Post by Robert Waller on Aug 14, 2023 12:25:45 GMT
A feature of redistricting in the USA has been the notion of the packed gerrymander and the cracked gerrymander. In the former, areas favourable to a party are gathered together so that the influence of its voters is concentrated, leaving surrounding districts safe or more winnable by the other party. In the latter, a place such as a city which may be strong for one party is split up and diluted with areas, for example more rural, strong for the other. In the United Kingdom we have a non-partisan independent boundary commission, of course, so strictly speaking no gerrymandering, but their policies can tend to one or other outcome. Take, say, the idea of the ‘doughnut’, such as the City of York; or alternatively the way that Oldham’s two seats each currently and for some decades have included extraneous territory. North of the border we have the case of Paisley, which for many decades had a seat of its own but is now split and then each part linked with wards from the rest of the historic county of Renfrewshire.
Paisley, due west of Glasgow, is a significant urban unit and has been called the ‘biggest town in Scotland’. Although it has shrunk since its peak in the 1961 census, when its population was recorded as 95,750, it is still the fifth largest community after the four cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee. With a current estimate of 77,000 it is just ahead of the largest of the Scottish New Towns, East Kilbride, and it could easily still form the basis of a single Westminster constituency; indeed it still does in terms of the Scottish Parliament. Paisley has had an interesting electoral history, dating back all the way to the Great Reform Act of 1832. It originally had a solid Whig, Radical and then Liberal tradition: the former Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith found a berth here in a 1920 byelection after having been a casualty of his erstwhile colleague Lloyd George’s coupon at East Fife in the 1918 general election. Asquith was beaten again in 1924, this time by Labour, and departed the Commons permanently; but the Liberal legacy in Paisley was not quite dead, for the party returned MPs in the 1930s, then did surprisingly well in both the 1961 byelection and the 1964 general election. Paisley was split into two seats in 1983. The Labour hegemony eventually gave way to that of the SNP in 2015, as in so many parts of Scotland.
The Paisley element forms very much the minority of the current Paisley and Renfrewshire North Westminster constituency. This really means ‘Paisley North and Renfrewshire North’. However, the Paisley section is not extensive. This seat’s boundaries do not match those of the current wards within Renfrewshire council precisely, and of those wards including the Paisley name, it includes only parts of both Paisley Northwest and Paisley Northeast & Ralston. The whole of each of the other Paisley wards, that is East and Central, Southeast and Southwest, are placed in the Paisley and Renfrewshire South division. Having said that, ‘North’ does include some well known, even iconic, parts of the town. One could perhaps be described as infamous.
Ferguslie Park, on Paisley’s north-western edge, for a long time had a ferocious reputation as the most deprived small area in the whole of Scotland, with very low quality social housing and high rates of drug abuse and violent crime. It was named as one of the most deprived communities by the Scottish Executive in 2006 and in 2012 it was still at no.1 on this particular league table in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. There have, however, been serious attempts at regeneration. Much of the worst housing has been demolished, and new developments have emerged, such as that around Tannahill. Ferguslie Park is the main element in the minority of the Northwest ward in this constituency, which also includes Gockston and Shortroods, which have a lot of new build housing. Northeast & Ralston is a very different kettle of fish. Ralston itself is not mainly in this constituency which includes just its parts north of the A761, but other middle class neighbourhoods of owner-occupied and indeed often detached housing are: Oldhall and the part of Crookston outside the Glasgow city boundaries. Despite this section, the Conservatives only managed 20% in Northeast & Ralston in the most recent Renfrewshire local government elections in May 2022, admittedly heir best showing anywhere with Paisley label; the SNP were top with 40%, to 34% for Labour. We can’t separate out Ferguslie Park’s preferences, but it probably had a very low turnout; Northwest ward’s participation rate was the lowest anywhere in the town, while easily placing the SNP candidates first.
The heavy majority of this seat is actually in the ‘Renfrewshire North’ section; its wards add up to around 62,000 of the 72,000 electors at present, though Renfrew South & Gallowhill ward does include some neighbourhoods such as the latter that could be described as part of the Paisley built-up area. Nevertheless this is the dominant part of the constituency, and it explains why the demographic indicators overall are considerably more owner occupied, middle class, and educated than Paisley and Renfrewshire South. The north western quadrant including the ward of Bishopton, Bridge of Weir and Langbank reaching as far as the Clyde is decidedly attractive, and in 2022 the Conservatives (with 34%) strongly challenged the SNP (36%) and finished far ahead of Labour (23%). Parts of Houston, Crosslee & Linwood ward are similar, though not the last named community – which is still strongly associated with the Rootes, later Chrysler, motor car factory established in 1961 – though in fact the site of the factory was nearer to Ferguslie Park in Paisley than to Linwood town (it was on the other side of the A737). It was not the greatest success, and closed just twenty years later. All buildings were demolished by 1995 and the site is now marked by a huge industrial and retail estate and some wasteland – the motor test tracks can still clearly be seen from an aerial view. With Linwood being its most populous element, the ward’s 2022 order was SNP (39%) and Labour (37%) ahead of Tory (24%, enough for one councillor out of four).
