Post by Robert Waller on Aug 2, 2023 20:50:48 GMT
Once upon a time a famed outlaw did (or more likely did not) live in the mighty Sherwood Forest, steal from the rich and give to the poor. Many hundreds of years later, in and near – and indeed, under - the much reduced forest, coal was discovered and the area was transformed. In the East Midlands of England, the coal seam slants so that the further eastwards one goes the deeper it is. This meant that the reserves in the west closer to the surface were the first to be exploited, but also the first to be exhausted. As a result the mining industry itself moved eastwards, and in the 1920s and 1930s new pits were sunk in the Dukeries, so named because of the preponderance of large landed estates like those of the Duke of Portland (Welbeck Abbey) and the Duke of Newcastle (Clumber House), as well as Rufford Abbey (Lord Savile) and Thoresby Hall (Earl Manvers). To cater for and house the miners migrating to the east Nottinghamshire field planned new colliery villages were constructed at Ollerton, Bilsthorpe, Clipstone, Blidworth and Edwinstowe (the nearest village to the Major Oak, the most famous tree in Sherwood Forest.
These communities were originally in the Newark constituency, which largely explains why that rather conservative historic market town gave its name to a seat held by Labour from 1950 right through to 1979. Then in 1983 an entirely new, extra, 11th constituency in Nottinghamshire was created. The new seat was named Sherwood.
It was not based on a local authority district like the other ten, but included elements of Ashfield and Gedling as well as Newark. Calverton, a modern mining village, was removed from the Gedling (formerly Carlton) constituency, and Hucknall (from Ashfield) was an old-established mining town in the Leen valley which was opened up in the nineteenth century. It did, though, have a common economic base to tie it together. Coal was king here, and the new seat rose straight into the top five in the national list of divisions dominated by employment in mining. This made it all the more amazing that Sherwood was won in 1983 and 1987 by a Conservative farmer, Andrew Stewart. The political world had to contend with a startling new phenomenon: the Tory mining seat.
This was one of the most prosperous coalfields in the country, until the threat and practice of pit closures finally came to this part of east Nottinghamshire as well. There were also some agricultural villages and one very affluent residential area south of Mansfield, Ravenshead. But all the same Sherwood seemed to have been drawn to provide an extra safe Labour seat in Nottinghamshire. Yet in the year 1983 no ostensible Labour stronghold was safe, or sacred. Since then the Dukeries coalfield endured a tempestuous time: working through the 1984-85 coal strike, beleaguered by flying Yorkshire pickets, deaths outside Ollerton Colliery, and the UDM breakaway. By the way, the ‘moderation’ of the Nottinghamshire coalfield and indeed its schismatic tendency were not new in the 1980s. The Dukeries coalfield had been largely non-unionised during its beginnings and elements even worked through the 1926 coal and general strikes, and in the 1930s the Nottinghamshire Miners Industrial Union (NMIU or ‘Spencer union’, named after the Labour MP for Broxtowe) split away from the Nottinghamshire Miners Association. Labour were in no position to retake Sherwood in 1987, and Stewart increased his majority to 4,500.
Then the government started to threaten pit closures even in this relatively modern part of the coalfield. Blidworth was the first to go, then there was a fatal accident at Bilsthorpe, which was placed on the list of the doomed along with Clipstone, and a merger was proposed between Ollerton and Thoresby Colliery near Edwinstowe. One began to wonder if any of the pits really had a future, and indeed the last one in Nottinghamshire, the enlarged Thoresby, finally closed in 2015. Labour’s Paddy Tipping had managed to win Sherwood from 1992 through the Blair years to 2010, but since that time the seat, never significantly affected by boundary changes, has been held progressively more safely by Mark Spencer for the Conservatives. By 2019 his majority had reached 16.000, very similar to that in the traditional capital of the Notts coalfield, Mansfield.
