Post by Robert Waller on Dec 5, 2023 20:42:19 GMT
This profile is heavily based on the really excellent work of peterski, who was invited to update if he wished, with some extra material by myself.
If there was ever a place which defines 'left behind' Britain it is the former industrial port of Hartlepool on the south Durham coast in North-East England. The constituency of Hartlepool (formerly known as The Hartlepools, reflecting the identities of what were once two separate towns) is coterminous with the borough council and encapsulates the urban area of the town, the sleepy low key seaside resort of Seaton Carew and a small rural hinterland. Despite the grim reputation foisted upon the town by general ignorance there is much to enjoy on any visit; the Royal Navy museum hosted at the historic quay, the Gray Art Gallery and museum founded by noted Shipbuilder William Gray, the Ice Cream and Fish and Chip festooned delights of Seaton Carew and its extraordinary expanses of yellow sand and attendant dune system and perhaps the most intriguing of all; the atmospheric headland of Old Hartlepool with its unique and rather charming eccentric ambience.
Undoubtedly there is also an idiosyncratic streak to the local politics that most often reveals itself in scattergun local election results and oddities like the election of 'Monkey Mayor' Stuart Drummond in 2002. To casual observers it is Hartlepool’s dubious honour of supposedly hanging a shipwrecked monkey as a French spy in the Napoleonic wars that gives the town notoriety, also more recently a dystopian vision of the town was portrayed in channel 4's 'Skint Britain'. Despite this, Hartlepool has noble and ancient origins on the headland; site of the Anglo-Saxon St Hilda's church, remnants of medieval town wall and surprisingly handsome streets of Georgian architecture. This original settlement, for many years a modest fishing port, became superseded by the Industrial powerhouse of 'West Hartlepool' largely created by businessman Ralph Ward Jackson as a coal exporting and shipbuilding port in the mid 19th century. Ward Jackson had a chequered business career but is remembered by a beautiful municipal park in the west end of the town. Jackson became the first MP for the new seat of The Hartlepools in 1868 as a Conservative but his narrow victory by 3 votes was portentous for the seat becoming something of a Liberal stronghold, with only single term Liberal Unionist victories until Conservatives held sway from 1924 until 1945.
It was perhaps surprising , given the industrial nature of the seat, that it took so long to elect a Labour MP and even in the landslide of 1945 Labour snuck home by a mere 275 votes. The majorities for Labour remained in the low thousands until Commander John Kerans, a hero of the Korean war, became the last Conservative MP for Hartlepools in 1959. Ted Leadbitter became MP for Labour in 1964 and was a popular and long serving incumbent alhough never quite managed to establish Hartlepool as a safe seat (the former Hartlepools becoming the singular Hartlepool in 1974). Leadbitter's successor was a seemingly extraordinary choice for such a gritty northern outpost; being none other than the flamboyant cosmopolitan architect of the soft liberal left 'New Labour' project Peter Mandelson. It is perhaps somewhat paradoxical that only under the verifiable member of the Hampstead elite, Mandelson, did Hartlepool become safe for Labour, with majorities of 17,000 and 15,000 in 1997 and 2001 respectively. The widely disseminated tale of Mandelson visiting a local chippy, seeing mushy peas and asking for what he thought was Guacamole is apocryphal but fitted a narrative. Yet Mandelson's departure for the European commission in 2004 ushered in a more precarious era for Labour, with a narrow win in the 2004 by-election by the certifiably local and non-elite Iain Wright over an insurgent Liberal Democrat campaign led by the photogenic Jody Dunn. It is perhaps indicative of Labour's gradual pivot away from the concerns of Northern working class voters that Labour victories have become narrow and often on relatively low percentage shares, with 36 % in 2015 and 38% in 2019 providing victory against a fairly neatly split right wing opposition. New candidate Mike Hill boosted his majority to 7,650 in 2017 and clung on by 3,595 in 2019 but a scandal forced his resignation and a subsequent by-election in early 2021.
