Post by Robert Waller on Sept 8, 2023 9:11:09 GMT
Middlesbrough may well be the best example in Britain of a town founded on a single predominant industry that led to a spectacular boom in housing and population. In 1801 its population was just 25, and in 1831 still only 154. But in the 1861 census it had reached 19,416, in 1881 55,953, and in 1891 91,302. Gladstone called it “an infant Hercules, but a Hercules just the same”. In 1871 nearly half of the residents of this ‘frontier town’ had immigrated from South Wales, Scotland or Ireland. As a 19th century ‘New Town’ its heart was laid out on a rather unimaginative grid, with streets called North, East, South and West radiating out from a central square. What was the basis of this powerful growth? The answer is iron and steel. Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan founded the ironworks which generated the most important source of employment, which mushroomed as the 19th century went on and started producing steel as well in 1875; Bolckow became Middlesbrough’s first MP in 1868. There was some diversification as shipbuilding and chemicals also became major industries in this Victorian powerhouse (‘Hercules’). However the town can also be seen as a prime example of an industrial cycle of boom, then bust. Bolckow & Vaughan went bankrupt in the fateful year of 1929 and were taken over by their chief rivals Dorman Long – who supplied the materials for the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the 1930s but were themselves nationalized in 1967.
Through the 20th century Middlesbrough was often depicted as an archetypal gritty workplace, though as time passed this tended to be associated with decline. It featured in both Alan Bleasdale’s original TV The Black Stuff (Yosser Hughes et al.) and the third series of Auf Wiedersehen Pet, when the unlikely lads became involved in a plan to dismantle the town’s famous transporter bridge and ship it overseas. But the image of Middlesbrough had changed to become a symbol of decline; as can be seen from Bleasdale’s harrowing follow up series, The Boys from the Black Stuff, their trip there was identified as a disastrous turning point in their individual lives. By the 21st century the town and its main constituency was almost at the top of the league tables for unemployment (“Gizza job”, indeed), and several of its wards ranked very high indeed in the indices of ‘multiple deprivation’. At the height of the iron and steel industry on Teesside there were 91 blast furnaces in operation, by 1993 only one was left; and the huge complex running east from Lackenby out to Redcar itself ended production in 2015. The last shipyards, Haverton Hill and Smith’s Dock, closed for good in 1979 and 1987 respectively.
Middlesbrough though historically in Yorkshire is included in the trinity of great North East of England industrial areas based on the three rivers of Tees, Wear and Tyne. Situated on the south bank of the Tees, it has been included in a variety of short lived local government agglomerations. Between 1968 and 1974 the county borough of Teesside (along with Stockton, Billingham and Eston) then from 1974 to 1996 in the county of Cleveland, which added Redcar and the towns that made up Langbaurgh. None of these artificial arrangements proved very satisfactory. Since 1996 Middlesbrough has been restored as a unitary authority of its own. However not all of that authority, or even the core Middlesbrough built-up area, lies within the constituency under discussion here.
Eight of the unitary authority wards were placed within the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland constituency, including Marton East and West, Ladgate, Nunthorpe and Park End, leaving eleven (on current ward boundaries) in ‘Middlesbrough’. This is a very working class seat. Even after the boundary changes described below, it has the 8th lowest of the 575 constituencies in England and Wales as far as managerial and professional workers is concerned, just 18%. Less than half of the housing is owner occupied. It lies in the highest decile of those with no educational qualifications and the lowest for those with the university degrees (and this in a seat with a well above average proportion of students due to the presence of Teesside University just north of Albert Park – there even used to be a University ward). But the true extent of Middlesbrough’s deprivation has tended to lie in its unemployment figures. Even though the totals are of course ever changing, there have been a very high number of the long term unemployed here for decades.
