Post by Robert Waller on Dec 22, 2023 17:48:50 GMT
This is largely based on the previous profiles by MacShimidh, reorganised after the boundary changes by myself with some additions
Largely cut off from the rest of the city by the M8 and M80 motorways, Glasgow North East has historically been overlooked even by fellow Glaswegians. There are few points of interest here, and those areas that are well-known tend to be known for the wrong reasons. It is a constituency of startlingly high deprivation and social problems, as becomes depressingly obvious when walking around, say, Balornock and Barmulloch. However, for whatever reason, these areas seen comparatively little regeneration, making this seat the second-most deprived in Scotland (only barely behind Glasgow East). The general ignorance towards this seat is encapsulated by the experience of its most famous MP, Michael Martin. Derogatorily nicknamed “Gorbals Mick” by the press, Martin shot back that the Gorbals was far away from his constituency on the other side of the Clyde, and would have been considered a step up from many of the communities in this seat.
This is not to say that the whole constituency is grim. In recent years, Dennistoun has become the yuppie capital of Glasgow, and Robroyston is one of the city’s most pleasant northern suburbs. Furthermore, over the last five years, the seat has made a name for itself because of its rapid metamorphosis from amongst the most blood-red of Labour strongholds into one of the most volatile and swingy seats in the UK. Indeed, the swing from Labour to the SNP in the 2015 general election holds the record for being the largest recorded in the post-war period. In terms of constitutional politics, this was one of the most pro-independence constituencies in 2014, with a Yes vote in the mid-to-high fifties, and in 2016 it had an estimated Remain vote of 59%, a few points lower than the Scottish national average. This is now the largest seat in Glasgow in terms of electorate, towards the top end of the permissible range in the latest boundary review, with over 75,000 electors and the only one of the six constituencies to include four complete Glasgow city council wards. It is therefore inevitable that North East contains a range of characteristics and neighbourhoods
We begin our tour of this seat in Springburn, probably the most prominent area in this seat and itself a formerly renowned area for its chemical and locomotive industries. Whilst not quite as deprived as the communities to its west (now in the North constituency), Springburn has its share of social problems as well, including high unemployment and plenty of derelict land and buildings. Springburn is located right on the county line with East Dunbartonshire, adjacent to leafy Bishopbriggs, and this juxtaposition does it no favours as it makes it look rougher than it is in reality. Springburn rather surprisingly has quite a large black population in what is otherwise an overwhelmingly white part of Glasgow. Stobhill Hospital is located here, and is one of the constituency's largest employers.
Next to Springburn are the twin neighbourhoods of Balornock and Barmulloch. Glasgow North East still has a high concentration of high-rise flats, and it was here that up until 2015 the most infamous yet iconic of the lot could be found – the complex of eight towers at Red Road. The highest inhabitable tower blocks in the city, Red Road was briefly the highest scheme in Europe and upon their opening in 1966 generated a wave of optimism as they replaced the slums of Glasgow. However, within just two decades, they had acquired an awful reputation for crime and dreadful living conditions. By the time of their demolition, they stood as little more than a reminder of Glasgow’s post-war housing policy failures. It was absolutely the right decision for these flats to demolished, but it must be said that this part of Glasgow feels even more desolate and empty now that they are gone.
Heading south, past the rather hollowed-out communities of Sighthill, Roystonhill and Germiston, the constituency changes quite noticeably in character as we enter Dennistoun. Significantly younger and more diverse than the rest of the constituency, Dennistoun is essentially an eastern part of the city centre and thus the only part of the seat that has undergone any significant gentrification. Indeed, walking down Duke Street with its trendy bars and cafes, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were in the West End rather than the East. This transformation from a working-class area into yuppie central is quite recent, but it has been very rapid and Dennistoun has become renowned as one of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world according to one write-up. Its somewhat bohemian character may be connected with a high Green party percentage in the most recent (2022) city council elections in Dennistoun ward – 26.2%. Labour were only a little ahead with 29.2% and the SNP were top, but with only 35.1%.