UKIP and later the Brexit party have competed with the Tories for the anti-Labour vote but Hartlepool had become an early hotbed of Euroscepticism as evidenced by a third place finish for UKIP ( beating the Conservatives) in the 2004 by-election. The Brexit referendum in 2016 duly gave Leave a landslide victory; its 70-30 split the largest margin in a north-east region where Remain only carried one counting area: Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This aversion to the EU reflects perhaps its industrial decline and isolated geographical position and comparisons with fellow struggling east coast communities like Grimsby, Sunderland and Kingston-upon-Hull are pertinent in this regard. Additionally it must be said that working class patriotic feeling is commonly expressed in a place like Hartlepool and ethnic minorities and educated middle class liberals are few in number to counterbalance these sentiments. This working class culture has survived, beaten but not quite unbroken, despite many decades of industrial decline.
Although the loss of shipbuilding, engineering and steel jobs have been continuous and relentless since as early as the 1960's there remains the residues of a manufacturing sector, with the Cameron's Lion Brewery in the centre of town being a long standing purveyor of quaffable ales, but the largest plants are 2 steel tube and pipe mills to the south of town remaining as the only active segments of the formerly huge South Durham Iron and Steel works . At the time of writing at least one of these sites is again under threat. Hartlepool Nuclear power station to the south of Seaton Carew is a notable landmark, as is the giant workshop of marine engineer Heereema at Hartlepool docks , a sad recent closure after years of struggles to gain orders. Other manufacturing companies include JDR cables, Graythorp Forge and Engineering, The Expanded Metal company, Coveris packaging and TT electronics. The Tioxide chemical plant and ABLE UK marine yard at the former Graythorp shipyard are visible industrial monoliths in the far south of the constituency, outposts of the more expansive chemical factory sites which are located close by in Stockton North but dominate views south of town. Across the Tees estuary stands the soon to be demolished Redcar Steel Works, currently a massive redevelopment site under the auspices of the 'Teesworks' programme.
As industries have declined, long term worklessness and underemployment have become endemic, with only limited opportunities available in sectors such as retail and public service, with some of the former council estates such as Dyke House, Owton Manor and De Brus becoming bywords for poverty and deprivation. Hartlepool is, however, by no means solely a sinkhole of misery. Fens, Rossmere and Rift House are considered 'better' estates and the town has a leafy west end. As one climbs the hill from the rather downtrodden 'Middleton Grange' shopping centre the housing stock improves gradually until eventually upper middle class detached properties on wide sylvan streets could almost transport the unwary to a salubrious corner of the home counties. A small segment of the seriously upscale Wynyard village development also sneaks into the constituency in the south-west.
It is these western suburbs that most reliably vote Tory in both local and general elections. Other areas of Tory strength in general elections are the moderately prosperous Seaton Carew, the northern suburbs of Throston and Hart Station and the villages of Hart, Elwick, Dalton Piercy and Greatham. It seems the Conservatives may carry the middle class enclave of the late twentieth century Hartlepool Marina redevelopment, which is anomalous to the predominantly terraced streets and grim estates of the rest of central Hartlepool. Local elections are especially difficult to read across to general elections in Hartlepool as an array of independents and right wing populists have gained traction in recent contests (a Brexit party and independent coalition ran the council for a time after 2019) and the Labour group has lost members to Socialist Labour and 'Hartlepool People'. Some clarity emerged as a new council was elected on revised boundaries on May 6th, the same day as the by-election which saw North Yorkshire farmer Jill Mortimer capture the seat for the Conservatives. The by-election was seen as a key test of Keir Starmer’s ability to arrest the decline of Labour in the so-called 'Red Wall' and also of Boris Johnson's management of the COVID 19 pandemic and vaccine rollout. Bearing in mind demographic trends of an ageing and low educational attainment population the Conservative gain on a huge swing of almost 16% may prove to be difficult for Labour to undo.
Difficult, but not impossible. For example, in the most recent set of elections in Hartlepool, the May 2023 contests for the borough council, Labour made seven gains and almost took control, with 18 out of the 36 members. Not only that, but their gains were very convincing rather than narrow: in Burn Valley their share increased by over 34%, in Fens & Greatham by 30%, in Foggy Furze by 32%, Victoria 31%. To a considerable extent, the Labour advance was the consequence of the decline of the Independents as well as the Conservatives; for example there was a Tory gain form Indy in the western rural Hart ward. Overall, though, adding up all the votes within the Hartlepool constituency in May 2023, Labour polled 48.2%, the Conservatives 24% and Independent 22%.
