Post by Robert Waller on Aug 15, 2023 18:41:21 GMT
There are few historic counties within Britain which have such contrasting social, economic and political characteristics as Dunbartonshire, which is essentially situated to the north and west of Glasgow. East Dunbartonshire has in recent elections been a multi-party marginal, represented by four different parties since 1974 but most recently dramatically changing hands between Liberal Democrat and SNP. On the other hand, in West Dunbartonshire, while the SNP has won the last three general elections (as in the majority of seats in Scotland) it is very definitely Labour who is the challenger, and the political tradition has been very much on the Left. That is because, on current boundaries even more so, West is a constituency of strong working-class characteristics and heritage, while East is one of the most affluent and middle class suburban seats north of the border.
The West Dunbartonshire constituency extends on the north bank of the lower Clyde river from the border with the city of Glasgow between Whitecrook and Yoker to the county town (and indeed one time capital of the kingdom of Strathclyde) Dumbarton – note, with an ‘m’ compared with the county’s ‘n’. It then stretched north and inland along the Vale of Leven to reach the southern tip of Loch Lomond. All this sounds very romantic and far from a proletarian stronghold but that would be highly inaccurate.
For a start, the seat’s largest community is Clydebank. Its population, although it has been substantially declining for sixty years, is still over 25,000 (it was 29,000 in 2011, and had peaked at 50,000 in 1961). Clydebank achieved renown as one of the powerhouses of world shipbuilding, starting with the establishment of Thomson’s yard in the 1870s. There was also a huge Singer sewing machine factory, located in the Kilbowie neighbourhood of Clydebank, from the 1880s to 1980. It employed 15,000 workers in 1960. Its 200 foot tall clock tower dominated the inland part of Clydebank, just as the great shipyard cranes towered over the riverfront. In the inter-war years of the 20th century Clydebank was an integral part of Red Clydeside; but it suffered from the savage blitz bombing attacks that destroyed many of its archetypical workers’ tenements in March 1941. With the precipitous decline of the Scottish shipbuilding industry after World War Two, Clydebank’s housing was also hollowed out, as can still be seen from the many ‘vacant lots’ in American parlance. There is virtually no middle class housing in Clydebank, unless one counts a small pocket inland near Hardgate. Taking the two Clydebank wards together, they still had close to 40% in social rented tenure in 2011; indeed for the West Dunbartonshire division as a whole, the figure of 37% placed it in the top twenty in this category within the UK – a stark contrast to East Dunbartonshire, which was no. 1 out of 650 for owner occupation at that time. The Scottish census was delayed for a year till 2022, so we as yet have limited updated information.
Dumbarton itself (population 20,000) may at first sight be dominated by the dramatic volcanic plug of basalt known as Dumbarton Rock – it forms an astonishing background to the stadium of Dumbarton FC, for example. But the town is another solidly working class unit, with far more Roman Catholics than Protestants (6,500 to 4,600 in the 2011 census), large social housing developments such as Silverton, Kirktonhill and Brucehill. Back in the days of small single member wards prior to the introduction of STV, Labour almost always won every Dumbarton ward – Central, West, North and South, with their only weakness being in Bowling, which is a little further up the Clyde.
The third main population centre is the Vale of Leven, consisting of a group of communities along the river stretching from north of Dumbarton up towards Lomond. This is not as idyllic as it sounds. The communities here – Renton, Bonhill, Alexandria, Balloch, Jamestown –have a combined population of over 20,000 and were originally created by the Industrial Revolution as textile centres; there is a touch of the atmosphere of the Pennine valleys here. To this may be added the grim 1960s tenements of New Bonhill, built high on the windy sides of the vale to house Glasgow overspill. Back in the 1920s and 1930s the Vale of Leven had the reputation of being one of the scattered ‘Little Moscows’, along with communities like Lumphinnans in Fife, electing Communist councillors and generally having a reputation for left-wing radicalism. This has not entirely dissipated. In 2012 Jim Bollan was elected to the council in the Leven ward as a Scottish Socialist party representative, and he is still there, though in 2017 and 2022 his label was 'West Dunbartonshire Community Party'.