To the east, we come back the grittier side of the constituency as we pass through Haghill and Riddrie. We are now deep inside Glasgow’s East End, in the shadow of Barlinnie Prison, the largest and probably most notorious in Scotland. This whole section of the seat is probably its most deprived Further northeast, lying between Blackhill and Provanmill, are the massive Provan Gas Works, an iconic sight when driving into Glasgow from Edinburgh or the north. Going northeast further still, we come to the pleasant Hogganfield Loch and Ruchazie, a small community which is essentially part of Easterhouse and is best known for its role in the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars of the 1980s.
Travelling north, we reach Robroyston, easily the most affluent part of this seat. There is not much to Robroyston – it is a fairly nondescript suburb largely now composed of standard issue private housing states – but it does have historical significance in that it was the site of William Wallace’s capture in 1305 before he was sent to Westminster to be executed. Wallace’s name still lives on in this area as it is sometimes known as Wallacewell and there is a monument to him here as well. Finally, in the seat’s northeastern extremity, we come across the odd community of Millerston, of which only a small part is within the Glasgow city boundaries, the rest being within North Lanarkshire. Springburn/Robroyston ward was almost a dead heat in May 2022, with Labour’s first preferences adding up to 41.7% and the Nationalists’ to 41.2%.
In the boundary changes that have reorganised all the seats within Glasgow, while North East has lost the truly depressing neighbourhoods around Possil and Milton as well as the somewhat more mixed Ruchill to the North division, it has gained nearly 40% of the East constituency. This is the north eastern corner of Glasgow (and indeed the North East ward on the city council). The best known element here is undoubtedly Easterhouse - perhaps the most reviled of Glasgow’s “Big Four” post-war housing schemes. Easterhouse garnered a poor reputation across the country for its high incidence of gang violence and other social ills such as drug abuse, and whilst there is no agreement on where Scotland’s “Ned culture” was born, Easterhouse is as good a guess as any. In recent years, Easterhouse has seen mass regeneration, probably more so than in any other part of the city, but the results have been decidedly mixed. For instance, the massive Glasgow Fort Shopping Centre was opened in 2004 and has provided many jobs for the area. And whilst the area’s housing has been renovated, this has merely hidden more salient problems such as poor health and a continuing problem with violent crime. Easterhouse is no longer as apocalyptic as it once was, but it is still an area held in extremely poor regard by other Glaswegians. In May 2022 the North East ward, centred on Easterhouse, saw Labour lead on first preferences, with 44.0% compared with 42.6% for the SNP and no one else above 10%.
The section added from East also includes other neighbourhoods besides Easterhouse: on each side of the M8 we find Garthamlock (greatly improved after successive redevelopment scenes in the 1980s and 2010s), Queenslie (largely an industrial estate), Barlanark, Carntyne (where once there was coal mining) and Springboig – which like so much of this area was once an isolated village and then overwhelmed with local authority developments. In the middle of all this is Provan Hall, which gave its name to the Provan constituency which existed between 1955 and 1997 in the years before Glasgow’s seats had compass points. The other ward completely within the new expanded NE is East Centre, covering Riddrie, Carntyne, Springboig and Barlanark, which saw a 5% lead for the SNP in 2022.
Like four of the other five redrawn divisions, NE includes part of the abolished Glasgow Central (West is the exception). In it case it is the smallest segment, only 3.8% if the former seat, but a distinguished corner: immediately west of Dennistoun, in the north east corner of the city centre itself - including St Mungo’s Cathedral, the Necropolis, Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the main campus of the University of Strathclyde, and the neighbourhood of Townhead. Overall, as the 2022 local election results suggest, Glasgow NE looks a very marginal seat and the boundary changes have not made a significant partisan impact on this.