Analysing the 2021 census statistics in detail, Hartlepool still looks like a classic white working class estate overall, with the proportion in professional and managerial occupations in the bottom 70 of constituencies in England and Wales, and those in routine and semi routine jobs in the top 70. However, this figure does vary internally, from around 37% in census MSOAs like Foggy Furze and Rift House & Summerhill (south east Hartlepool peripheral estates) and Headland & West View on the coast, to barely 205 in the more sparsely populated inland MSOA of The Fens, Elwick & Hart and 23% in Seaton Carew. In even greater detail, at OA level, the middle class enclaves within the town itself can be identified, such as around Grantham Avenue in the ‘west end’, where the professional and managerial level reaches 42%. Similarly, while the proportion overall with no educational qualifications is very high at 23% overall, and approaches 30% in the ‘council estate MSIAS like Owton Manor, Foggy Furze and Rift House, Jesmond (very much not the one on Newcastle-upon-Tyne) and the coastal Headland & West View, the percentage with university degrees is into the 30s in the ‘west end’ MSOA of Harbour, Victoria & Wooler Road and the inland private estates of Elwick Rise, Bishop Cuthbert and West Park.
The key question is whether electoral politics in Hartlepool will return to the old fashioned cleavages of class and education as revealed by these census figures, having been thoroughly derailed in the last decade. After a series of extraordinary results including a 28% UKIP share in 2015, the highest Brexit party share in 2019 (which actually split the anti-Labour vote so heavily that they won when many had predicted a defeat) and then in 2021 the highest pro-government swing in a byelection for over 70 years, it would be a brave person who rules out another dramatic shift in fortunes in a 2024 general election. One thing that will not complicate matters is the boundary review - which has left Hartlepool completely unchanged.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 19.8% 266/575
Owner occupied 58.8% 415/573
Private rented 17.7% 306/573
Social rented 23.5% 79/573
White 96.5% 106/575
Black 0.5% 452/575
Asian 1.7% 420/575
Managerial & professional 24.0% 508/575
Routine & Semi-routine 30.5% 70/575
Degree level 24.8% 60/575
No qualifications 23.1% 77/575
Students 6.1% 235/575
2019 General Election: Hartlepool
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Mike Hill 15,464 37.7 -14.8
Conservative Stefan Houghton 11,869 28.9 -5.3
Brexit Party Richard Tice 10,603 25.8 New
Liberal Democrats Andy Hagon 1,696 4.1 +2.3
Independent Joe Bousfield 911 2.2 New
Socialist Labour Kevin Cranney 494 1.2 New
Lab Majority 3,595 8.8 -9.5
Turnout 41,037 57.9 -1.3
Labour hold
Swing 4.8 Lab to C
By-election 6 May 2021: Hartlepool
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Jill Mortimer 15,529 51.9 +23.0
Labour Paul Williams 8,589 28.7 –9.0
Independent Sam Lee 2,904 9.7 N/A
Heritage Claire Martin 468 1.6 N/A
Reform UK John Prescott 368 1.2 –24.6
Green Rachel Featherstone 358 1.2 N/A
Liberal Democrats Andy Hagon 349 1.2 –2.9
Independent Thelma Walker[c] 250 0.8 N/A
No description Chris Killick 248 0.8 N/A
North East Hilton Dawson 163 0.5 N/A
Independent W. Ralph Ward-Jackson 157 0.5 N/A
Women's Equality Gemma Evans 140 0.5 N/A
Independent Adam Gaines 126 0.4 N/A
SDP David Bettney 108 0.4 N/A
Monster Raving Loony The Incredible Flying Brick 104 0.3 N/A
Freedom Alliance Steve Jack 72 0.2 N/A
C Majority 6,940 23.2 N/A
Turnout 29,933 42.7 –15.2
Conservative gain from Labour
Swing 16.0 Lab to C
Boundary Changes and Notional Results
N/A, unchanged seat
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/north-east/North%20East_192_Hartlepool_Landscape.pdf
If there was ever a place which defines 'left behind' Britain it is the former industrial port of Hartlepool on the south Durham coast in North-East England. The constituency of Hartlepool (formerly known as The Hartlepools, reflecting the identities of what were once two separate towns) is coterminous with the borough council and encapsulates the urban area of the town, the sleepy low key seaside resort of Seaton Carew and a small rural hinterland. Despite the grim reputation foisted upon the town by general ignorance there is much to enjoy on any visit; the Royal Navy museum hosted at the historic quay, the Gray Art Gallery and museum founded by noted Shipbuilder William Gray, the Ice Cream and Fish and Chip festooned delights of Seaton Carew and its extraordinary expanses of yellow sand and attendant dune system and perhaps the most intriguing of all; the atmospheric headland of Old Hartlepool with its unique and rather charming eccentric ambience.
