981 54%, and in 1991 just 30%; by 2021, the most recent census, the socially rented housing proportion was 22.9%. All in all, the secular trend was for a long time politically rightwards. However Labour have often controlled the borough council, and with a very substantial recovery to the strength of the ‘New Labour’ years they can again be competitive in this seat in parliamentary terms. This seems to be precisely what is happening in the run up to a likely 2024 general election.
In May 2023, for example, Labour won eight of the Crawley council wards up for election compared with just four for the Tories. What is more, they gained Pound Hill North & Forge Wood, their first victory in any Pound Hill contest since 1996 – one year before Tony Blair came to power – an interesting harbinger? The Conservative group leader only held on in Furnace Green by under 150 votes. Overall, Labour secured 11,354 votes across the 12 Crawley wards compared with 9,025 for the Conservatives, who came first only in Maidenbower, Three Bridges, Furnace Green and Pound Hill South & Worth. Only 31 March 2023 Henry Smith, aged 53, announced he would not be contesting Crawley again.
Although around no.100 on the Labour party’s target list by size of swing required, they now appear to be the favourites to regain Crawley after a 14 year gap – precisely the same period, of course since there was last a Labour Prime Minister in Downing Street. Keir Starmer seems at present to have reassembled the vote amassed by Tony Blair as a non-threatening (and non-socialist) alternative to a long standing and tired and threadbare looking Conservative government. Crawley may only be win by Labour when they win the general election as a whole – but they have won it when they do, as it were, and it looks like that will continue to happen.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 12.6% 555/650
Owner-occupied 59.0% 490/650
Private rented 14.5% 301/650
Social rented 23.9% 127/650
White 79.9% 527/650
Black 3.3% 132/650
Asian 13.0% 89/650
Managerial & professional 28.8%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.2%
Degree level 21.5% 456/650
No qualifications 20.1% 452/650
Students 6.2% 443/650
2021 Census
Age 65+ 13.3% 486/575
Owner occupied 57.0% 439/575
Private rented 20.1% 199/575
Social rented 22.9% 89/575
White 73.4% 447/575
Black 4.5% 144/575
Asian 15.4% 92/575
Managerial & professional 28.7% 390/575
Routine & Semi-routine 27.8% 145/575
Degree level 27.6% 409/575
No qualifications 17.8% 277/575
Students 5.9% 246/575
General election 2019: Crawley
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Henry Smith 27,040 54.2 +3.6
Labour Peter Lamb 18,680 37.4 -8.3
Liberal Democrats Khalil Yousuf 2,728 5.5 +1.7
Green Iain Dickson 1,451 2.9 +2.9
C Majority 8,360 16.8 +11.9
Turnout 50,103 67.2 -1.2
Conservative hold
Swing +5.9 Lab to C
No boundary changes
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/south-east/South%20East_302_Crawley_Landscape.pdf
