Post by bungle on Dec 10, 2023 8:56:42 GMT
Erewash
In 2005 the constituency of Erewash got a brief moment in the political sun. This is quite an apt metaphor for the cause of this attention was the candidature of the notoriously permatanned television personality (and former Labour MP) Robert Kilroy-Silk. Kilroy-Silk had recently been elected to the European Parliament for the East Midlands on a UKIP ticket but, like most large political egos, he decided he was bigger than the party and within a year had founded his own outfit called Veritas. Erewash was the constituency graced with his presence as parliamentary candidate as he sought to make a Westminster come-back some 19 years after his departure.
Suddenly there was much interest in Erewash from London political journalists. The amusement for those of us with deep connections to Derbyshire was watching pretty much all of them do two things: one, ask ‘where on earth is this place?’ and two, pronounce it as EAR-wash. Clearing up the latter point first, it is pronounced ER-RE-wash. It is the name of a river which flows north to south and was duly appropriated in the 1974 local government changes as the name for the new borough council. After nearly 50 years as a local government moniker and 40 as a parliamentary constituency it has rather stuck. Plans to abolish the Erewash name for parliamentary purposes were proposed by the Boundary Commission in the 2023 review. Their suggestion was to call the otherwise unchanged seat ‘Ilkeston and Long Eaton’. This ran into some serious opposition during the public hearings and the Assistant Commissioners recommended a reversion to Erewash which the Boundary Commission wisely accepted: Erewash survives for another outing.
The alternative name gives a clue as to its otherwise unclear location. Erewash is pretty much that bit between Derby and Nottingham which is within the county of Derbyshire. It is actually more of a north-south constituency as it starts in the town of Ilkeston at its north. The River Erewash provides its eastern boundary and the Erewash Valley has a rich industrial heritage. Just to its west at the southern end of the constituency is the other major conurbation of Long Eaton. The constituency used to abut the boundary of the city of Derby at Spondon and stretch all the way to the Nottinghamshire border but the wards of West Hallam, Dale Abbey and Ockbrook & Borrowash were removed to Mid Derbyshire in 2010 so the constituency no longer has a boundary with Derby itself.
There are good transport connections here which are improving all the time (which might give the impression that for anyone living there the only way is ‘out’). The Brian Clough Way is the recent moniker given to the A52 dual carriageway which connects Derby and Nottingham; for anyone with a semblance of football history they must agree this is a very appropriate and politically astute designation. When Erewash votes Labour it becomes even more apt given Clough’s well known political views. The M1 bisects the constituency going north-south and the A52/M1 J25 at Sandiacre is a critical piece of infrastructure. Trent Junction on the Midland Main Line is within the constituency and Long Eaton is well served by trains to both London, Derby and Nottingham. Ilkeston (pop 38,000) was one of the largest conurbations without a station until 2017 when a new station opened on the Sheffield – Nottingham line. This has increased the constituency’s role as a home for people who work in either Derby or Nottingham. All of this investment in infrastructure was potentially dwarfed by the proposal to route the HS2b extension to Leeds right through Long Eaton (which, unsurprisingly, created huge political controversy). This threat has now been lifted.
As a result of all of the above, Long Eaton really is a place most people with pass through or nearby without really noticing it. It struggles to punch its weight in terms of notable history or people: former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon is one of its more notable sons. The railway junction created the town and, since then, its growth has reflected standard housing history: artisan terraces in its centre, inter-war and post war housing further out up the Derby Road (largely privately owned) and then from the 1960s onwards private family housing in areas like Petersham which abuts the M1. Politically, Long Eaton has tended to lean left, albeit uneasily, and when the political weather is propitious for the Consveratives they do succeed here. For example, in the Derbyshire County Council elections of 2009 they were able to win the Petersham division by 43 votes whilst Labour struggled to hold on in the Long Eaton division by only 20 votes. In Labour’s dreadful year of 2017 the same divisions were both gained by the Conservatives by 150 and 135 votes respectively. In 2021 the Conservatives held the Long Eaton division by a comfortable margin of nearly 500 votes. Yet it was the death of that incumbent Tory in summer 2022 which presented Labour with a key electoral test. At the resulting by-election in October 2022 Labour gained the seat on a swing of nearly 16% from the previous year. This was a decent harbinger of what was going to happen in 2023 in this marginal of areas. Labour gained 4 seats across the core Long Eaton wards to remove all Conservative representatives at borough level.