Also in this seat is the Erskine & Inchinnan ward (SNP 44%, Labour 34%, Conservative 18% in 2022). This lies on the south bank of the Clyde between Bishopton and Renfrew; Erskine is probably best known for being the site of the high level bridge nearest to the mouth of the Clyde, opened in 1971. Below it is a town of some 15,000 souls, shading into Inchinnan. The street pattern reveals that modern housing development prevails, dating mainly from the 1970s to the 1990s. 80% of the housing was owner occupied in the ward in 2011, and only 14% social rented. The voting pattern in 2022 was typical of the whole constituency in that year though : 43% SNP, 34% Labour, 18% Conservative. Finally, we come to Renfrew itself, the largest single section of this seat, the historic county town - although overshadowed by Paisley since the Industrial Revolution – but still substantial, with a population of 24,000. It is also the SNP’s stronghold. They took 49% of first preferences in Renfrew North & Braehead (with Loanhead too) in 2022, and no less than 52% in Renfrew South & Gallowhill (which also includes Newmains)
What else is in this seat? It includes Glasgow Airport, actually located directly north of Paisley. It does however just miss Paisley’s Premiership football club, St Mirren – both the old Love Street ground, now built on (the clue is in the name of the main new street, Saints) and their less characterful stadium since 2009, near Paisley St James station which is right on the boundary between the seats, which is currently a bit jagged and illogical, not conforming with the ward boundaries.
In the Westminster parliamentary boundary changes these anomalies are proposed to be sorted out, involving transfers both ways with the other Paisley & Renfrewshire seat. But there are other suggestions too. Several thousand voters around Bridge of Weir will be transferred to Inverclyde, which will further weaken the Tories here. An even more substantial section, 11,600 voters, of Glasgow SW is shifted out of the city constituency: this consists of just over half of Cardonald ward, north of the A761, including North Cardonald, Hillington and the massive Hillington industrial estate (where a good number of residents of the existing constituency work anyway). Labour actually slightly outpolled the SNP in the 2022 Glasgow city council elections in Cardonald ward, but overall the boundary changes should not challenge the status quo too much; they will probably reinforce what would have been the likely political tendency, and put Labour into a clear second place with the Conservatives more clearly behind in third. In the final report of June 2023 only one minor change was made, as the boundaries were slightly shifted to take account of the new (Taylor Wimpey) housing development of 'Dargavel Village' near Bishopton - which only moves 58 voters into this seat from Inverclyde & Renfrewshire West based on the qualification date electoral register, but has grown even since then.
Perhaps the most controversial original boundary recommendation lay in the nomenclature. Unlike in the USA and indeed in parts of England, the ‘cracked’ element of the ‘Paisley seats’ does not really have a political effect, as both the town itself and the ‘Renfrewshire’ terrain are rather strongly SNP overall. Gavin Newlands finished 12,000 votes ahead of fairly evenly divided pursuers in 2019, with more than twice as many votes as either of them. Almost to rub in the insult to Paisley, the Commission initially proposed that the two seats should be called just Renfrew North and Renfrew South, with no reference to Scotland’s fifth largest community at all. This led to representations to the inquiry process, and was reversed in the revised and final proposals to Paisley and Renfrewshire North – as the earlier suggestion could best be described not so much as cracked, as crackpot.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 16.8% 316/650
Owner-occupied 70.7% 201/650
Private rented 8.3% 632/650
Social rented 20.4% 207/650
White 97.2% 213/650
Black 0.4% 422/650
Asian 2.1% 359/650
Managerial & professional 30.2%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.2%
Degree level 23.6% 389/650
No qualifications 27.0% 179/650
Students 7.8% 233/650
2022 Census
Details not yet available
General Election 2019: Paisley and Renfrewshire North
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
SNP Gavin Newlands 23,353 47.0 +9.6
Labour Alison Taylor 11,451 23.0 -8.8
Conservative Julie Pirone 11,217 22.6 -4.9
Liberal Democrats Ross Stalker 3,661 7.4 +4.2
SNP Majority 11,902 24.0 +18.4
2019 electorate 72,007
Turnout 49,682 69.0 -0.1
SNP hold
Swing 9.2 Lab to SNP
Boundary Changes
The new Paisley and Renfrewshire North will consist of
76.1 % of Paisley and Renfrewshire North
18.1 % of Glasgow SW
5.2% of Paisley and Renfrewshire South
Map
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/paisley_and_renfrewshire_north.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Professor David Denver for Rallings and Thrasher)
Paisley, due west of Glasgow, is a significant urban unit and has been called the ‘biggest town in Scotland’. Although it has shrunk since its peak in the 1961 census, when its population was recorded as 95,750, it is still the fifth largest community after the four cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee. With a current estimate of 77,000 it is just ahead of the largest of the Scottish New Towns, East Kilbride, and it could easily still form the basis of a single Westminster constituency; indeed it still does in terms of the Scottish Parliament. Paisley has had an interesting electoral history, dating back all the way to the Great Reform Act of 1832. It originally had a solid Whig, Radical and then Liberal tradition: the former Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith found a berth here in a 1920 byelection after having been a casualty of his erstwhile colleague Lloyd George’s coupon at East Fife in the 1918 general election. Asquith was beaten again in 1924, this time by Labour, and departed the Commons permanently; but the Liberal legacy in Paisley was not quite dead, for the party returned MPs in the 1930s, then did surprisingly well in both the 1961 byelection and the 1964 general election. Paisley was split into two seats in 1983. The Labour hegemony eventually gave way to that of the SNP in 2015, as in so many parts of Scotland.