Another striking illustration of decline and problems can literally be seen in a visit to the historic town centre north of the A66 inner ring road. East Street and West Street (as mentioned in the first paragraph above) now go nowhere, and the Old Town Hall is a listed building surrounded by wasteland. With the at least partial and often substantial redevelopment of some of the near slums noted in the early editions of the Almanac back in the 1980s, such as Netherley and parts of Kirkby on Merseyside and the peripheral Glasgow estates such as Easterhouse, there is now perhaps no better example in Britain of the kind of urban wasteland and blight seen in parts of American cities like Detroit (on a much large scale, of course). This was the true core of the original, boom town, Middlesbrough:
The politics of Middlesbrough have been highly distinctive in recent years. The situation might be summed up as showing considerable disenchantment with the Labour party, who have held a parliamentary seat here since 1935 continuously- and Havelock Wilson won Middlesbrough as a Independent Labour candidate as far back as 1892 and as a Lib-Lab in 1895. Yet the form that discontent has taken has not been to switch from clear red to blue as in so many previously solid northern seats in 2019. In the ‘Boris election’ Labour’s Andy McDonald MP lost 15% of the vote share but held on by over 8,000 and beat the Tory by nigh on two to one. Rather the alternative has been seen as Independents. For a start the elected mayoralty was won by ‘Robocop’ Ray Mallon in 2002, 2007 and 2011, with percentages ranging from 63% to 50%, against Labour’s best of 32& (2010) and the Liberal Democrats’ second place 23.6% in 2007. Dave Budd secured a solitary mayoral victory for Labour in 2016, by only 2,000 majority, then ‘normal for Middlesbrough’ service was resumed in 2019 when Independent Andy Preston beat Labour by a massive margin of nearly 60% to less than 23%. What is more, Independents and Others currently hold 23 seats on Middlesbrough council compared with 22 for Labour. In the council elections in May 2019 Independents matched the 14 councillors representing Labour in the wards that make up this seat. Next, in the December 2019 Westminster election a former Labour councillor, Antony High, achieved one of the best Independent results in the country taking 4,548 votes and a share of 13% in a clear third place ahead of Brexit, Liberal Democrat and Green (the last two took just 4.0% between them).
Antony High said at the time that he felt the Labour party had let down the local working class. There is some more middle class and owner occupied territory within this seat, particularly in its south western corner in the wards of Kader and Acklam. This area was in Middlesbrough West during the period from 1918 to February 1974 when there were nominally two Middlesbrough divisions, and West was something of a marginal, with four post WW2 wins for Labour and four for the Conservatives. Also in that seat and this one we find Ayresome, along with Linthorpe and (Albert) Park wards - Park rather than Ayresome ward is actually the site of the pre-1995 football ground – Wilf Mannion, Brian Clough, Graeme Souness, Gary Pallister … . However there are also the inner city terraces and redevelopment of Newport and the largely empty Central which stretches to the Tees frontage. Moving back south eastwards are the very deprived ‘council estate’ wards of North Ormesby and Berwick Hills & Pallister, not named, I think, after Gary), and last but not least Brambles and Thorntree , one of the ten highest wards in England for ‘no educational qualifications’. Several of these neighbourhoods figure at the high end of ‘multiple deprivation’ lists. There is no discernible relationship between the socio-economic statistics for the wards and their electoral preferences in local government elections; it probably depends on how strong the various Independent candidates are, for example Antony High easily topped the poll in his Ayresome base. However the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats polled respectably only in Acklam, and the Greens in Park ward.
In parliamentary terms Labour usually win without a clear display of public enthusiasm. The turnout in 2019 was only 56%, a full 10% below the national average. This seems likely to continue. There are rays of light for the party. They won a local government byelection in North Ormesby ward in December 2021. The result was convincing: Nicola Gascoigne (Labour) 172, Independent 32, Conservative 20, Liberal Democrats 7 (those are totals not percentages). Then in March 2022 Antony High re-defected back to Labour.
www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/20028747.middlesbrough-council-group-leader-defects-labour/
Then in May 2023 Andy Preston was defeat in the mayoral election by Labour's 32 year old candidate Chris Cooke, although only by 760 votes. In the borough council elections on the same day Labour made six gains from the Independents in wards wholly or partly in the Middlesbrough seat, including North Ormesby - confirming the 2021 byelection success - and Ayresome, where the returnee Antony High topped the poll for them.
