Post by Robert Waller on Aug 15, 2023 19:11:14 GMT
Probably more people have seen the countryside of the large rural division of South West Norfolk than they realise. Although the classic TV comedy series Dad’s Army was clearly set on the coast of south east England, the sections out of studio were filmed in the heathland around the town of Thetford, where the cast stayed in the Bell Hotel. Some of the adventures of the local MP recently may remind us of the escapades of Walker, Pike, Godfrey and co, and Jones’s rattled cry of ‘Don’t panic!’ may have been very appropriate; but the constituency itself is likely to remain more loyal than her wider party did.
In fact, there are at least three distinct types of countryside in the SW Norfolk seat. The part around Thetford, which is the largest town (population 25,500 in the 2021 census), following its expansion as a London overspill receptor in the 1960s and 1970s – it had little over 5,000 in 1961 - is known as the Breckland. The local council is also so named; brecks are patches of rough sandy ground, poor for agricultural purposes though augmented with large tracts of pine trees in the 20th century, as in Thetford Forest. There is also a large military ‘no-go area’ rather like Salisbury Plain. It is easy to see why it was convenient to do the Dad’s Army location work here, though it really looks nothing like Kent or Sussex.
Secondly, the SW Norfolk constituency extends north westwards to include much of the low lying Norfolk Fen country. The main town here is Downham Market (11,300 residents in 2021), and the impression is very similar to the Cambridgeshire fenland seats just over the county boundary: immensely flat and low, with long straight roads and lanes punctuated by right angled turns, a lot of water and an enormous sky.
Finally, in the north east of the seat we find the third significant settlement, Swaffham (8,400). The terrain here is more typical central Norfolk rolling pasture and arable, corn and oak countryside, green and gold in summer and dotted with far more small villages and parish churches than might be expected, a legacy of Norfolk’s distant history as the economic heart of medieval and early modern England’s wool industry and agricultural production.
All these sections have been strongly Conservative in recent elections, but that has not always been the case. In fact, SW Norfolk has a fascinating electoral history, which will be unexpected to some. If we start with the 1945 general election, Labour’s Sidney Dye ousted the Conservative MP Somerset De Chair by a mere 53 vote margin. So far, no surprises; 1945 was a Labour landside, and more unlikely gains were made then with larger majorities. Further extremely close two-way contests followed. In 1950, Dye increased his lead to fully 260 votes. Then a Conservative farmer, Denys Bullard, gained South West by another three figure margin, 442, in 1951.
At this point, though, Norfolk started to ‘do different’. In 1955, when nationally the Tories again increased their overall majority to around 60 seats, Sidney Dye actually regained SW Norfolk, by 193. This was the fourth lead of less than 500 in a row. Dye died in December 1958, and the in the resulting byelection in March 1959 Labour’s Albert Hilton held it with the unprecedented lead of 1,354. What is more Hilton won in the general election later in 1959 too, with a majority back down to the accustomed wafer: 78 votes. By the national swing this shouldn’t have happened as Harold Macmillan presided over an increase of the Tory overall majority to around 100. In 1964, though, just when Harold Wilson came to power with a solid pro-Labour swing, the Conservatives actually gained SW Norfolk against the strong tide. Paul Hawkins won – by 123 votes! In 1966, again against the national movement to a Labour landslide, Hawkins increased his majority to a princely 775. At this point this constituency had recorded eight majorities since the war of less than 1,500 votes, seven of them less than 1,000, and had swung in a different direction from the rest of the country five times (not including the byelection).
How do we account for this extraordinary behaviour? The first thing to note is that both Sidney Dye and Albert Hilton were officials of the National Union of Agricultural Workers and had themselves been farm workers in Norfolk. The county had an unusually high degree of agricultural unionism compared with other parts of Britain, and the Labour party probably were stronger in Norfolk up to the 1960s than in any other rural area apart, possibly, from Highland crofters. Also, Norfolk has long been proud of its contrarian character, seen positively in the phrase ‘Norfolk do different’ and more negatively in the legend or myth about doctors certifying people as ‘normal for Norfolk’. However, in the period since the 1960s electoral politics really has been normalised. For example Paul Hawkins built up his majority after the first two narrow victories and by 1987 the new MP Gillian Shephard won a majority of over 20,000 for the Conservative party. She held on by 2,464 against the first Blair landslide in 1997. In December 2019 Liz Truss won by over 26,000 - and took a position of having the 11th safest Tory seat anywhere into her brief Premiership.