Undoubtedly there is also an idiosyncratic streak to the local politics that most often reveals itself in scattergun local election results and oddities like the election of 'Monkey Mayor' Stuart Drummond in 2002. To casual observers it is Hartlepool’s dubious honour of supposedly hanging a shipwrecked monkey as a French spy in the Napoleonic wars that gives the town notoriety, also more recently a dystopian vision of the town was portrayed in channel 4's 'Skint Britain'. Despite this, Hartlepool has noble and ancient origins on the headland; site of the Anglo-Saxon St Hilda's church, remnants of medieval town wall and surprisingly handsome streets of Georgian architecture. This original settlement, for many years a modest fishing port, became superseded by the Industrial powerhouse of 'West Hartlepool' largely created by businessman Ralph Ward Jackson as a coal exporting and shipbuilding port in the mid 19th century. Ward Jackson had a chequered business career but is remembered by a beautiful municipal park in the west end of the town. Jackson became the first MP for the new seat of The Hartlepools in 1868 as a Conservative but his narrow victory by 3 votes was portentous for the seat becoming something of a Liberal stronghold, with only single term Liberal Unionist victories until Conservatives held sway from 1924 until 1945.
It was perhaps surprising , given the industrial nature of the seat, that it took so long to elect a Labour MP and even in the landslide of 1945 Labour snuck home by a mere 275 votes. The majorities for Labour remained in the low thousands until Commander John Kerans, a hero of the Korean war, became the last Conservative MP for Hartlepools in 1959. Ted Leadbitter became MP for Labour in 1964 and was a popular and long serving incumbent alhough never quite managed to establish Hartlepool as a safe seat (the former Hartlepools becoming the singular Hartlepool in 1974). Leadbitter's successor was a seemingly extraordinary choice for such a gritty northern outpost; being none other than the flamboyant cosmopolitan architect of the soft liberal left 'New Labour' project Peter Mandelson. It is perhaps somewhat paradoxical that only under the verifiable member of the Hampstead elite, Mandelson, did Hartlepool become safe for Labour, with majorities of 17,000 and 15,000 in 1997 and 2001 respectively. The widely disseminated tale of Mandelson visiting a local chippy, seeing mushy peas and asking for what he thought was Guacamole is apocryphal but fitted a narrative. Yet Mandelson's departure for the European commission in 2004 ushered in a more precarious era for Labour, with a narrow win in the 2004 by-election by the certifiably local and non-elite Iain Wright over an insurgent Liberal Democrat campaign led by the photogenic Jody Dunn. It is perhaps indicative of Labour's gradual pivot away from the concerns of Northern working class voters that Labour victories have become narrow and often on relatively low percentage shares, with 36 % in 2015 and 38% in 2019 providing victory against a fairly neatly split right wing opposition. New candidate Mike Hill boosted his majority to 7,650 in 2017 and clung on by 3,595 in 2019 but a scandal forced his resignation and a subsequent by-election in early 2021.
