Post by Robert Waller on Nov 29, 2023 13:18:27 GMT
This is based on the original by Devil Wincarnate, plus additions and updates by myself. NB: thanks to spqr for sending some information on William Shepherd.
The story of Cheadle is that of the post-war suburbanisation of Britain. Formed on its original boundaries in 1950, it emerged from the short-lived Bucklow constituency that covered parts of the North Cheshire market towns. It did not suffer the fate of its predecessor as the area exploded in population, the Mancunian middle classes heading down the A34 and the A6 in search of their quarter-acre paradise. Although the seat represents the western reaches of Stockport, its history is as entwined with Cottonopolis as with the milliners up the Mersey.
The area was originally a string of Cheshire hamlets without many obvious links, although the modern seat sits mainly in the Ladybrook Valley. A large part of what is now Cheadle Hulme was a manor under the prominent Moseley family of many a political sage before and since; and Bramhall was the host of Bramall Hall, seat of the notable Davenport family for whom neighbouring Davenport is named. The Davenports died out and the hall was sold to John Henry Davies, the chairman of Manchester United Football Club- a harbinger of the area’s later reputation as a magnet for professional footballers. But it was the arrival of the railway that turned this patch into a coherent, sprawling whole. The line from Manchester to Crewe first reached the area in 1842, and a junction was formed when a line to Macclesfield and later Stoke-on-Trent arrived in 1849. This junction essentially created what is now Cheadle Hulme, and within a few decades a collection of minor hamlets had become a major commuter town, which remains the primary purpose of the area to this day. Eventually Cheadle, Bramhall, Gatley and Heald Green all found themselves on railway lines.
After Altrincham & Sale West, this is Greater Manchester’s wealthiest seat, and only a small amount of Green Belt divides it from the fabulously-affluent Tatton. Almost half the seat features in the least-deprived quintiles. The current seat is formed of the Stockport MBC wards of Bramhall North, Bramhall South, Cheadle & Gatley, Cheadle Hulme North, Cheadle Hulme South, Heald Green and Stepping Hill. There are few political personalities connected to the seat, although former Labour MP Richard Burden and political commentator Owen Jones both attended Bramhall High School. The constituency has the fourth-highest Jewish population in Greater Manchester, and hosts South Manchester’s only Jewish primary school.
The seat started out as a relatively safe Conservative patch from 1950, inheriting William Shepherd from Bucklow as its MP. Shepherd appears to have had a fairly dull but dutiful career, barring an arrest by the Brussels police for jumping a red light. The original boundaries were much wider than today, and until 1974 included much of today’s Hazel Grove seat. During this time, Labour were the distant challengers, with a steadily increasing Liberal vote. But the eventual shock came in 1966, when Michael Winstanley narrowly turned the seat yellow. Winstanley was actually a GP across the conurbation in Urmston, and indeed would be ennobled as Baron Winstanley of Urmston in 1976. However, he had a high local profile, as he was the presenter of Granada Television’s consumer affairs programme This Is Your Right. He held it for just four years, being defeated by the Conservative Tom Normanton, who would hold the redrawn seat until 1987. Oddly, Normanton and Winstanley had been at school together.
By the early Seventies, Manchester suburbia had sprawled across the northern Cheshire plain. Cheadle was far too big to remain as it was, turnout reaching 85,764 in the 1970 poll. Hazel Grove was therefore created (and promptly returned, if briefly, Michael Winstanley), and Cheadle now contained its namesake urban district, as well as Wilmslow. Wilmslow would remain in the seat until 1983, when Cheadle started to take the shape most familiar now. Normanton stepped down in 1987, to be replaced by Stephen Day.
Day survived the great Tory cull of 1997, only to fall by a 33-vote margin to the Lib Dem Patsy Calton. Calton was a chemistry teacher in nearby Poynton, and a councillor for Bramhall West on Stockport council. She continued to serve as a councillor until being defeated amidst much acrimony in 2002. Calton defeated Day again in 2005, this time with a majority of over 4,000. However, Calton was suffering from breast cancer, and died weeks after her victory. The resulting by-election was the first time that the Lib Dems had defended a seat in a by-election (Winchester in 1997 was the consequence of the poll being annulled). In a campaign best described as tetchy, Mark Hunter (the council leader) held the seat and would remain MP for a decade. This was Stephen Day’s last outing, and also saw Labour lose their deposit in the second of five outings for Martin Miller.