Therefore not only did SW Norfolk no longer look anywhere near marginal, but it now appeared to be among the safest Tory seats in Britain. This can be understood if we look at its demographic characteristics. By the time of the 2011 census only 2,067 people were listed as employed in agriculture, forestry or fishing, just 4% of all workers. Nearly twice as many were in public administration and defence. Not only is there the Stanford Training Area in the Breckland as mentioned above, but RAF Marham is in the constituency. The USAAF base at Lakenheath is just over the Suffolk border and there are an unusually large number of residents in this seat born in North America. Many British forces veterans have also settled in Norfolk.
More important in explaining the extremely strong Conservative share in 2019 were the educational statistics: on the new boundaries, the number of residents with degrees ranks 544th out of the 575 seats in England and Wales. There are extremely few full time students, even taking into account the factors that depressed the Census returns for this variable in 2021 – SW Norfolk ranked 4th lowest in England and Wales. The seat is older than average and has very few ethnic minority residents, and that has hardly changed over the past 10 years. It is actually well on the working class side of the occupational analysis, and on terminal education age, nearly in the lowest 30 seats for residents possessing degrees. Connected to all this was a Leave majority over Remain in the 2016 referendum of almost exactly two to one. A long term trend to the Conservatives was given a supercharged boost in the 2019 Boris ‘get Brexit done’ election.
Initially the expansion of Thetford may have led some to believe that it may give succour to a Labour revival, but more likely it was part of the process by which SW Norfolk came to vote on national lines, as the urban proportion of the seat has increased.
www.keystonetrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/thetfordprofile.pdf
Eight of Labour’s 12 seats in Breckland council represented Thetford wards after the May 2023 elections, but the other four were in Dereham, which is not in this constituency. The western half of Thetford was still recording a social housing proportion of over 30% in the 2021 census: 35% in the Thetford South(West) MSOA and 40% in Thetford North(West). But all the other wards in the constituency were won by the Tories save two Independents in the three-councillor Swaffham. The Green victory on Breckland was not within the SW seat.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Breckland_District_Council_election
Over in the ‘Fens’ sector, which is part of the King’s Lynn & West Norfolk council area, there were a large number of Independent victories in May 2023. Labour gained Downham Old Town from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats held East Downham, but the Tories won the more rural wards within the SW Norfolk division, except those taken by Independents.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_King%27s_Lynn_and_West_Norfolk_Borough_Council_election
Unfortunately local government boundary changes mean that there is no longer a ward with the wondrous name of Wimbotsham with Fincham Wissey. In the Norfolk county council elections of May 2021, Labour held Thetford West but the Conservatives won all six other divisions entirely within the SW seat easily, including Thetford East. In The Brecks, for example, they took 71% in a four way contest, which was an impressive show of strength.
With the kind of dominance the Conservatives have built up over the decades in this quadrant of the county, boundary changes could not make a significant difference to the safety of the representation. What is more, the revised proposals of November 2022 reduced the recommended changes to South West Norfolk constituency only being changed from the existing boundary to realign to new local government ward boundaries. For example the whole of All Saints & Wayland ward will now be in Mid Norfolk, and the whole of Walsoken ward in NW Norfolk. Overall this entailed a reduction in electorate, probably trimming 1,500 votes off the national majority for Liz Truss in 2019, but scarcely denting the percentage majority, the best indicator of seat safety.