Continuing the tour of the constituency heading south west of Long Eaton is one of those overspill villages which has grown exponentially since the 1930s – Sawley. Its housing mix is very similar to Long Eaton – pre-war small, semi-detached private and corporation housing with some 1960s/1970s private family housing. This meant politically it was also broadly left during the same period but the local election lodestone failed from the early 1980s when Labour councillor Bill Camm left the party over a row about a swimming pool. Camm was ‘Mr Sawley’ and his vote at both district and county elections could be weighed. It has been politically marginal throughout the last decade with close contests between Labour and Conservative in both 2019 and 2023. There is more reliable territory for the Conservatives in the 1970s/80s/90s private housing in New Sawley which is of the type seen in places like Oakwood and Mickleover in Derby. Wilsthorpe Ward remained Conservative in 2023 but only just – the overall Conservative vote dropped 14% with both Labour and the Lib Dems increasing by around 7%. In a marginal parliamentary seat this kind of outcome in housing areas like this should alarm the Conservatives.
Heading back north through what Pevsner calls ‘flat and uneventful country’ there are several Derby/Nottingham commuter villages like Breaston which are well-expanded with private family housing: these are solidly Conservative, although a Green candidate just gained a seat in Breaston ward in 2023. Sandiacre is more suburban in nature and has some grim parts as well. It tends to the right on the whole but not convincingly. Since it became a single ward there is a bit of an Uxbridge feel electorally – Labour promise much but never quite make it over the line. They were only 8 votes off gaining one seat here in 2023 but that might be as good as they get for the imminent future.
We then arrive in Ilkeston. Historically this was the centre of some significant heavy industry – ironworks, pipe making and coal mining. Its politics reflected this; this was solid Labour territory. There was an Ilkeston parliamentary constituency from 1885 – 1983 and in the zenith of the heavy industry period Labour could rely on the seat from 1922 onwards, regularly securing 65-70% of the vote. The only exception was in 1931 when in a two-horse race a National Labour candidate won by 2 votes. Since the 1970s this industry has dissipated and Ilkeston has struggled to re-invent its economic base. It naturally forms part of the Nottingham Urban Area and with the creation of better travel links there is a growing supply of cheaper private housing growth for Nottingham commuters, especially around Hallam Fields and Shipley Common. This has taken its toll on Labour’s grip at a county and district level. In 2017 the Conservatives managed win both the Ilkeston South and West divisions. In the 2019 GE it is clear that for the first time the Ilkeston area will have given a net positive vote to the Conservatives. In 2021 the Conservatives went even further and took all 3 divisions with another sizeable swing.
The divisional pattern now more closely reflects the prevailing political weather compared to 20 or 30 years ago. This is also matched at ward level in Ilkeston. These wards are really useful barometers in that their message is rarely blurred by other parties or independents. Over the past 15 years or so they have become increasingly marginal. Wards like Hallam Fields, Little Hallam, Cotmanhay, Shipley View and Larklands all saw results in the local elections of 2019 (a poor election for both main parties) of around 55-45%. Labour won 12 seats to the Tories 4. So what did 2023 tell us? All the Ilkeston wards were again two party contests and there was a sizeable, but not spectacular, swing back to Labour here of around 7 – 8% on average. Labour took the remaining 4 Tory seats. What is notable is the swing to Labour was highest in Hallam Fields (over 10%) – full of new build houses aimed at those advancing on the housing ladder – and lowest in Cotmanhay (barely 2%). The latter is classic pre-and post war corporation housing and low value small private housing which houses a more ageing population. Traditionally in the 1980s/90s Cotmanhay was a Labour stronghold but Brexit resonated here and Labour’s grip has noticeably weakened, which is still detectable in the 2023 result. In this respect, it is similar to places like Heanor in Amber Valley or Bolsover to the north that have unwound from old allegiances to Labour such that their default setting is now several notches to the right. Ilkeston is no longer the town it was politically – it is now somewhere to watch with interest.