The Paisley element forms very much the minority of the current Paisley and Renfrewshire North Westminster constituency. This really means ‘Paisley North and Renfrewshire North’. However, the Paisley section is not extensive. This seat’s boundaries do not match those of the current wards within Renfrewshire council precisely, and of those wards including the Paisley name, it includes only parts of both Paisley Northwest and Paisley Northeast & Ralston. The whole of each of the other Paisley wards, that is East and Central, Southeast and Southwest, are placed in the Paisley and Renfrewshire South division. Having said that, ‘North’ does include some well known, even iconic, parts of the town. One could perhaps be described as infamous.
Ferguslie Park, on Paisley’s north-western edge, for a long time had a ferocious reputation as the most deprived small area in the whole of Scotland, with very low quality social housing and high rates of drug abuse and violent crime. It was named as one of the most deprived communities by the Scottish Executive in 2006 and in 2012 it was still at no.1 on this particular league table in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. There have, however, been serious attempts at regeneration. Much of the worst housing has been demolished, and new developments have emerged, such as that around Tannahill. Ferguslie Park is the main element in the minority of the Northwest ward in this constituency, which also includes Gockston and Shortroods, which have a lot of new build housing. Northeast & Ralston is a very different kettle of fish. Ralston itself is not mainly in this constituency which includes just its parts north of the A761, but other middle class neighbourhoods of owner-occupied and indeed often detached housing are: Oldhall and the part of Crookston outside the Glasgow city boundaries. Despite this section, the Conservatives only managed 20% in Northeast & Ralston in the most recent Renfrewshire local government elections in May 2022, admittedly heir best showing anywhere with Paisley label; the SNP were top with 40%, to 34% for Labour. We can’t separate out Ferguslie Park’s preferences, but it probably had a very low turnout; Northwest ward’s participation rate was the lowest anywhere in the town, while easily placing the SNP candidates first.
The heavy majority of this seat is actually in the ‘Renfrewshire North’ section; its wards add up to around 62,000 of the 72,000 electors at present, though Renfrew South & Gallowhill ward does include some neighbourhoods such as the latter that could be described as part of the Paisley built-up area. Nevertheless this is the dominant part of the constituency, and it explains why the demographic indicators overall are considerably more owner occupied, middle class, and educated than Paisley and Renfrewshire South. The north western quadrant including the ward of Bishopton, Bridge of Weir and Langbank reaching as far as the Clyde is decidedly attractive, and in 2022 the Conservatives (with 34%) strongly challenged the SNP (36%) and finished far ahead of Labour (23%). Parts of Houston, Crosslee & Linwood ward are similar, though not the last named community – which is still strongly associated with the Rootes, later Chrysler, motor car factory established in 1961 – though in fact the site of the factory was nearer to Ferguslie Park in Paisley than to Linwood town (it was on the other side of the A737). It was not the greatest success, and closed just twenty years later. All buildings were demolished by 1995 and the site is now marked by a huge industrial and retail estate and some wasteland – the motor test tracks can still clearly be seen from an aerial view. With Linwood being its most populous element, the ward’s 2022 order was SNP (39%) and Labour (37%) ahead of Tory (24%, enough for one councillor out of four).