Even before its more recent swinginess, Glasgow North East had an interesting political back story. Upon its creation in 2005, it was won by the Speaker seeking re-election, Michael Martin. Martin was a big beast of Scottish Labour, having first been elected to Glasgow Springburn in 1979. A social conservative on Labour’s right flank, Martin was elected Speaker in 2000, becoming the first Catholic Speaker since the Reformation, and one of the few (possibly the only?) from a working-class background. Going from a sheet metal worker to Speaker of the House was a huge personal triumph, but his speakership was a turbulent one, and he was ultimately forced to resign in 2009 by his perceived lethargic response to the expenses scandal. Martin died in 2018, and is widely seen as having been a poor speaker, although Labour’s arch-unionist Tam Dalyell has written an interesting counterpoint.
Upon Martin’s resignation, a by-election was called for November 2009. Coming just a year after their sensational victory in Glasgow East, the SNP had high hopes of snagging a second Glasgow seat. In the event, the by-election proved to be a dull affair, with the Labour and Co-operative candidate, Willie Bain, securing nearly 60% and the SNP a very distant second. Indeed, the by-election was more notable for having a pathetically low turnout of 33%, and for being the first political outing of one Ruth Davidson. As for Bain, he was a Springburn boy done good, having become a law lecturer at the University of Strathclyde. One of the more competent figures of Scottish Labour’s twilight years, he was seen as something of a rising star, and this reputation and his seat’s long Labour pedigree meant that even as the 2015 Labour apocalypse loomed, few expected him to lose his seat. In the event, he lost with a huge swing of 39% to the SNP, in what was both the biggest shock of the night and the perfect summation of Scottish Labour’s fate.
Bain’s vanquisher was Anne McLaughlin, a perennial SNP candidate who had briefly served as an MSP on the Glasgow regional list. McLaughlin quite justifiably took great pleasure in calling herself the biggest swinger in Scottish history, but rather ironically, she herself was brought down by an impressive swing of nearly 13% just two years later. Replacing her was Paul Sweeney, a young and well-credentialed Labour and Co-operative candidate. Despite his potential, Sweeney himself lost the seat two years later on a less crazy swing of only 4%, and McLaughlin took back her old seat for the SNP.
Why did Labour briefly regain this seat in 2017? Firstly, this is simply a seat where people like the Labour Party, and even the SNP landslide wasn’t enough to erase that. This remains Labour’s strongest seat in Glasgow, and even in 2015 they didn’t slip below 33%. Secondly, this has been identified as the most left-wing seat in the UK, and as a result Corbyn and his platform would have played well here. Many left-wing nationalists briefly abandoned the SNP in favour of what they saw as a resurgence of the “real” Labour Party. Thirdly, Sweeney ran a brilliant local campaign, and he took the SNP by surprise as they thought they had buried Labour. Of course, by 2019 the latter two of these factors had melted away – Corbyn’s popularity had cratered, and the SNP had learnt the right lessons from 2017. This seat is now high on Labour’s target list, and probably their most likely gain in Glasgow. It is hard to see them becoming a serious Scottish party – or for that matter, winning a majority in the Commons – without taking it back. It is, put simply, a must-win for the party.
2011 Census, old boundaries
Age 65+ 15.3% 430/650
Owner-occupied 37.2% 624/650
Private rented 12.2% 444/650
Social rented 49.0% 3/650
White 89.2% 449/650
Black 4.4% 116/650
Asian 5.4% 212/650
Managerial & professional 17.2%
Routine & Semi-routine 30.5%
Degree level 16.7% 597/650
No qualifications 42.5% 1/650
Students 10.1% 143/650
General Election 2019: Glasgow North East
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
SNP Anne McLaughlin 15,911 46.9 +4.7
Labour Co-op Paul Sweeney 13,363 39.4 -3.5
Conservative Lauren Bennie 3,558 10.5 -2.4
Liberal Democrats Nicolas Moohan 1,093 3.2 +1.2
SNP Majority 2,548 7.5
2019 electorate 61,075
Turnout 33,925 55.5 +2.5
SNP gain from Labour Co-op
Swing 4.1 Lab to SNP
Boundary Changes
Glasgow North East consists of
77.3% of Glasgow North East
39.6% of Glasgow East
3.8% of Glasgow Central
Map
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/glasgow_north_east.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Denver for Rallings and Thrasher)
Largely cut off from the rest of the city by the M8 and M80 motorways, Glasgow North East has historically been overlooked even by fellow Glaswegians. There are few points of interest here, and those areas that are well-known tend to be known for the wrong reasons. It is a constituency of startlingly high deprivation and social problems, as becomes depressingly obvious when walking around, say, Balornock and Barmulloch. However, for whatever reason, these areas seen comparatively little regeneration, making this seat the second-most deprived in Scotland (only barely behind Glasgow East). The general ignorance towards this seat is encapsulated by the experience of its most famous MP, Michael Martin. Derogatorily nicknamed “Gorbals Mick” by the press, Martin shot back that the Gorbals was far away from his constituency on the other side of the Clyde, and would have been considered a step up from many of the communities in this seat.