In 2015, the Lib Dem vote sank and the Conservative vote stayed relatively stable. The new MP, still in place, is Mary Robinson, a former accountant and South Ribble councillor. Robinson held on in 2017 and 2019 with a slightly higher share of the vote. Both contests were rare three-party affairs. The local Green Party claimed to have stood down in favour of the Liberal Democrats, but in fact have never run a candidate here. In an unusual twist, the defeated Mark Hunter won a council seat in 2016 against Stephen Robinson, husband of the MP. Robinson’s victories have been somewhat against the run of play. This is a firmly Remain-voting seat, and at a local level is dominated by Lib Dem and Ratepayer councillors.
In May 2023 the Conservatives, incumbents in the parliamentary constituency, won none of the Stockport council wards or seats within it. There had been ward boundary changes, but most wards had clear predecessors with which they could be compared. The Liberal Democrats took both Bramhall wards narrowly, as they had done in 2022, having gained them then from the Tories who had held the pair solidly and continuously since 2008. They also only just beat the Tories in Norbury & Woodsmoor, which has replaced the former Stepping Hill ward, which wasn’t very well named as although it did include the well known hospital of that name, contained less of the Stepping Hill neighbourhood than Offerton ward (in Hazel Grove constituency) did. In 2023 the Lib Dems also won Cheadle West & Gatley and Cheadle Hulme South easily, as they had the corresponding wards in old boundaries since 1995 with one exception in the former (ex-Cheadle & Gatley ward) in 2008, and in the latter without a break since 1976. In Cheadle East & Cheadle Hulme North, Labour actually won two of the three spots available in 2023, the LDs taking the other one; this was not unprecedented as Labour had returned councillors in Cheadle Hulme North in 2022 and 2018, though never before then in that ward in Stockport metropolitan borough days. Finally, Heald Green has been dominated by localists for at least the past 50 years,
Overall adding up the votes within the Cheadle parliamentary seat, as Adam Gray has done, it comes to Lib Dem 45%, to a wretched 23% for the Conservatives (and 17% for Labour and 9.5% for Greens, so there may be room for tactical help for the LDs to complete the Westminster level gain).
Cheadle is a very middle class and well educated constituency overall, just outside the England and Wales top 30 as far as professional and managerial jobs are concerned (46%), this reaching a peak in Bramhall, where that figure for its West MSOA reached 54% and South & Woodford nearly 55%. Bramhall North is also over 50% prof/man and other parts of the seat are just under 50%: Cheadle Hulme SE 49%, Gatley North 49.5%. The much more working sections are, of course, the parts that are nearly in Stockport town, and to some extent Cheadle Heath (23% in these categories). Overall though, the most striking demographic statistics of all relate to housing. The Cheadle constituency ranks 2nd highest in England and Wales for owner occupation, one of the very few over 80%, 4th lowest for social rented housing, and 6th lowest for private rented. The Bramhall wards are approximately 90% owner occupied, more than half of these outright without need of a mortgage, and Heald Green nearly approaches this level, with the rest of this seat not far behind; the small pockets of social rented housing are more to be found in Cheadle East (16%) than anywhere else, the private rented there and in Cheadle Heath (both 16%).
Despite all these apparent indicators of bourgeois affluence, Cheadle looks very like one of the near certain Liberal Democrat gains in a 2024 general election, unless the national political landscape should undergo an unexpected transformation. This would restore the name of Cheadle to its distinguished history of Liberalism. There are no boundary changes to cloud the issue.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 22.5% 150/575
Owner occupied 82.5% 2/575
Private rented 11.0% 568/575
Social rented 6.5% 572/575
White 82.6% 380/575
Black 0.8% 346/575
Asian 11.6% 134/575
Managerial & professional 45.8% 31/575
Routine & Semi-routine 14.8% 531/575
Degree level 44.1% 74/575
No qualifications 12.6% 520/575
Students 5.6% 289/575
General Election 2019: Cheadle
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Mary Robinson 25,694 46.0 +1.4
Liberal Democrats Tom Morrison 23,358 41.8 +5.5
Labour Zahid Chauhan 6,851 12.3 -6.8
C Majority 2,336 4.2 -4.1
2019 electorate 74,639
Turnout 55,903 74.9 +0.6
Conservative hold
Swing 2.0 C to LD
Boundary Changes and Notional Results
N/A
Unchanged seat
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/north-west/North%20West_227_Cheadle_Landscape.pdf
The story of Cheadle is that of the post-war suburbanisation of Britain. Formed on its original boundaries in 1950, it emerged from the short-lived Bucklow constituency that covered parts of the North Cheshire market towns. It did not suffer the fate of its predecessor as the area exploded in population, the Mancunian middle classes heading down the A34 and the A6 in search of their quarter-acre paradise. Although the seat represents the western reaches of Stockport, its history is as entwined with Cottonopolis as with the milliners up the Mersey.