As far as the rest of the 2022 West Dunbartonshire council results were concerned, the SNP did best in the two Clydebank wards, taking 48% of the first preferences in Waterfront to Labour’s 37%, and 52% in Clydebank Central to Labour’s 40%; these figures imply just how poorly other parties fared. In Dumbarton ward Labour led with over 46% to the Nationalists’ 42%, and a Conservative lost his seat after taking only 9% compared with nearly 15% in 2017. In the two Vale of Leven wards, Labour pipped the SNP in the northern one, Lomond, with 38% to 35% and two councillors to one, while in Leven, in addition to Jim Bollan, Labour took two of the other spots and the SNP only one.
There is one other ward, which was Labour’s strongest of all: Kilpatrick, where they achieved 56%, one of their highest shares anywhere in Scotland in 2022, well ahead of the SNP’s 38%. Kilpatrick is located inland from Clydebank, and largely comprises not the community of Old Kilpatrick or Kilpatrick station, which are both in Clydebank Waterfront ward, but rather the social housing estates of Faifley and Duntocher, as well as some thinly populated hilly countryside; the result here was probably affected by a large personal vote (49% of all first preferences in Kilpatrick) for Douglas McAllister, at the time the Provost of the council and also the Labour candidate for the Scottish Parliament seat of Clydebank & Milngavie in 2021.
Douglas McAllister did not beat the SNP on that occasion, but those Scottish Parliament results might seem to offer some hope for Labour within West Dunbartonshire. Jackie Baillie held her Dumbarton Holyrood seat against the SNP, by a larger margin than the 109 vote majority of 2016. In fact she has been the constituency MSP here since 1999 which means the SNP have never won Dumbarton. However it should be remembered that the seat does not coincide with the boundaries of West Dunbartonshire, as it also includes Helensburgh and the massive area of the Lomond ward from Argyll and Bute; there will probably have been tactical voting against the SNP from unionist voters in these sections.
In fact, speaking of unionism, we come to the reason why the rays of hope for Labour in West Dunbartonshire could well be illusory, despite the Scottish Parliament Dumbarton results. In the 2014 referendum the West Dunbartonshire district decisively voted Yes to independence, by 54% to 46%. This was actually the second highest Yes vote of any district in Scotland, behind Dundee but ahead of Glasgow, the other two with a majority for secession. Not surprisingly in these circumstances, West Dunbartonshire was not one of the six Westminster seats that Labour (temporarily) regained from the Nationalists at the ‘Corbyn’ 2017 election, despite its left wing traditions. In December 2019 the SNP MP Martin Docherty-Hughes extended his lead to over 9.500 after an 8% swing back from Labour.
In the boundary review the only change is be the transfer of just 3,400 voters from within the Glasgow city boundaries in the form of a minority part of the Garscadden/Scotstounhill ward, in the Yoker area, formerly in Glasgow NW (most of which would be reformulated as Glasgow West). This is likely to add about 500 to the SNP notional majority for 2019 in West Dunbartonshire. It would seem that at the next Westminster election there will again be more interest in the eastern section of the county, especially with the proposals for more significant changes boundary changes entailing the creation of a seat named Mid Dunbartonshire. Despite something of a slump in SNP fortunes in 2023, a labour victory here would still be a considerable achievement.
2011 Census, old boundaries
Age 65+ 16.4% 346/650
Female 52.4% 12/650
Owner-occupied 55.5% 535/650
Private rented 6.6% 648/650
Social rented 37.3% 18/650
White 98.4% 61/650
Black 0.3% 453/650
Asian 0.9% 534/650
Born in Scotland 92.3% 7/650
Managerial & professional 22.8%
Higher managerial and professional 4.9% 618/650
Routine & Semi-routine 33.4%
Semi-routine 18.7% 40/650
Degree level 16.5% 600/650
No qualifications 32.8% 44/650
Students 7.1% 282/650
2022 Census, new boundaries
Details not yet available
General Election 2019: West Dunbartonshire
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
SNP Martin Docherty-Hughes 22,396 49.6 +6.7
Labour Jean Anne Mitchell 12,843 28.5 -9.2
Conservative Alix Mathieson 6,436 14.3 -2.9
Liberal Democrats Jennifer Lang 1,890 4.2 +1.9
Green Peter Connolly 867 1.9 New
Independent Andrew Muir 708 1.6 New
SNP Majority 9,553 21.1 +15.9
2019 electorate 66,517
Turnout 45,140 68.0 +2.9
SNP hold
Swing 8.0 Lab to SNP
Boundary changes
The new West Dunbartonshire will be composed of
100% of West Dunbartonshire
3.9% of Glasgow NW
Map
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/west_dunbartonshire_3.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Professor David Denver for Rallings and Thrasher)
The West Dunbartonshire constituency extends on the north bank of the lower Clyde river from the border with the city of Glasgow between Whitecrook and Yoker to the county town (and indeed one time capital of the kingdom of Strathclyde) Dumbarton – note, with an ‘m’ compared with the county’s ‘n’. It then stretched north and inland along the Vale of Leven to reach the southern tip of Loch Lomond. All this sounds very romantic and far from a proletarian stronghold but that would be highly inaccurate.
