Tamworth

[John Chanin]

Tamworth’s main claim to importance came a long time ago - indeed a very long time ago as it was the base for kings Offa and Penda of the Mercian ascendency in the 600s and 700s. Following the statutory sacking by the Vikings it devolved into a small market town at the junction of the rivers Tame and Anker, albeit with a Norman castle overlooking the river, still in existence. The town was raised from its torpor by the development of the neighbouring coalfields in the 1800s, and the construction of the Birmingham-Fazeley and Coventry canals. But it was still a small market town in the early 1900s, and despite some development in the inter-war period, not much larger at the end of the second world war. Then things changed. There has been an enormous expansion of the town since the war, mainly Birmingham overspill, as it is well situated for commuting, and having absorbed the once separate settlement of Wilnecote it now has a population of 75,000. It is a little more middle-class than nearby towns on the coalfields, and there is a fair bit of council housing to the east of the town centre around Glascote and Stonydelph, and much working-class owner-occupation. Managerial workers exceed routine only in the southern wards of Trinity and Wilnecote, and education levels are low throughout, and in this it resembles the other industrial towns north and east of the Birmingham conurbation. Politically at local level it is more Conservative than these towns, with the Conservatives (and UKIP in mid-decade) winning most wards most of the time, with only Bolehall directly to the east of the town centre being reliably Labour. However the volatility typical of the town is shown by the Conservatives winning all 10 seats in 2021 while Labour won 8 in 2023.

Tamworth was split off from the by now enormous Lichfield & Tamworth seat in 1983, and was further reduced in size in 1997. However the town is still not large enough for a seat of its own, and 14,500 voters are included from Lichfield District amounting to about 20% of the seat. A quarter of these come from Fazeley, which is part of the Tamworth urban area, and very similar demographically and politically. The rest is however very Conservative and tips Tamworth to the right in an average year.  Little Aston sits on the north side of Sutton Park, and is part of a continuous urban area with the very up market Four Oaks area of Sutton Coldfield and Streetly in Walsall District. Over half of the population here is managerial, with nearly half having degrees and no social rented housing at all. Interestingly it has by far the highest ethnic minority population in the seat -14% - but these are successful families of Indian descent, and very different from the large Muslim populations in neighbouring seats. Much of it is a private gated estate, and is arguably the richest settlement in the whole of the West Midlands. Stonnall, Shenstone, and Drayton Bassett with its theme park, are commuter villages and only very slightly less middle-class. There is also some sparsely populated countryside in the Mease Valley, north of the town. All this is territory where Conservative councillors are sometimes returned unopposed. The Boundary Commission have made only minor amendments here, splitting the Whittington & Streethay ward between Tamworth and Lichfield, to ensure both seats remain within acceptable limits.

In the 19th century Tamworth was something of a rotten borough, famous as the base for Robert Peel (father and son) between 1790 and 1850. The borough was in Staffordshire, while the town centre and the castle were in Warwickshire, but this anomaly was corrected in 1889, when the town was consolidated in Staffordshire. Idiosyncratic naming by Boundary Commissions is nothing new, and between the wars the ‘Tamworth’ constituency actually consisted of Sutton Coldfield and Solihull, and didn’t include Tamworth town at all, which was part of the Lichfield constituency. A Tamworth constituency that is based on the town was created in 1983, since when the Conservatives have won except for 1997, 2001, and 2005 (when Labour held on narrowly). The Conservatives achieved a comfortable victory in 2010, extending their lead substantially in 2015, and again in 2019, achieving an enormous 20,000 majority, similar to other towns on the Birmingham periphery. It would have been hard to see Labour coming close here again any time soon, but the MP here, former IT consultant, Christopher Pincher, who won the seat in 2010, has resigned following suspension from the Commons for unacceptable personal behaviour. The subsequent by-election was won by Labour's Sarah Edwards on a 20% swing, but whether the seat will be defensible at the General Election remains to be seen.

Census data: Owner-occupied 70% (187/575 in England & Wales), private rented 14% (480th), social rented 16% (236th).
                      : White 95%(201st), Black 1%(372nd), South Asian 2%(342nd), Mixed 2%(328th), Other 1%(470th)
                      : Managerial & professional 34% (401st), Routine & Semi-routine 34% (141st)
                      : Degree level 25%(499th), Minimal qualifications 33%(107th)
                      : Students 5% (395th), Over 65: 20% (237th)

Boundaries : The new seat is made up of 97% from Tamworth and 3% from Lichfield
                       99% of the old seat is in the new one, with 1% going to Lichfield

	2017	%	2019	%	2023 by-election	%	Notional	%
Conservative	28,748	61.0	30,542	66.3	10,403	40.7	31,748	66.7
Labour	16,401	34.8	10,908	23.7	11,719	45.8	11,085	23.3
Liberal Democrat	1,961	4.2	2,426	5.3	417	1.6	2,530	5.3
UKIP			814	1.8	436	1.7	814	1.7
Green			935	2.0	417	1.6	976	2.1
Others			431	0.9	2,194	8.6	431	0.9
Majority	12,347	26.2	19,634	42.6	-1316	-5.1	20,663	43.4

[batman]

There was a Tamworth seat until 1945. My 1945 Times Guide says it was in Warwickshire at the time.