There will be boundary changes, almost certainly before the next general election. The Commission for England pointed out that the Middlesbrough constituency was at the start of the review considerably below the permitted electorate range, at 61,630, and has the geographical boundary of the River Tees to its north, with relatively few crossing points linking it to Stockton-on-Tees. In proposing their revised Middlesbrough constituency they chose to avoid crossing the River Tees and instead opted to include two of the three Thornaby wards currently in Stockton South – Mandale & Victoria and Stainsby Hill (as in local Chris Rea’s song Stainsby Girl) - thereby dividing the town between the newly proposed Stockton West and Middlesbrough divisions. The former was gained by Labour from by, guess who, the Thornaby Independent Association, in May 2023, but the latter was retained by the localists. Therefore the political pattern of the element switched between constituencies replicates that of Thornaby’s larger neighbour, while, as there, at the same time permitting Labour's dominance in parliamentary terms.
After the inquiry process, the proposed constituency was renamed as Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, as a sop to 100 representations from local residents of Thornaby, objecting to the prospective splitting of the town between two constituencies, and outlining the strong and unique community ties in the area. However the lines were left unchanged from the initial proposals, and will not threaten Labour’s grip on the seat any more than apathy or general disgruntlement have done. The seat of his birth may share Brian Clough’s party preference, but there seems to be precious little of the drive and inspiration of his - or its - golden period here, any more.
[
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 14.8% 448/575
Owner occupied 49.5% 506/575
Private rented 25.8% 97/575
Social rented 24.7% 67/575
White 78.1% 423/575
Black 3.3% 175/575
Asian 13.3% 113/575
Managerial & professional 18.4% 568/575
Routine & Semi-routine 30.7% 64/575
Degree level 24.6% 502/575
No qualifications 25.6% 39/575
Students 11.5% 69 /575
General Election 2019: Middlesbrough
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Andy McDonald 17,207 50.5 –15.2
Conservative Ruth Betson 8,812 25.8 -0.9
Independent Antony High 4,548 13.3 New
Brexit Party Faye Clements 2,168 6.4 New
Liberal Democrats Thomas Crawford 816 2.4 +1.4
Green Hugh Alberti 546 1.6 +0.9
Lab Majority 8,395 24.6 –14.4
2019 electorate 60,759
Turnout 34,097 56.1 –2.2
Labour hold
Swings 7.2 Lab to C,
14.2 Lab to Ind
Boundary Changes
The new Middlesbrough and Thornaby East will consist of
94.2% of Middlesbrough
15.5% of Stockton South
2.4% of Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/north-east/North%20East_196_Middlesbrough%20and%20Thornaby%20East_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional results on new boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
Through the 20th century Middlesbrough was often depicted as an archetypal gritty workplace, though as time passed this tended to be associated with decline. It featured in both Alan Bleasdale’s original TV The Black Stuff (Yosser Hughes et al.) and the third series of Auf Wiedersehen Pet, when the unlikely lads became involved in a plan to dismantle the town’s famous transporter bridge and ship it overseas. But the image of Middlesbrough had changed to become a symbol of decline; as can be seen from Bleasdale’s harrowing follow up series, The Boys from the Black Stuff, their trip there was identified as a disastrous turning point in their individual lives. By the 21st century the town and its main constituency was almost at the top of the league tables for unemployment (“Gizza job”, indeed), and several of its wards ranked very high indeed in the indices of ‘multiple deprivation’. At the height of the iron and steel industry on Teesside there were 91 blast furnaces in operation, by 1993 only one was left; and the huge complex running east from Lackenby out to Redcar itself ended production in 2015. The last shipyards, Haverton Hill and Smith’s Dock, closed for good in 1979 and 1987 respectively.
Middlesbrough though historically in Yorkshire is included in the trinity of great North East of England industrial areas based on the three rivers of Tees, Wear and Tyne. Situated on the south bank of the Tees, it has been included in a variety of short lived local government agglomerations. Between 1968 and 1974 the county borough of Teesside (along with Stockton, Billingham and Eston) then from 1974 to 1996 in the county of Cleveland, which added Redcar and the towns that made up Langbaurgh. None of these artificial arrangements proved very satisfactory. Since 1996 Middlesbrough has been restored as a unitary authority of its own. However not all of that authority, or even the core Middlesbrough built-up area, lies within the constituency under discussion here.