UKIP and later the Brexit party have competed with the Tories for the anti-Labour vote but Hartlepool had become an early hotbed of Euroscepticism as evidenced by a third place finish for UKIP ( beating the Conservatives) in the 2004 by-election. The Brexit referendum in 2016 duly gave Leave a landslide victory; its 70-30 split the largest margin in a north-east region where Remain only carried one counting area: Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This aversion to the EU reflects perhaps its industrial decline and isolated geographical position and comparisons with fellow struggling east coast communities like Grimsby, Sunderland and Kingston-upon-Hull are pertinent in this regard. Additionally it must be said that working class patriotic feeling is commonly expressed in a place like Hartlepool and ethnic minorities and educated middle class liberals are few in number to counterbalance these sentiments. This working class culture has survived, beaten but not quite unbroken, despite many decades of industrial decline.
Although the loss of shipbuilding, engineering and steel jobs have been continuous and relentless since as early as the 1960's there remains the residues of a manufacturing sector, with the Cameron's Lion Brewery in the centre of town being a long standing purveyor of quaffable ales, but the largest plants are 2 steel tube and pipe mills to the south of town remaining as the only active segments of the formerly huge South Durham Iron and Steel works . At the time of writing at least one of these sites is again under threat. Hartlepool Nuclear power station to the south of Seaton Carew is a notable landmark, as is the giant workshop of marine engineer Heereema at Hartlepool docks , a sad recent closure after years of struggles to gain orders. Other manufacturing companies include JDR cables, Graythorp Forge and Engineering, The Expanded Metal company, Coveris packaging and TT electronics. The Tioxide chemical plant and ABLE UK marine yard at the former Graythorp shipyard are visible industrial monoliths in the far south of the constituency, outposts of the more expansive chemical factory sites which are located close by in Stockton North but dominate views south of town. Across the Tees estuary stands the soon to be demolished Redcar Steel Works, currently a massive redevelopment site under the auspices of the 'Teesworks' programme.
As industries have declined, long term worklessness and underemployment have become endemic, with only limited opportunities available in sectors such as retail and public service, with some of the former council estates such as Dyke House, Owton Manor and De Brus becoming bywords for poverty and deprivation. Hartlepool is, however, by no means solely a sinkhole of misery. Fens, Rossmere and Rift House are considered 'better' estates and the town has a leafy west end. As one climbs the hill from the rather downtrodden 'Middleton Grange' shopping centre the housing stock improves gradually until eventually upper middle class detached properties on wide sylvan streets could almost transport the unwary to a salubrious corner of the home counties. A small segment of the seriously upscale Wynyard village development also sneaks into the constituency in the south-west.
It is these western suburbs that most reliably vote Tory in both local and general elections. Other areas of Tory strength in general elections are the moderately prosperous Seaton Carew, the northern suburbs of Throston and Hart Station and the villages of Hart, Elwick, Dalton Piercy and Greatham. It seems the Conservatives may carry the middle class enclave of the late twentieth century Hartlepool Marina redevelopment, which is anomalous to the predominantly terraced streets and grim estates of the rest of central Hartlepool. Local elections are especially difficult to read across to general elections in Hartlepool as an array of independents and right wing populists have gained traction in recent contests (a Brexit party and independent coalition ran the council for a time after 2019) and the Labour group has lost members to Socialist Labour and 'Hartlepool People'. Some clarity emerged as a new council was elected on revised boundaries on May 6th, the same day as the by-election which saw North Yorkshire farmer Jill Mortimer capture the seat for the Conservatives. The by-election was seen as a key test of Keir Starmer’s ability to arrest the decline of Labour in the so-called 'Red Wall' and also of Boris Johnson's management of the COVID 19 pandemic and vaccine rollout. Bearing in mind demographic trends of an ageing and low educational attainment population the Conservative gain on a huge swing of almost 16% may prove to be difficult for Labour to undo.
Difficult, but not impossible. For example, in the most recent set of elections in Hartlepool, the May 2023 contests for the borough council, Labour made seven gains and almost took control, with 18 out of the 36 members. Not only that, but their gains were very convincing rather than narrow: in Burn Valley their share increased by over 34%, in Fens & Greatham by 30%, in Foggy Furze by 32%, Victoria 31%. To a considerable extent, the Labour advance was the consequence of the decline of the Independents as well as the Conservatives; for example there was a Tory gain form Indy in the western rural Hart ward. Overall, though, adding up all the votes within the Hartlepool constituency in May 2023, Labour polled 48.2%, the Conservatives 24% and Independent 22%.