Sherwood now looks like yet another example of the massive movement away from Labour in ex-mining areas, as it has now finally become an ex-mining area itself; note the huge swing in 2019 in Bassetlaw to its north, and over the Derbyshire border to the west in Bolsover. It is true that some of the exceptional change in 2019 was specifically to do with Brexit (Sherwood is estimated to have voted 64% Leave in 2016) but Labour would be unwise to load too many hopes of a regain on this; for a start it is a very long road back, requiring a swing of over 15%. More likely, there has been a sea change in the electoral politics here. Mineral extractive industries are by definition cyclical. Resources run out or become uneconomic to remove. The Nottinghamshire coalfield was one of the last to be exploited, and one of the last to expire. Deep coal mining is an important part of the past of Britain and of the Labour party, but it is now in the past; and the electoral map is changing to reflect that fact.
There are some boundary changes due before the next general election. The most noticeable change will be that the Commission has decided to change the name of the seat to Sherwood Forest, which may be somewhat more widely recognisable, though no more of the remnants of woodland are actually included.
At its southern end this seat gains around 3,000 voters from the Newark seat, in the shape mainly of the large and fairly affluent village of Lowdham, a commuter village set on the Lincoln-Newark-Nottingham rail line. Apart from some minor adjustments caused by ward boundary cages since the last review, the main countervailing loss is of just over 6% of the present Sherwood to Gedling, chiefly around Bestwood Village. The net political impact will be very slightly to increase the Conservative notional majority, as Lowdham ward gave 58% of its vote to the Conservatives in May 2019, the closest local elections to the last general election, compared with 19% for the Greens and 12% each for Liberal Democrats and Labour. By contrast Bestwood St Albans returned two Labour councillors both then and in May 2023.
However even in a poor year for the Tories, they did still win the remaining Gedling borough wards in the Sherwood seat: ex-mining Calverton and the newly name Newstead Abbey, which is mainly based on Ravenshead. Of the Newark & Sherwood District wards, they also held the rural Dover Beck and Bilsthorpe, Boughton and Rainworth South & Rufford, these latter three despite formerly having coal mines within their neighbourhoods. On the other hand Labour gained the substantial village of Farnsfield as well as winning in Ollerton and Rainworth North & Blidworth, both very much in the 1920s Dukeries coalfield. It looks as if Labour have only partially regained their former strength in that section. Finally in the Ashfield section, which consists of the four Hucknall wards, the relevance for parliamentary politics is clouded by the election in 2023 of nine Ashfield Independents as well as a lone Conservative in Hucknall West; this group may well play a very significant role in the 2024 general election in Ashfield seat, but it will not in Sherwood Forest.
As with Robin Hood, the hard grind, the heroism, the conflicts, and the splits in this area of former mining and industrial and political conflict are all fading into the status of legend. The Sherwood Forest area has been through transformations before, of the arrival of mining and the Labour party, then their decline; and who is to say that it will not undergo another one. The strict application of uniform swing based on opinion polls in 2023 claimed that they could, and in July 2024 they did, with an above-average swing of 21%, similar to those recorded in Mansfield and Bassetlaw. However such churn and volatility mean there will probably be more tense battles in this part of the land historically noted for drama.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 20.9% 210/575
Owner occupied 71.8% 132/575
Private rented 14.9% 442/575
Social rented 13.3% 368/575
White 95.1% 181/575
Black 1.2% 300/575
Asian 1.4% 455/575
Managerial & professional 30.2% 347/575
Routine & Semi-routine 27.8% 140/575
Degree level 26.5% 452/575
No qualifications 20.4% 171/575
Students 4.5% 504/575
General Election 2024: Sherwood Forest
Labour Michelle Welsh 18,841 38.7 +9.2
Conservative Mark Spencer 13,398 27.5 −33.3
Reform UK Helen O'Hare 11,320 23.3 N/A
Green Sheila Greatrex-White 2,216 4.6 +2.0
Liberal Democrats David Dobbie 1,838 3.8 −1.9
(Ashfield) Independent Lee Waters 864 1.8 N/A
Independent Jeremy Spry 183 0.4 N/A
Lab Majority 5,443 11.2 N/A
Turnout 48,660 61.9 −5.7
Registered electors 78,894
Labour gain from Conservative
Swing 21.2 C to Lab
General Election 2019: Sherwood
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Mark Spencer 32,049 60.8 +9.3
Labour Jerry Hague 15,863 30.1 -11.7
Liberal Democrats Tim Ball 2,863 5.5 +3.4
Green Esther Cropper 1,214 2.3 +1.1
Independent Simon Rood 700 1.3 N/A
C Majority 16,186 30.7 + 21.0
Turnout 52,689 67.6 - 2.6
Conservative hold
Swing 10.5% Labour to Conservative
Boundary Changes
The Sherwood Forest seat consists of
92.4% of Sherwood
6.2% of Newark
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/east-midlands/East%20Midlands_031_Newark_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
These communities were originally in the Newark constituency, which largely explains why that rather conservative historic market town gave its name to a seat held by Labour from 1950 right through to 1979. Then in 1983 an entirely new, extra, 11th constituency in Nottinghamshire was created. The new seat was named Sherwood.