Nevertheless , even though those days of dramatically close and even quixotic results seemed long past, as much coloured by nostalgia and historical distance as was Dad’s Army itself, this was an illusion. In July 2024 Labour did manage to regain SW after an interlude of 60 years. Liz Truss's share dropped by an extraordinary 43.4%. Labour's increased by 8.4% but also very relevant were the performances of Reform (nearly 10,000 votes and over 22%) and the Independent James Bagge, a former High Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant of Norfolk who had opposed Truss's initial selection from within the party and criticised her profile in the constituency. Bagge took over 6,000 votes and 14%. For whatever the reasons, Truss's defeat towards the end of that dramatic night of election results was widely thought to be the 'Portillo moment' of 2024.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 24.2% 101/575
Owner occupied 66.4% 277/575
Private rented 19.5% 235/575
Social rented 14.1% 333/575
White 96.2% 117/575
Black 0.6% 440/575
Asian 0.9% 535/575
Managerial & professional 27.4% 440/575
Routine & Semi-routine 30.1% 78/575
Degree level 22.3% 544/575
No qualifications 23.8% 69/575
Students 3.7% 572/575
General Election 2024: South West Norfolk
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Terry Jermy 11,847 26.7 +8.4
Conservative Liz Truss 11,217 25.3 −43.4
Reform UK Toby McKenzie 9,958 22.4 N/A
Independent James Bagge 6,282 14.2 N/A
Liberal Democrats Josie Ratcliffe 2,618 5.9 −2.4
Green Pallavi Devulapalli 1,838 4.1 +1.1
Monster Raving Loony Earl Elvis of East Anglia 338 0.8 −0.9
Heritage Gary Conway 160 0.4 N/A
Communist Lorraine Douglas 77 0.2 N/A
Lab Majority 630 1.4
Turnout 44,335 59.3
Labour gain from Conservative
Swing 25.8 C to Lab
General Election 2019: South West Norfolk
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Liz Truss 35,507 69.0 +6.2
Labour Emily Blake 9,312 18.1 −9.7
Liberal Democrats Josie Ratcliffe 4,166 8.1 +3.6
Green Pallavi Devulapalli 1,645 3.2 New
Monster Raving Loony Earl Elvis of Outwell 836 1.6 New
C Majority 26,195 50.9 +15.9
2019 electorate 78,455
Turnout 51,466 65.6 −1.7
Conservative hold
Swing 8.0 Lab to C
Boundary changes
The new SW Norfolk seat consists of
90.3% of SW Norfolk
2.0% of Mid Norfolk
0.6% of North West Norfolk
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_096_South%20West%20Norfolk_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional results (Rallings & Thrasher)
[/quote]
In fact, there are at least three distinct types of countryside in the SW Norfolk seat. The part around Thetford, which is the largest town (population 25,500 in the 2021 census), following its expansion as a London overspill receptor in the 1960s and 1970s – it had little over 5,000 in 1961 - is known as the Breckland. The local council is also so named; brecks are patches of rough sandy ground, poor for agricultural purposes though augmented with large tracts of pine trees in the 20th century, as in Thetford Forest. There is also a large military ‘no-go area’ rather like Salisbury Plain. It is easy to see why it was convenient to do the Dad’s Army location work here, though it really looks nothing like Kent or Sussex.
Secondly, the SW Norfolk constituency extends north westwards to include much of the low lying Norfolk Fen country. The main town here is Downham Market (11,300 residents in 2021), and the impression is very similar to the Cambridgeshire fenland seats just over the county boundary: immensely flat and low, with long straight roads and lanes punctuated by right angled turns, a lot of water and an enormous sky.
Finally, in the north east of the seat we find the third significant settlement, Swaffham (8,400). The terrain here is more typical central Norfolk rolling pasture and arable, corn and oak countryside, green and gold in summer and dotted with far more small villages and parish churches than might be expected, a legacy of Norfolk’s distant history as the economic heart of medieval and early modern England’s wool industry and agricultural production.
All these sections have been strongly Conservative in recent elections, but that has not always been the case. In fact, SW Norfolk has a fascinating electoral history, which will be unexpected to some. If we start with the 1945 general election, Labour’s Sidney Dye ousted the Conservative MP Somerset De Chair by a mere 53 vote margin. So far, no surprises; 1945 was a Labour landside, and more unlikely gains were made then with larger majorities. Further extremely close two-way contests followed. In 1950, Dye increased his lead to fully 260 votes. Then a Conservative farmer, Denys Bullard, gained South West by another three figure margin, 442, in 1951.