Analysing the 2021 census statistics in detail, Hartlepool still looks like a classic white working class estate overall, with the proportion in professional and managerial occupations in the bottom 70 of constituencies in England and Wales, and those in routine and semi routine jobs in the top 70. However, this figure does vary internally, from around 37% in census MSOAs like Foggy Furze and Rift House & Summerhill (south east Hartlepool peripheral estates) and Headland & West View on the coast, to barely 205 in the more sparsely populated inland MSOA of The Fens, Elwick & Hart and 23% in Seaton Carew. In even greater detail, at OA level, the middle class enclaves within the town itself can be identified, such as around Grantham Avenue in the ‘west end’, where the professional and managerial level reaches 42%. Similarly, while the proportion overall with no educational qualifications is very high at 23% overall, and approaches 30% in the ‘council estate MSIAS like Owton Manor, Foggy Furze and Rift House, Jesmond (very much not the one on Newcastle-upon-Tyne) and the coastal Headland & West View, the percentage with university degrees is into the 30s in the ‘west end’ MSOA of Harbour, Victoria & Wooler Road and the inland private estates of Elwick Rise, Bishop Cuthbert and West Park.
The key question is whether electoral politics in Hartlepool will return to the old fashioned cleavages of class and education as revealed by these census figures, having been thoroughly derailed in the last decade. After a series of extraordinary results including a 28% UKIP share in 2015, the highest Brexit party share in 2019 (which actually split the anti-Labour vote so heavily that they won when many had predicted a defeat) and then in 2021 the highest pro-government swing in a byelection for over 70 years, it would be a brave person who rules out another dramatic shift in fortunes in a 2024 general election. One thing that will not complicate matters is the boundary review - which has left Hartlepool completely unchanged.
2021 Census
Age 65+ 19.8% 266/575
Owner occupied 58.8% 415/573
Private rented 17.7% 306/573
Social rented 23.5% 79/573
White 96.5% 106/575
Black 0.5% 452/575
Asian 1.7% 420/575
Managerial & professional 24.0% 508/575
Routine & Semi-routine 30.5% 70/575
Degree level 24.8% 60/575
No qualifications 23.1% 77/575
Students 6.1% 235/575
2019 General Election: Hartlepool
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Mike Hill 15,464 37.7 -14.8
Conservative Stefan Houghton 11,869 28.9 -5.3
Brexit Party Richard Tice 10,603 25.8 New
Liberal Democrats Andy Hagon 1,696 4.1 +2.3
Independent Joe Bousfield 911 2.2 New
Socialist Labour Kevin Cranney 494 1.2 New
Lab Majority 3,595 8.8 -9.5
Turnout 41,037 57.9 -1.3
Labour hold
Swing 4.8 Lab to C
By-election 6 May 2021: Hartlepool
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Jill Mortimer 15,529 51.9 +23.0
Labour Paul Williams 8,589 28.7 –9.0
Independent Sam Lee 2,904 9.7 N/A
Heritage Claire Martin 468 1.6 N/A
Reform UK John Prescott 368 1.2 –24.6
Green Rachel Featherstone 358 1.2 N/A
Liberal Democrats Andy Hagon 349 1.2 –2.9
Independent Thelma Walker[c] 250 0.8 N/A
No description Chris Killick 248 0.8 N/A
North East Hilton Dawson 163 0.5 N/A
Independent W. Ralph Ward-Jackson 157 0.5 N/A
Women's Equality Gemma Evans 140 0.5 N/A
Independent Adam Gaines 126 0.4 N/A
SDP David Bettney 108 0.4 N/A
Monster Raving Loony The Incredible Flying Brick 104 0.3 N/A
Freedom Alliance Steve Jack 72 0.2 N/A
C Majority 6,940 23.2 N/A
Turnout 29,933 42.7 –15.2
Conservative gain from Labour
Swing 16.0 Lab to C
Boundary Changes and Notional Results
N/A, unchanged seat
Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/north-east/North%20East_192_Hartlepool_Landscape.pdf