It was not based on a local authority district like the other ten, but included elements of Ashfield and Gedling as well as Newark. Calverton, a modern mining village, was removed from the Gedling (formerly Carlton) constituency, and Hucknall (from Ashfield) was an old-established mining town in the Leen valley which was opened up in the nineteenth century. It did, though, have a common economic base to tie it together. Coal was king here, and the new seat rose straight into the top five in the national list of divisions dominated by employment in mining. This made it all the more amazing that Sherwood was won in 1983 and 1987 by a Conservative farmer, Andrew Stewart. The political world had to contend with a startling new phenomenon: the Tory mining seat.
This was one of the most prosperous coalfields in the country, until the threat and practice of pit closures finally came to this part of east Nottinghamshire as well. There were also some agricultural villages and one very affluent residential area south of Mansfield, Ravenshead. But all the same Sherwood seemed to have been drawn to provide an extra safe Labour seat in Nottinghamshire. Yet in the year 1983 no ostensible Labour stronghold was safe, or sacred. Since then the Dukeries coalfield endured a tempestuous time: working through the 1984-85 coal strike, beleaguered by flying Yorkshire pickets, deaths outside Ollerton Colliery, and the UDM breakaway. By the way, the ‘moderation’ of the Nottinghamshire coalfield and indeed its schismatic tendency were not new in the 1980s. The Dukeries coalfield had been largely non-unionised during its beginnings and elements even worked through the 1926 coal and general strikes, and in the 1930s the Nottinghamshire Miners Industrial Union (NMIU or ‘Spencer union’, named after the Labour MP for Broxtowe) split away from the Nottinghamshire Miners Association. Labour were in no position to retake Sherwood in 1987, and Stewart increased his majority to 4,500.
Then the government started to threaten pit closures even in this relatively modern part of the coalfield. Blidworth was the first to go, then there was a fatal accident at Bilsthorpe, which was placed on the list of the doomed along with Clipstone, and a merger was proposed between Ollerton and Thoresby Colliery near Edwinstowe. One began to wonder if any of the pits really had a future, and indeed the last one in Nottinghamshire, the enlarged Thoresby, finally closed in 2015. Labour’s Paddy Tipping had managed to win Sherwood from 1992 through the Blair years to 2010, but since that time the seat, never significantly affected by boundary changes, has been held progressively more safely by Mark Spencer for the Conservatives. By 2019 his majority had reached 16.000, very similar to that in the traditional capital of the Notts coalfield, Mansfield.
Sherwood now looks like yet another example of the massive movement away from Labour in ex-mining areas, as it has now finally become an ex-mining area itself; note the huge swing in 2019 in Bassetlaw to its north, and over the Derbyshire border to the west in Bolsover. It is true that some of the exceptional change in 2019 was specifically to do with Brexit (Sherwood is estimated to have voted 64% Leave in 2016) but Labour would be unwise to load too many hopes of a regain on this; for a start it is a very long road back, requiring a swing of over 15%. More likely, there has been a sea change in the electoral politics here. Mineral extractive industries are by definition cyclical. Resources run out or become uneconomic to remove. The Nottinghamshire coalfield was one of the last to be exploited, and one of the last to expire. Deep coal mining is an important part of the past of Britain and of the Labour party, but it is now in the past; and the electoral map is changing to reflect that fact.
There are some boundary changes due before the next general election. The most noticeable change will be that the Commission has decided to change the name of the seat to Sherwood Forest, which may be somewhat more widely recognisable, though no more of the remnants of woodland are actually included.