Eight of the unitary authority wards were placed within the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland constituency, including Marton East and West, Ladgate, Nunthorpe and Park End, leaving eleven (on current ward boundaries) in ‘Middlesbrough’. This is a very working class seat. Even after the boundary changes described below, it has the 8th lowest of the 575 constituencies in England and Wales as far as managerial and professional workers is concerned, just 18%. Less than half of the housing is owner occupied. It lies in the highest decile of those with no educational qualifications and the lowest for those with the university degrees (and this in a seat with a well above average proportion of students due to the presence of Teesside University just north of Albert Park – there even used to be a University ward). But the true extent of Middlesbrough’s deprivation has tended to lie in its unemployment figures. Even though the totals are of course ever changing, there have been a very high number of the long term unemployed here for decades.
Another striking illustration of decline and problems can literally be seen in a visit to the historic town centre north of the A66 inner ring road. East Street and West Street (as mentioned in the first paragraph above) now go nowhere, and the Old Town Hall is a listed building surrounded by wasteland. With the at least partial and often substantial redevelopment of some of the near slums noted in the early editions of the Almanac back in the 1980s, such as Netherley and parts of Kirkby on Merseyside and the peripheral Glasgow estates such as Easterhouse, there is now perhaps no better example in Britain of the kind of urban wasteland and blight seen in parts of American cities like Detroit (on a much large scale, of course). This was the true core of the original, boom town, Middlesbrough:
The politics of Middlesbrough have been highly distinctive in recent years. The situation might be summed up as showing considerable disenchantment with the Labour party, who have held a parliamentary seat here since 1935 continuously- and Havelock Wilson won Middlesbrough as a Independent Labour candidate as far back as 1892 and as a Lib-Lab in 1895. Yet the form that discontent has taken has not been to switch from clear red to blue as in so many previously solid northern seats in 2019. In the ‘Boris election’ Labour’s Andy McDonald MP lost 15% of the vote share but held on by over 8,000 and beat the Tory by nigh on two to one. Rather the alternative has been seen as Independents. For a start the elected mayoralty was won by ‘Robocop’ Ray Mallon in 2002, 2007 and 2011, with percentages ranging from 63% to 50%, against Labour’s best of 32& (2010) and the Liberal Democrats’ second place 23.6% in 2007. Dave Budd secured a solitary mayoral victory for Labour in 2016, by only 2,000 majority, then ‘normal for Middlesbrough’ service was resumed in 2019 when Independent Andy Preston beat Labour by a massive margin of nearly 60% to less than 23%. What is more, Independents and Others currently hold 23 seats on Middlesbrough council compared with 22 for Labour. In the council elections in May 2019 Independents matched the 14 councillors representing Labour in the wards that make up this seat. Next, in the December 2019 Westminster election a former Labour councillor, Antony High, achieved one of the best Independent results in the country taking 4,548 votes and a share of 13% in a clear third place ahead of Brexit, Liberal Democrat and Green (the last two took just 4.0% between them).
Antony High said at the time that he felt the Labour party had let down the local working class. There is some more middle class and owner occupied territory within this seat, particularly in its south western corner in the wards of Kader and Acklam. This area was in Middlesbrough West during the period from 1918 to February 1974 when there were nominally two Middlesbrough divisions, and West was something of a marginal, with four post WW2 wins for Labour and four for the Conservatives. Also in that seat and this one we find Ayresome, along with Linthorpe and (Albert) Park wards - Park rather than Ayresome ward is actually the site of the pre-1995 football ground – Wilf Mannion, Brian Clough, Graeme Souness, Gary Pallister … . However there are also the inner city terraces and redevelopment of Newport and the largely empty Central which stretches to the Tees frontage. Moving back south eastwards are the very deprived ‘council estate’ wards of North Ormesby and Berwick Hills & Pallister, not named, I think, after Gary), and last but not least Brambles and Thorntree , one of the ten highest wards in England for ‘no educational qualifications’. Several of these neighbourhoods figure at the high end of ‘multiple deprivation’ lists. There is no discernible relationship between the socio-economic statistics for the wards and their electoral preferences in local government elections; it probably depends on how strong the various Independent candidates are, for example Antony High easily topped the poll in his Ayresome base. However the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats polled respectably only in Acklam, and the Greens in Park ward.