The area was originally a string of Cheshire hamlets without many obvious links, although the modern seat sits mainly in the Ladybrook Valley. A large part of what is now Cheadle Hulme was a manor under the prominent Moseley family of many a political sage before and since; and Bramhall was the host of Bramall Hall, seat of the notable Davenport family for whom neighbouring Davenport is named. The Davenports died out and the hall was sold to John Henry Davies, the chairman of Manchester United Football Club- a harbinger of the area’s later reputation as a magnet for professional footballers. But it was the arrival of the railway that turned this patch into a coherent, sprawling whole. The line from Manchester to Crewe first reached the area in 1842, and a junction was formed when a line to Macclesfield and later Stoke-on-Trent arrived in 1849. This junction essentially created what is now Cheadle Hulme, and within a few decades a collection of minor hamlets had become a major commuter town, which remains the primary purpose of the area to this day. Eventually Cheadle, Bramhall, Gatley and Heald Green all found themselves on railway lines.
After Altrincham & Sale West, this is Greater Manchester’s wealthiest seat, and only a small amount of Green Belt divides it from the fabulously-affluent Tatton. Almost half the seat features in the least-deprived quintiles. The current seat is formed of the Stockport MBC wards of Bramhall North, Bramhall South, Cheadle & Gatley, Cheadle Hulme North, Cheadle Hulme South, Heald Green and Stepping Hill. There are few political personalities connected to the seat, although former Labour MP Richard Burden and political commentator Owen Jones both attended Bramhall High School. The constituency has the fourth-highest Jewish population in Greater Manchester, and hosts South Manchester’s only Jewish primary school.
The seat started out as a relatively safe Conservative patch from 1950, inheriting William Shepherd from Bucklow as its MP. Shepherd appears to have had a fairly dull but dutiful career, barring an arrest by the Brussels police for jumping a red light. The original boundaries were much wider than today, and until 1974 included much of today’s Hazel Grove seat. During this time, Labour were the distant challengers, with a steadily increasing Liberal vote. But the eventual shock came in 1966, when Michael Winstanley narrowly turned the seat yellow. Winstanley was actually a GP across the conurbation in Urmston, and indeed would be ennobled as Baron Winstanley of Urmston in 1976. However, he had a high local profile, as he was the presenter of Granada Television’s consumer affairs programme This Is Your Right. He held it for just four years, being defeated by the Conservative Tom Normanton, who would hold the redrawn seat until 1987. Oddly, Normanton and Winstanley had been at school together.
By the early Seventies, Manchester suburbia had sprawled across the northern Cheshire plain. Cheadle was far too big to remain as it was, turnout reaching 85,764 in the 1970 poll. Hazel Grove was therefore created (and promptly returned, if briefly, Michael Winstanley), and Cheadle now contained its namesake urban district, as well as Wilmslow. Wilmslow would remain in the seat until 1983, when Cheadle started to take the shape most familiar now. Normanton stepped down in 1987, to be replaced by Stephen Day.
Day survived the great Tory cull of 1997, only to fall by a 33-vote margin to the Lib Dem Patsy Calton. Calton was a chemistry teacher in nearby Poynton, and a councillor for Bramhall West on Stockport council. She continued to serve as a councillor until being defeated amidst much acrimony in 2002. Calton defeated Day again in 2005, this time with a majority of over 4,000. However, Calton was suffering from breast cancer, and died weeks after her victory. The resulting by-election was the first time that the Lib Dems had defended a seat in a by-election (Winchester in 1997 was the consequence of the poll being annulled). In a campaign best described as tetchy, Mark Hunter (the council leader) held the seat and would remain MP for a decade. This was Stephen Day’s last outing, and also saw Labour lose their deposit in the second of five outings for Martin Miller.