This is not to say that the whole constituency is grim. In recent years, Dennistoun has become the yuppie capital of Glasgow, and Robroyston is one of the city’s most pleasant northern suburbs. Furthermore, over the last five years, the seat has made a name for itself because of its rapid metamorphosis from amongst the most blood-red of Labour strongholds into one of the most volatile and swingy seats in the UK. Indeed, the swing from Labour to the SNP in the 2015 general election holds the record for being the largest recorded in the post-war period. In terms of constitutional politics, this was one of the most pro-independence constituencies in 2014, with a Yes vote in the mid-to-high fifties, and in 2016 it had an estimated Remain vote of 59%, a few points lower than the Scottish national average. This is now the largest seat in Glasgow in terms of electorate, towards the top end of the permissible range in the latest boundary review, with over 75,000 electors and the only one of the six constituencies to include four complete Glasgow city council wards. It is therefore inevitable that North East contains a range of characteristics and neighbourhoods
We begin our tour of this seat in Springburn, probably the most prominent area in this seat and itself a formerly renowned area for its chemical and locomotive industries. Whilst not quite as deprived as the communities to its west (now in the North constituency), Springburn has its share of social problems as well, including high unemployment and plenty of derelict land and buildings. Springburn is located right on the county line with East Dunbartonshire, adjacent to leafy Bishopbriggs, and this juxtaposition does it no favours as it makes it look rougher than it is in reality. Springburn rather surprisingly has quite a large black population in what is otherwise an overwhelmingly white part of Glasgow. Stobhill Hospital is located here, and is one of the constituency's largest employers.
Next to Springburn are the twin neighbourhoods of Balornock and Barmulloch. Glasgow North East still has a high concentration of high-rise flats, and it was here that up until 2015 the most infamous yet iconic of the lot could be found – the complex of eight towers at Red Road. The highest inhabitable tower blocks in the city, Red Road was briefly the highest scheme in Europe and upon their opening in 1966 generated a wave of optimism as they replaced the slums of Glasgow. However, within just two decades, they had acquired an awful reputation for crime and dreadful living conditions. By the time of their demolition, they stood as little more than a reminder of Glasgow’s post-war housing policy failures. It was absolutely the right decision for these flats to demolished, but it must be said that this part of Glasgow feels even more desolate and empty now that they are gone.
Heading south, past the rather hollowed-out communities of Sighthill, Roystonhill and Germiston, the constituency changes quite noticeably in character as we enter Dennistoun. Significantly younger and more diverse than the rest of the constituency, Dennistoun is essentially an eastern part of the city centre and thus the only part of the seat that has undergone any significant gentrification. Indeed, walking down Duke Street with its trendy bars and cafes, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were in the West End rather than the East. This transformation from a working-class area into yuppie central is quite recent, but it has been very rapid and Dennistoun has become renowned as one of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world according to one write-up. Its somewhat bohemian character may be connected with a high Green party percentage in the most recent (2022) city council elections in Dennistoun ward – 26.2%. Labour were only a little ahead with 29.2% and the SNP were top, but with only 35.1%.