The Erewash constituency itself was formed as recently as 1983 from parts of the old Ilkeston and South East Derbyshire constituencies. Most of the old Ilkeston seat was moved into the new Amber Valley CC with only the eponymous town and a small number of close villages being transferred into Erewash. In 1981 the sitting MP for Ilkeston, Ray Fletcher, was deselected and replaced as candidate by David Bookbinder, firebrand left-wing leader of Derbyshire County Council and bete noire of all local Tories and Norman Tebbit. Bookbinder saw Amber Valley as his better bet and stood there but lost. In its first outing Erewash was considered a marginal seat in its own right. When sitting South East Derbyshire MP Peter Rost won Erewash by 11,000 in that 1983 election the size of the majority is misleading. The fact is the aforementioned Bill Camm took 4,000 votes as Independent Labour and Rost only secured 45% of the vote.
South East Derbyshire made up the bulk of the new Erewash. As a constituency this covered the Long Eaton urban area plus the Rural District of Shardlow, which was in essence the villages to the west/north west and south of Long Eaton stretching down to Melbourne. All of these latter areas were the Tory bedrock of support. In 1983 those villages to the south of the Trent were largely moved into the new South Derbyshire CC. Private housing growth meant SE Derbyshire gently but noticeably shifted rightwards across the spectrum during its post war years. In 1959 the Conservatives won by 12 votes while in 1964 Labour only regained it by 873. Trevor Park, who was elected that year and in 1966, detected that the plates were moving. He retired rather than ‘face the music’, only to do a Les Huckfield and almost immediately try to be selected for safe Labour seats. As a left-wing critic of the Wilson government he didn’t get very far. His post-parliament career peaked once he became Chair of the Municipal Services Committee on Leeds City Council. However, Park was spot on in his foreboding; in 1970, despite the Conservatives only having a national majority of 31 seats, Rost was able to gain the seat for the Conservatives by 2,700 and then hold on relatively comfortably in both 1974 elections.
Peter Rost was never on the radar for ministerial office and his greatest prowess was reserved for the tennis courts. However, like several other MPs of his generation he was a refugee from Nazi Germany and his political biography “Weimar to Westminster” is worth a read. He includes one chapter entitled ‘poxy little runt’ which is what the diarist Alan Clark called him after the latter’s drunken despatch box debacle. Rost retired in 1992 and was succeeded by Angela Knight who comfortably held the seat by 5,000. Knight was fast tracked to promotion and became a Treasury Minister which probably helped secure her post-ministerial career representing the interests of stockbrokers and then as the CEO of the British Bankers Association.
Like many seats of this demographic in the East Midlands, the call of New Labour proved compelling and in 1997 Liz Blackman was elected on a swing of 12%. She held the seat comfortably in both 2001 and 2005 when the challenge of Kilroy-Silk and Veritas barely amounted to a saved deposit. Blackman retired in 2010 and, like 1997 in reverse, these type of East Midlands seats swung back sharply to the Tories – 10.5% in the case of Erewash. Jessica Lee, a barrister, served one term before voluntarily standing down and Maggie Throup, who was eagerly expecting to become MP for Solihull in 2010, finally entered Parliament in 2015. Throup joined the government in 2019 as a whip and then occupied a ministerial hot seat as Minister for Vaccines. She left office when the Truss administration took over.
So how can we summarise Erewash’s prospects at the next election? Erewash has delivered pro-Conservative swings in every election since 2010 such that the swing required for Labour to win by the smallest margin now stands at 11%. However, unlike say South Derbyshire or North West Leicestershire, this isn’t as daunting as it looks; the local election results from 2022 and 2023 give grounds for optimism. The Nottingham commuter overspill of younger voters and families seeking first houses aren’t deeply attached to voting Conservative and they have been tested since 2019. If Labour can connect with these aspirational voters, recapture enough of its more traditional support in the two urban conurbations post-Brexit and capitalise on disillusionment with the Tories then they should find a route to win. Hard but not impossible.
Thrice Labour candidate Catherine Atkinson has transferred to Derby North for the next election so Labour have selected Dr Adam Thompson, a metrologist, as their candidate. Maggie Throup was readopted as the Conservative candidate in February 2023. Brent Poland, a humanities teacher, will be the Green candidate here, having already contested the seat in 2019.