[Pete Whitehead]

Oct 2, 2023 16:49:00 GMT batman said:

There was a Tamworth seat until 1945. My 1945 Times Guide says it was in Warwickshire at the time.

That was a county seat that covered more or less the current boroughs of Solihull and North Warwickshire plus Sutton Coldfield ( it was split into Solihull and Sutton Coldfield seats in 1945). It did include a small part of the town which remained in Warwickshire still but mostly was named for the old Tamworth rural district

[John Chanin]

Oct 2, 2023 16:49:00 GMT batman said:

There was a Tamworth seat until 1945. My 1945 Times Guide says it was in Warwickshire at the time.

As my profile says....

[YL]

Oct 2, 2023 17:00:45 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Oct 2, 2023 16:49:00 GMT batman said:

There was a Tamworth seat until 1945. My 1945 Times Guide says it was in Warwickshire at the time.

That was a county seat that covered more or less the current boroughs of Solihull and North Warwickshire plus Sutton Coldfield ( it was split into Solihull and Sutton Coldfield seats in 1945). It did include a small part of the town which remained in Warwickshire still but mostly was named for the old Tamworth rural district

I'm not sure that it had anything to do with the Rural District, which didn't exist in 1885 and in 1918 was split between Warwickshire and Staffordshire and so was only partly in the constituency. The name had been used for a Warwickshire division since 1885 when it did include the part of Tamworth town which was historically in Warwickshire. As drawn in 1918 it contained no part of the then Tamworth MB but by 1932 expansion of the borough boundaries had brought some areas which were in the constituency in.

One thing which John Chanin doesn't say is that the seat (on slightly different boundaries from those today) was not called Tamworth between 1983 and 1997, but South East Staffordshire, and that under that name it was the scene of a 1996 by-election.

[YL]

Map of Warwickshire in 1932 showing constituency boundaries

This shows the bizarrely named "Tamworth" of the time. As can be seen it included a salient in the north which did include areas by then in Tamworth MB (though outside it in 1918) and the Warwickshire parts of Tamworth RD, but that really was on the northern edge of a constituency which contained Sutton Coldfield and the entire modern Met Borough of Solihull.

[islington]

Oct 2, 2023 17:46:32 GMT YL said:

Oct 2, 2023 17:00:45 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

That was a county seat that covered more or less the current boroughs of Solihull and North Warwickshire plus Sutton Coldfield ( it was split into Solihull and Sutton Coldfield seats in 1945). It did include a small part of the town which remained in Warwickshire still but mostly was named for the old Tamworth rural district

I'm not sure that it had anything to do with the Rural District, which didn't exist in 1885 and in 1918 was split between Warwickshire and Staffordshire and so was only partly in the constituency. The name had been used for a Warwickshire division since 1885 when it did include the part of Tamworth town which was historically in Warwickshire. As drawn in 1918 it contained no part of the then Tamworth MB but by 1932 expansion of the borough boundaries had brought some areas which were in the constituency in.

One thing which John Chanin doesn't say is that the seat (on slightly different boundaries from those today) was not called Tamworth between 1983 and 1997, but South East Staffordshire, and that under that name it was the scene of a 1996 by-election.

Yes. I think the 1918 version was probably named after the 1885 version, of which it was a clear continuation even though the way its boundary was redrawn meant that it included none of Tamworth MB as it existed in 1918.

The 1885 version followed the traditional county boundary in the Tamworth area, which meant that it cut right through the middle of the town - the castle and the market were in Warks and the ancient parish church (St Editha) was in Staffs. The Boundary Commission had recommended the name 'Coleshill' for this seat, which if nothing else has centrality to commend it; but Parliament wished for sentimental reasons to preserve the name of Sir Robert Peel's old seat so while accepting the BC's recommended boundary it changed the name to the 'Northern or Tamworth' division of Warwickshire - an inept piece of naming, given that only half the town was included. ('North Warwickshire' would have been my suggestion but unfortunately I was not in a position to make representations at the time.)

The fact that the county boundary cut right through the town had been less important in Parliamentary terms prior to 1885 because Tamworth was a Parliamentary borough whose boundary, since 1832, had comprised the entire parish, which included the whole of the town and a significant surrounding area extending into both Warks and Staffs. Prior to 1832 the PB boundary had been much more tightly drawn around the town itself, but even then it straddled the county boundary, one of (I think I'm right in saying) only two pre-1832 PBs to include parts of two counties (Thetford in Norfolk/Suffolk was the other).  

[batman]

Oct 2, 2023 17:18:48 GMT John Chanin said:

Oct 2, 2023 16:49:00 GMT batman said:

There was a Tamworth seat until 1945. My 1945 Times Guide says it was in Warwickshire at the time.

As my profile says....

sorry, I missed that bit John