At its southern end this seat gains around 3,000 voters from the Newark seat, in the shape mainly of the large and fairly affluent village of Lowdham, a commuter village set on the Lincoln-Newark-Nottingham rail line. Apart from some minor adjustments caused by ward boundary cages since the last review, the main countervailing loss is of just over 6% of the present Sherwood to Gedling, chiefly around Bestwood Village. The net political impact will be very slightly to increase the Conservative notional majority, as Lowdham ward gave 58% of its vote to the Conservatives in May 2019, the closest local elections to the last general election, compared with 19% for the Greens and 12% each for Liberal Democrats and Labour. By contrast Bestwood St Albans returned two Labour councillors both then and in May 2023.
However even in a poor year for the Tories, they did still win the remaining Gedling borough wards in the Sherwood seat: ex-mining Calverton and the newly name Newstead Abbey, which is mainly based on Ravenshead. Of the Newark & Sherwood District wards, they also held the rural Dover Beck and Bilsthorpe, Boughton and Rainworth South & Rufford, these latter three despite formerly having coal mines within their neighbourhoods. On the other hand Labour gained the substantial village of Farnsfield as well as winning in Ollerton and Rainworth North & Blidworth, both very much in the 1920s Dukeries coalfield. It looks as if Labour have only partially regained their former strength in that section. Finally in the Ashfield section, which consists of the four Hucknall wards, the relevance for parliamentary politics is clouded by the election in 2023 of nine Ashfield Independents as well as a lone Conservative in Hucknall West; this group may well play a very significant role in the 2024 general election in Ashfield seat, but it will not in Sherwood Forest.
As with Robin Hood, the hard grind, the heroism, the conflicts, and the splits in this area of former mining and industrial and political conflict are all fading into the status of legend. The Sherwood Forest area has been through transformations before, of the arrival of mining and the Labour party, then their decline; and who is to say that it will not undergo another one. The strict application of uniform swing based on opinion polls in 2023 claimed that they could, and in July 2024 they did, with an above-average swing of 21%, similar to those recorded in Mansfield and Bassetlaw. However such churn and volatility mean there will probably be more tense battles in this part of the land historically noted for drama.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 20.9% 210/575
Owner occupied 71.8% 132/575
Private rented 14.9% 442/575
Social rented 13.3% 368/575
White 95.1% 181/575
Black 1.2% 300/575
Asian 1.4% 455/575
Managerial & professional 30.2% 347/575
Routine & Semi-routine 27.8% 140/575
Degree level 26.5% 452/575
No qualifications 20.4% 171/575
Students 4.5% 504/575
General Election 2024: Sherwood Forest
Labour Michelle Welsh 18,841 38.7 +9.2
Conservative Mark Spencer 13,398 27.5 −33.3
Reform UK Helen O'Hare 11,320 23.3 N/A
Green Sheila Greatrex-White 2,216 4.6 +2.0
Liberal Democrats David Dobbie 1,838 3.8 −1.9
(Ashfield) Independent Lee Waters 864 1.8 N/A
Independent Jeremy Spry 183 0.4 N/A
Lab Majority 5,443 11.2 N/A
Turnout 48,660 61.9 −5.7
Registered electors 78,894
Labour gain from Conservative
Swing 21.2 C to Lab
General Election 2019: Sherwood
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Mark Spencer 32,049 60.8 +9.3
Labour Jerry Hague 15,863 30.1 -11.7
Liberal Democrats Tim Ball 2,863 5.5 +3.4
Green Esther Cropper 1,214 2.3 +1.1
Independent Simon Rood 700 1.3 N/A
C Majority 16,186 30.7 + 21.0
Turnout 52,689 67.6 - 2.6
Conservative hold
Swing 10.5% Labour to Conservative
Boundary Changes
The Sherwood Forest seat consists of
92.4% of Sherwood
6.2% of Newark
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/east-midlands/East%20Midlands_031_Newark_Portrait.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
| Con | 31688 | 60.8% |
| Lab | 15398 | 29.6% |
| LD | 2969 | 5.7% |
| Green | 1354 | 2.6% |
| Ind | 700 | 1.3% |
| Con Majority | 16290 | 31.3% |