Also in this seat is the Erskine & Inchinnan ward (SNP 44%, Labour 34%, Conservative 18% in 2022). This lies on the south bank of the Clyde between Bishopton and Renfrew; Erskine is probably best known for being the site of the high level bridge nearest to the mouth of the Clyde, opened in 1971. Below it is a town of some 15,000 souls, shading into Inchinnan. The street pattern reveals that modern housing development prevails, dating mainly from the 1970s to the 1990s. 80% of the housing was owner occupied in the ward in 2011, and only 14% social rented. The voting pattern in 2022 was typical of the whole constituency in that year though : 43% SNP, 34% Labour, 18% Conservative. Finally, we come to Renfrew itself, the largest single section of this seat, the historic county town - although overshadowed by Paisley since the Industrial Revolution – but still substantial, with a population of 24,000. It is also the SNP’s stronghold. They took 49% of first preferences in Renfrew North & Braehead (with Loanhead too) in 2022, and no less than 52% in Renfrew South & Gallowhill (which also includes Newmains)
What else is in this seat? It includes Glasgow Airport, actually located directly north of Paisley. It does however just miss Paisley’s Premiership football club, St Mirren – both the old Love Street ground, now built on (the clue is in the name of the main new street, Saints) and their less characterful stadium since 2009, near Paisley St James station which is right on the boundary between the seats, which is currently a bit jagged and illogical, not conforming with the ward boundaries.
In the Westminster parliamentary boundary changes these anomalies are proposed to be sorted out, involving transfers both ways with the other Paisley & Renfrewshire seat. But there are other suggestions too. Several thousand voters around Bridge of Weir will be transferred to Inverclyde, which will further weaken the Tories here. An even more substantial section, 11,600 voters, of Glasgow SW is shifted out of the city constituency: this consists of just over half of Cardonald ward, north of the A761, including North Cardonald, Hillington and the massive Hillington industrial estate (where a good number of residents of the existing constituency work anyway). Labour actually slightly outpolled the SNP in the 2022 Glasgow city council elections in Cardonald ward, but overall the boundary changes should not challenge the status quo too much; they will probably reinforce what would have been the likely political tendency, and put Labour into a clear second place with the Conservatives more clearly behind in third. In the final report of June 2023 only one minor change was made, as the boundaries were slightly shifted to take account of the new (Taylor Wimpey) housing development of 'Dargavel Village' near Bishopton - which only moves 58 voters into this seat from Inverclyde & Renfrewshire West based on the qualification date electoral register, but has grown even since then.
Perhaps the most controversial original boundary recommendation lay in the nomenclature. Unlike in the USA and indeed in parts of England, the ‘cracked’ element of the ‘Paisley seats’ does not really have a political effect, as both the town itself and the ‘Renfrewshire’ terrain are rather strongly SNP overall. Gavin Newlands finished 12,000 votes ahead of fairly evenly divided pursuers in 2019, with more than twice as many votes as either of them. Almost to rub in the insult to Paisley, the Commission initially proposed that the two seats should be called just Renfrew North and Renfrew South, with no reference to Scotland’s fifth largest community at all. This led to representations to the inquiry process, and was reversed in the revised and final proposals to Paisley and Renfrewshire North – as the earlier suggestion could best be described not so much as cracked, as crackpot.
2011 Census
Age 65+ 16.8% 316/650
Owner-occupied 70.7% 201/650
Private rented 8.3% 632/650
Social rented 20.4% 207/650
White 97.2% 213/650
Black 0.4% 422/650
Asian 2.1% 359/650
Managerial & professional 30.2%
Routine & Semi-routine 27.2%
Degree level 23.6% 389/650
No qualifications 27.0% 179/650
Students 7.8% 233/650
2022 Census
Details not yet available
General Election 2019: Paisley and Renfrewshire North
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
SNP Gavin Newlands 23,353 47.0 +9.6
Labour Alison Taylor 11,451 23.0 -8.8
Conservative Julie Pirone 11,217 22.6 -4.9
Liberal Democrats Ross Stalker 3,661 7.4 +4.2
SNP Majority 11,902 24.0 +18.4
2019 electorate 72,007
Turnout 49,682 69.0 -0.1
SNP hold
Swing 9.2 Lab to SNP
Boundary Changes
The new Paisley and Renfrewshire North will consist of
76.1 % of Paisley and Renfrewshire North
18.1 % of Glasgow SW
5.2% of Paisley and Renfrewshire South
Map
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/paisley_and_renfrewshire_north.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Professor David Denver for Rallings and Thrasher)
| SNP | 22856 | 48.9% |
| Lab | 11103 | 23.7% |
| Con | 9134 | 19.5% |
| LD | 3539 | 7.6% |
| Brexit | 146 | 0.3% |
| | ||
| Majority | 11753 | 25.1% |