In parliamentary terms Labour usually win without a clear display of public enthusiasm. The turnout in 2019 was only 56%, a full 10% below the national average. This seems likely to continue. There are rays of light for the party. They won a local government byelection in North Ormesby ward in December 2021. The result was convincing: Nicola Gascoigne (Labour) 172, Independent 32, Conservative 20, Liberal Democrats 7 (those are totals not percentages). Then in March 2022 Antony High re-defected back to Labour.
www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/20028747.middlesbrough-council-group-leader-defects-labour/
Then in May 2023 Andy Preston was defeat in the mayoral election by Labour's 32 year old candidate Chris Cooke, although only by 760 votes. In the borough council elections on the same day Labour made six gains from the Independents in wards wholly or partly in the Middlesbrough seat, including North Ormesby - confirming the 2021 byelection success - and Ayresome, where the returnee Antony High topped the poll for them.
There will be boundary changes, almost certainly before the next general election. The Commission for England pointed out that the Middlesbrough constituency was at the start of the review considerably below the permitted electorate range, at 61,630, and has the geographical boundary of the River Tees to its north, with relatively few crossing points linking it to Stockton-on-Tees. In proposing their revised Middlesbrough constituency they chose to avoid crossing the River Tees and instead opted to include two of the three Thornaby wards currently in Stockton South – Mandale & Victoria and Stainsby Hill (as in local Chris Rea’s song Stainsby Girl) - thereby dividing the town between the newly proposed Stockton West and Middlesbrough divisions. The former was gained by Labour from by, guess who, the Thornaby Independent Association, in May 2023, but the latter was retained by the localists. Therefore the political pattern of the element switched between constituencies replicates that of Thornaby’s larger neighbour, while, as there, at the same time permitting Labour's dominance in parliamentary terms.
After the inquiry process, the proposed constituency was renamed as Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, as a sop to 100 representations from local residents of Thornaby, objecting to the prospective splitting of the town between two constituencies, and outlining the strong and unique community ties in the area. However the lines were left unchanged from the initial proposals, and will not threaten Labour’s grip on the seat any more than apathy or general disgruntlement have done. The seat of his birth may share Brian Clough’s party preference, but there seems to be precious little of the drive and inspiration of his - or its - golden period here, any more.
[
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 14.8% 448/575
Owner occupied 49.5% 506/575
Private rented 25.8% 97/575
Social rented 24.7% 67/575
White 78.1% 423/575
Black 3.3% 175/575
Asian 13.3% 113/575
Managerial & professional 18.4% 568/575
Routine & Semi-routine 30.7% 64/575
Degree level 24.6% 502/575
No qualifications 25.6% 39/575
Students 11.5% 69 /575
General Election 2019: Middlesbrough
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Andy McDonald 17,207 50.5 –15.2
Conservative Ruth Betson 8,812 25.8 -0.9
Independent Antony High 4,548 13.3 New
Brexit Party Faye Clements 2,168 6.4 New
Liberal Democrats Thomas Crawford 816 2.4 +1.4
Green Hugh Alberti 546 1.6 +0.9
Lab Majority 8,395 24.6 –14.4
2019 electorate 60,759
Turnout 34,097 56.1 –2.2
Labour hold
Swings 7.2 Lab to C,
14.2 Lab to Ind
Boundary Changes
The new Middlesbrough and Thornaby East will consist of
94.2% of Middlesbrough
15.5% of Stockton South
2.4% of Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/north-east/North%20East_196_Middlesbrough%20and%20Thornaby%20East_Landscape.pdf
2019 Notional results on new boundaries (Rallings and Thrasher)
| Lab | 20290 | 54.0% |
| Con | 9149 | 24.3% |
| Brexit | 2324 | 6.2% |
| LD | 991 | 2.6% |
| Green | 553 | 1.5% |
| Oth | 4282 | 11.4% |
| Majority | 11141 | 29.6% |