At this point, though, Norfolk started to ‘do different’. In 1955, when nationally the Tories again increased their overall majority to around 60 seats, Sidney Dye actually regained SW Norfolk, by 193. This was the fourth lead of less than 500 in a row. Dye died in December 1958, and the in the resulting byelection in March 1959 Labour’s Albert Hilton held it with the unprecedented lead of 1,354. What is more Hilton won in the general election later in 1959 too, with a majority back down to the accustomed wafer: 78 votes. By the national swing this shouldn’t have happened as Harold Macmillan presided over an increase of the Tory overall majority to around 100. In 1964, though, just when Harold Wilson came to power with a solid pro-Labour swing, the Conservatives actually gained SW Norfolk against the strong tide. Paul Hawkins won – by 123 votes! In 1966, again against the national movement to a Labour landslide, Hawkins increased his majority to a princely 775. At this point this constituency had recorded eight majorities since the war of less than 1,500 votes, seven of them less than 1,000, and had swung in a different direction from the rest of the country five times (not including the byelection).
How do we account for this extraordinary behaviour? The first thing to note is that both Sidney Dye and Albert Hilton were officials of the National Union of Agricultural Workers and had themselves been farm workers in Norfolk. The county had an unusually high degree of agricultural unionism compared with other parts of Britain, and the Labour party probably were stronger in Norfolk up to the 1960s than in any other rural area apart, possibly, from Highland crofters. Also, Norfolk has long been proud of its contrarian character, seen positively in the phrase ‘Norfolk do different’ and more negatively in the legend or myth about doctors certifying people as ‘normal for Norfolk’. However, in the period since the 1960s electoral politics really has been normalised. For example Paul Hawkins built up his majority after the first two narrow victories and by 1987 the new MP Gillian Shephard won a majority of over 20,000 for the Conservative party. She held on by 2,464 against the first Blair landslide in 1997. In December 2019 Liz Truss won by over 26,000 - and took a position of having the 11th safest Tory seat anywhere into her brief Premiership.
Therefore not only did SW Norfolk no longer look anywhere near marginal, but it now appeared to be among the safest Tory seats in Britain. This can be understood if we look at its demographic characteristics. By the time of the 2011 census only 2,067 people were listed as employed in agriculture, forestry or fishing, just 4% of all workers. Nearly twice as many were in public administration and defence. Not only is there the Stanford Training Area in the Breckland as mentioned above, but RAF Marham is in the constituency. The USAAF base at Lakenheath is just over the Suffolk border and there are an unusually large number of residents in this seat born in North America. Many British forces veterans have also settled in Norfolk.
More important in explaining the extremely strong Conservative share in 2019 were the educational statistics: on the new boundaries, the number of residents with degrees ranks 544th out of the 575 seats in England and Wales. There are extremely few full time students, even taking into account the factors that depressed the Census returns for this variable in 2021 – SW Norfolk ranked 4th lowest in England and Wales. The seat is older than average and has very few ethnic minority residents, and that has hardly changed over the past 10 years. It is actually well on the working class side of the occupational analysis, and on terminal education age, nearly in the lowest 30 seats for residents possessing degrees. Connected to all this was a Leave majority over Remain in the 2016 referendum of almost exactly two to one. A long term trend to the Conservatives was given a supercharged boost in the 2019 Boris ‘get Brexit done’ election.
Initially the expansion of Thetford may have led some to believe that it may give succour to a Labour revival, but more likely it was part of the process by which SW Norfolk came to vote on national lines, as the urban proportion of the seat has increased.
www.keystonetrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/thetfordprofile.pdf
Eight of Labour’s 12 seats in Breckland council represented Thetford wards after the May 2023 elections, but the other four were in Dereham, which is not in this constituency. The western half of Thetford was still recording a social housing proportion of over 30% in the 2021 census: 35% in the Thetford South(West) MSOA and 40% in Thetford North(West). But all the other wards in the constituency were won by the Tories save two Independents in the three-councillor Swaffham. The Green victory on Breckland was not within the SW seat.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Breckland_District_Council_election
Over in the ‘Fens’ sector, which is part of the King’s Lynn & West Norfolk council area, there were a large number of Independent victories in May 2023. Labour gained Downham Old Town from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats held East Downham, but the Tories won the more rural wards within the SW Norfolk division, except those taken by Independents.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_King%27s_Lynn_and_West_Norfolk_Borough_Council_election
Unfortunately local government boundary changes mean that there is no longer a ward with the wondrous name of Wimbotsham with Fincham Wissey. In the Norfolk county council elections of May 2021, Labour held Thetford West but the Conservatives won all six other divisions entirely within the SW seat easily, including Thetford East. In The Brecks, for example, they took 71% in a four way contest, which was an impressive show of strength.