For a start, the seat’s largest community is Clydebank. Its population, although it has been substantially declining for sixty years, is still over 25,000 (it was 29,000 in 2011, and had peaked at 50,000 in 1961). Clydebank achieved renown as one of the powerhouses of world shipbuilding, starting with the establishment of Thomson’s yard in the 1870s. There was also a huge Singer sewing machine factory, located in the Kilbowie neighbourhood of Clydebank, from the 1880s to 1980. It employed 15,000 workers in 1960. Its 200 foot tall clock tower dominated the inland part of Clydebank, just as the great shipyard cranes towered over the riverfront. In the inter-war years of the 20th century Clydebank was an integral part of Red Clydeside; but it suffered from the savage blitz bombing attacks that destroyed many of its archetypical workers’ tenements in March 1941. With the precipitous decline of the Scottish shipbuilding industry after World War Two, Clydebank’s housing was also hollowed out, as can still be seen from the many ‘vacant lots’ in American parlance. There is virtually no middle class housing in Clydebank, unless one counts a small pocket inland near Hardgate. Taking the two Clydebank wards together, they still had close to 40% in social rented tenure in 2011; indeed for the West Dunbartonshire division as a whole, the figure of 37% placed it in the top twenty in this category within the UK – a stark contrast to East Dunbartonshire, which was no. 1 out of 650 for owner occupation at that time. The Scottish census was delayed for a year till 2022, so we as yet have limited updated information.
Dumbarton itself (population 20,000) may at first sight be dominated by the dramatic volcanic plug of basalt known as Dumbarton Rock – it forms an astonishing background to the stadium of Dumbarton FC, for example. But the town is another solidly working class unit, with far more Roman Catholics than Protestants (6,500 to 4,600 in the 2011 census), large social housing developments such as Silverton, Kirktonhill and Brucehill. Back in the days of small single member wards prior to the introduction of STV, Labour almost always won every Dumbarton ward – Central, West, North and South, with their only weakness being in Bowling, which is a little further up the Clyde.
The third main population centre is the Vale of Leven, consisting of a group of communities along the river stretching from north of Dumbarton up towards Lomond. This is not as idyllic as it sounds. The communities here – Renton, Bonhill, Alexandria, Balloch, Jamestown –have a combined population of over 20,000 and were originally created by the Industrial Revolution as textile centres; there is a touch of the atmosphere of the Pennine valleys here. To this may be added the grim 1960s tenements of New Bonhill, built high on the windy sides of the vale to house Glasgow overspill. Back in the 1920s and 1930s the Vale of Leven had the reputation of being one of the scattered ‘Little Moscows’, along with communities like Lumphinnans in Fife, electing Communist councillors and generally having a reputation for left-wing radicalism. This has not entirely dissipated. In 2012 Jim Bollan was elected to the council in the Leven ward as a Scottish Socialist party representative, and he is still there, though in 2017 and 2022 his label was 'West Dunbartonshire Community Party'.
As far as the rest of the 2022 West Dunbartonshire council results were concerned, the SNP did best in the two Clydebank wards, taking 48% of the first preferences in Waterfront to Labour’s 37%, and 52% in Clydebank Central to Labour’s 40%; these figures imply just how poorly other parties fared. In Dumbarton ward Labour led with over 46% to the Nationalists’ 42%, and a Conservative lost his seat after taking only 9% compared with nearly 15% in 2017. In the two Vale of Leven wards, Labour pipped the SNP in the northern one, Lomond, with 38% to 35% and two councillors to one, while in Leven, in addition to Jim Bollan, Labour took two of the other spots and the SNP only one.