In 2015, the Lib Dem vote sank and the Conservative vote stayed relatively stable. The new MP, still in place, is Mary Robinson, a former accountant and South Ribble councillor. Robinson held on in 2017 and 2019 with a slightly higher share of the vote. Both contests were rare three-party affairs. The local Green Party claimed to have stood down in favour of the Liberal Democrats, but in fact have never run a candidate here. In an unusual twist, the defeated Mark Hunter won a council seat in 2016 against Stephen Robinson, husband of the MP. Robinson’s victories have been somewhat against the run of play. This is a firmly Remain-voting seat, and at a local level is dominated by Lib Dem and Ratepayer councillors.
In May 2023 the Conservatives, incumbents in the parliamentary constituency, won none of the Stockport council wards or seats within it. There had been ward boundary changes, but most wards had clear predecessors with which they could be compared. The Liberal Democrats took both Bramhall wards narrowly, as they had done in 2022, having gained them then from the Tories who had held the pair solidly and continuously since 2008. They also only just beat the Tories in Norbury & Woodsmoor, which has replaced the former Stepping Hill ward, which wasn’t very well named as although it did include the well known hospital of that name, contained less of the Stepping Hill neighbourhood than Offerton ward (in Hazel Grove constituency) did. In 2023 the Lib Dems also won Cheadle West & Gatley and Cheadle Hulme South easily, as they had the corresponding wards in old boundaries since 1995 with one exception in the former (ex-Cheadle & Gatley ward) in 2008, and in the latter without a break since 1976. In Cheadle East & Cheadle Hulme North, Labour actually won two of the three spots available in 2023, the LDs taking the other one; this was not unprecedented as Labour had returned councillors in Cheadle Hulme North in 2022 and 2018, though never before then in that ward in Stockport metropolitan borough days. Finally, Heald Green has been dominated by localists for at least the past 50 years,
Overall adding up the votes within the Cheadle parliamentary seat, as Adam Gray has done, it comes to Lib Dem 45%, to a wretched 23% for the Conservatives (and 17% for Labour and 9.5% for Greens, so there may be room for tactical help for the LDs to complete the Westminster level gain).
Cheadle is a very middle class and well educated constituency overall, just outside the England and Wales top 30 as far as professional and managerial jobs are concerned (46%), this reaching a peak in Bramhall, where that figure for its West MSOA reached 54% and South & Woodford nearly 55%. Bramhall North is also over 50% prof/man and other parts of the seat are just under 50%: Cheadle Hulme SE 49%, Gatley North 49.5%. The much more working sections are, of course, the parts that are nearly in Stockport town, and to some extent Cheadle Heath (23% in these categories). Overall though, the most striking demographic statistics of all relate to housing. The Cheadle constituency ranks 2nd highest in England and Wales for owner occupation, one of the very few over 80%, 4th lowest for social rented housing, and 6th lowest for private rented. The Bramhall wards are approximately 90% owner occupied, more than half of these outright without need of a mortgage, and Heald Green nearly approaches this level, with the rest of this seat not far behind; the small pockets of social rented housing are more to be found in Cheadle East (16%) than anywhere else, the private rented there and in Cheadle Heath (both 16%).
Despite all these apparent indicators of bourgeois affluence, Cheadle looks very like one of the near certain Liberal Democrat gains in a 2024 general election, unless the national political landscape should undergo an unexpected transformation. This would restore the name of Cheadle to its distinguished history of Liberalism. There are no boundary changes to cloud the issue.
2021 Census, new boundaries
Age 65+ 22.5% 150/575
Owner occupied 82.5% 2/575
Private rented 11.0% 568/575
Social rented 6.5% 572/575
White 82.6% 380/575
Black 0.8% 346/575
Asian 11.6% 134/575
Managerial & professional 45.8% 31/575
Routine & Semi-routine 14.8% 531/575
Degree level 44.1% 74/575
No qualifications 12.6% 520/575
Students 5.6% 289/575
General Election 2019: Cheadle
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Mary Robinson 25,694 46.0 +1.4
Liberal Democrats Tom Morrison 23,358 41.8 +5.5
Labour Zahid Chauhan 6,851 12.3 -6.8
C Majority 2,336 4.2 -4.1
2019 electorate 74,639
Turnout 55,903 74.9 +0.6
Conservative hold
Swing 2.0 C to LD
Boundary Changes and Notional Results
N/A
Unchanged seat
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/north-west/North%20West_227_Cheadle_Landscape.pdf