With the kind of dominance the Conservatives have built up over the decades in this quadrant of the county, boundary changes could not make a significant difference to the safety of the representation. What is more, the revised proposals of November 2022 reduced the recommended changes to South West Norfolk constituency only being changed from the existing boundary to realign to new local government ward boundaries. For example the whole of All Saints & Wayland ward will now be in Mid Norfolk, and the whole of Walsoken ward in NW Norfolk. Overall this entailed a reduction in electorate, probably trimming 1,500 votes off the national majority for Liz Truss in 2019, but scarcely denting the percentage majority, the best indicator of seat safety.
Nevertheless , even though those days of dramatically close and even quixotic results seemed long past, as much coloured by nostalgia and historical distance as was Dad’s Army itself, this was an illusion. In July 2024 Labour did manage to regain SW after an interlude of 60 years. Liz Truss's share dropped by an extraordinary 43.4%. Labour's increased by 8.4% but also very relevant were the performances of Reform (nearly 10,000 votes and over 22%) and the Independent James Bagge, a former High Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant of Norfolk who had opposed Truss's initial selection from within the party and criticised her profile in the constituency. Bagge took over 6,000 votes and 14%. For whatever the reasons, Truss's defeat towards the end of that dramatic night of election results was widely thought to be the 'Portillo moment' of 2024.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 24.2% 101/575
Owner occupied 66.4% 277/575
Private rented 19.5% 235/575
Social rented 14.1% 333/575
White 96.2% 117/575
Black 0.6% 440/575
Asian 0.9% 535/575
Managerial & professional 27.4% 440/575
Routine & Semi-routine 30.1% 78/575
Degree level 22.3% 544/575
No qualifications 23.8% 69/575
Students 3.7% 572/575
General Election 2024: South West Norfolk
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Terry Jermy 11,847 26.7 +8.4
Conservative Liz Truss 11,217 25.3 −43.4
Reform UK Toby McKenzie 9,958 22.4 N/A
Independent James Bagge 6,282 14.2 N/A
Liberal Democrats Josie Ratcliffe 2,618 5.9 −2.4
Green Pallavi Devulapalli 1,838 4.1 +1.1
Monster Raving Loony Earl Elvis of East Anglia 338 0.8 −0.9
Heritage Gary Conway 160 0.4 N/A
Communist Lorraine Douglas 77 0.2 N/A
Lab Majority 630 1.4
Turnout 44,335 59.3
Labour gain from Conservative
Swing 25.8 C to Lab
General Election 2019: South West Norfolk
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Liz Truss 35,507 69.0 +6.2
Labour Emily Blake 9,312 18.1 −9.7
Liberal Democrats Josie Ratcliffe 4,166 8.1 +3.6
Green Pallavi Devulapalli 1,645 3.2 New
Monster Raving Loony Earl Elvis of Outwell 836 1.6 New
C Majority 26,195 50.9 +15.9
2019 electorate 78,455
Turnout 51,466 65.6 −1.7
Conservative hold
Swing 8.0 Lab to C
Boundary changes
The new SW Norfolk seat consists of
90.3% of SW Norfolk
2.0% of Mid Norfolk
0.6% of North West Norfolk
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/eastern/Eastern_096_South%20West%20Norfolk_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional results (Rallings & Thrasher)
| Con | 32988 | 68.7% |
| Lab | 8808 | 18.3% |
| LD | 3965 | 8.3% |
| Grn | 1452 | 3.0% |
| Oth | 836 | 1.7% |
| maj | 24180 | 50.3% |
[/quote]