There is one other ward, which was Labour’s strongest of all: Kilpatrick, where they achieved 56%, one of their highest shares anywhere in Scotland in 2022, well ahead of the SNP’s 38%. Kilpatrick is located inland from Clydebank, and largely comprises not the community of Old Kilpatrick or Kilpatrick station, which are both in Clydebank Waterfront ward, but rather the social housing estates of Faifley and Duntocher, as well as some thinly populated hilly countryside; the result here was probably affected by a large personal vote (49% of all first preferences in Kilpatrick) for Douglas McAllister, at the time the Provost of the council and also the Labour candidate for the Scottish Parliament seat of Clydebank & Milngavie in 2021.
Douglas McAllister did not beat the SNP on that occasion, but those Scottish Parliament results might seem to offer some hope for Labour within West Dunbartonshire. Jackie Baillie held her Dumbarton Holyrood seat against the SNP, by a larger margin than the 109 vote majority of 2016. In fact she has been the constituency MSP here since 1999 which means the SNP have never won Dumbarton. However it should be remembered that the seat does not coincide with the boundaries of West Dunbartonshire, as it also includes Helensburgh and the massive area of the Lomond ward from Argyll and Bute; there will probably have been tactical voting against the SNP from unionist voters in these sections.
In fact, speaking of unionism, we come to the reason why the rays of hope for Labour in West Dunbartonshire could well be illusory, despite the Scottish Parliament Dumbarton results. In the 2014 referendum the West Dunbartonshire district decisively voted Yes to independence, by 54% to 46%. This was actually the second highest Yes vote of any district in Scotland, behind Dundee but ahead of Glasgow, the other two with a majority for secession. Not surprisingly in these circumstances, West Dunbartonshire was not one of the six Westminster seats that Labour (temporarily) regained from the Nationalists at the ‘Corbyn’ 2017 election, despite its left wing traditions. In December 2019 the SNP MP Martin Docherty-Hughes extended his lead to over 9.500 after an 8% swing back from Labour.
In the boundary review the only change is be the transfer of just 3,400 voters from within the Glasgow city boundaries in the form of a minority part of the Garscadden/Scotstounhill ward, in the Yoker area, formerly in Glasgow NW (most of which would be reformulated as Glasgow West). This is likely to add about 500 to the SNP notional majority for 2019 in West Dunbartonshire. It would seem that at the next Westminster election there will again be more interest in the eastern section of the county, especially with the proposals for more significant changes boundary changes entailing the creation of a seat named Mid Dunbartonshire. Despite something of a slump in SNP fortunes in 2023, a labour victory here would still be a considerable achievement.
2011 Census, old boundaries
Age 65+ 16.4% 346/650
Female 52.4% 12/650
Owner-occupied 55.5% 535/650
Private rented 6.6% 648/650
Social rented 37.3% 18/650
White 98.4% 61/650
Black 0.3% 453/650
Asian 0.9% 534/650
Born in Scotland 92.3% 7/650
Managerial & professional 22.8%
Higher managerial and professional 4.9% 618/650
Routine & Semi-routine 33.4%
Semi-routine 18.7% 40/650
Degree level 16.5% 600/650
No qualifications 32.8% 44/650
Students 7.1% 282/650
2022 Census, new boundaries
Details not yet available
General Election 2019: West Dunbartonshire
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
SNP Martin Docherty-Hughes 22,396 49.6 +6.7
Labour Jean Anne Mitchell 12,843 28.5 -9.2
Conservative Alix Mathieson 6,436 14.3 -2.9
Liberal Democrats Jennifer Lang 1,890 4.2 +1.9
Green Peter Connolly 867 1.9 New
Independent Andrew Muir 708 1.6 New
SNP Majority 9,553 21.1 +15.9
2019 electorate 66,517
Turnout 45,140 68.0 +2.9
SNP hold
Swing 8.0 Lab to SNP
Boundary changes
The new West Dunbartonshire will be composed of
100% of West Dunbartonshire
3.9% of Glasgow NW
Map
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/west_dunbartonshire_3.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Professor David Denver for Rallings and Thrasher)
| SNP | 23163 | 49.7% |
| Lab | 13322 | 28.6% |
| Con | 6606 | 14.2% |
| LD | 1949 | 4.2% |
| Green | 867 | 1.9% |
| Oth | 708 | 1.5% |
| Majority | 9841 | 21.1% |