To the east, we come back the grittier side of the constituency as we pass through Haghill and Riddrie. We are now deep inside Glasgow’s East End, in the shadow of Barlinnie Prison, the largest and probably most notorious in Scotland. This whole section of the seat is probably its most deprived Further northeast, lying between Blackhill and Provanmill, are the massive Provan Gas Works, an iconic sight when driving into Glasgow from Edinburgh or the north. Going northeast further still, we come to the pleasant Hogganfield Loch and Ruchazie, a small community which is essentially part of Easterhouse and is best known for its role in the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars of the 1980s.
Travelling north, we reach Robroyston, easily the most affluent part of this seat. There is not much to Robroyston – it is a fairly nondescript suburb largely now composed of standard issue private housing states – but it does have historical significance in that it was the site of William Wallace’s capture in 1305 before he was sent to Westminster to be executed. Wallace’s name still lives on in this area as it is sometimes known as Wallacewell and there is a monument to him here as well. Finally, in the seat’s northeastern extremity, we come across the odd community of Millerston, of which only a small part is within the Glasgow city boundaries, the rest being within North Lanarkshire. Springburn/Robroyston ward was almost a dead heat in May 2022, with Labour’s first preferences adding up to 41.7% and the Nationalists’ to 41.2%.
In the boundary changes that have reorganised all the seats within Glasgow, while North East has lost the truly depressing neighbourhoods around Possil and Milton as well as the somewhat more mixed Ruchill to the North division, it has gained nearly 40% of the East constituency. This is the north eastern corner of Glasgow (and indeed the North East ward on the city council). The best known element here is undoubtedly Easterhouse - perhaps the most reviled of Glasgow’s “Big Four” post-war housing schemes. Easterhouse garnered a poor reputation across the country for its high incidence of gang violence and other social ills such as drug abuse, and whilst there is no agreement on where Scotland’s “Ned culture” was born, Easterhouse is as good a guess as any. In recent years, Easterhouse has seen mass regeneration, probably more so than in any other part of the city, but the results have been decidedly mixed. For instance, the massive Glasgow Fort Shopping Centre was opened in 2004 and has provided many jobs for the area. And whilst the area’s housing has been renovated, this has merely hidden more salient problems such as poor health and a continuing problem with violent crime. Easterhouse is no longer as apocalyptic as it once was, but it is still an area held in extremely poor regard by other Glaswegians. In May 2022 the North East ward, centred on Easterhouse, saw Labour lead on first preferences, with 44.0% compared with 42.6% for the SNP and no one else above 10%.
The section added from East also includes other neighbourhoods besides Easterhouse: on each side of the M8 we find Garthamlock (greatly improved after successive redevelopment scenes in the 1980s and 2010s), Queenslie (largely an industrial estate), Barlanark, Carntyne (where once there was coal mining) and Springboig – which like so much of this area was once an isolated village and then overwhelmed with local authority developments. In the middle of all this is Provan Hall, which gave its name to the Provan constituency which existed between 1955 and 1997 in the years before Glasgow’s seats had compass points. The other ward completely within the new expanded NE is East Centre, covering Riddrie, Carntyne, Springboig and Barlanark, which saw a 5% lead for the SNP in 2022.
Like four of the other five redrawn divisions, NE includes part of the abolished Glasgow Central (West is the exception). In it case it is the smallest segment, only 3.8% if the former seat, but a distinguished corner: immediately west of Dennistoun, in the north east corner of the city centre itself - including St Mungo’s Cathedral, the Necropolis, Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the main campus of the University of Strathclyde, and the neighbourhood of Townhead. Overall, as the 2022 local election results suggest, Glasgow NE looks a very marginal seat and the boundary changes have not made a significant partisan impact on this.
Even before its more recent swinginess, Glasgow North East had an interesting political back story. Upon its creation in 2005, it was won by the Speaker seeking re-election, Michael Martin. Martin was a big beast of Scottish Labour, having first been elected to Glasgow Springburn in 1979. A social conservative on Labour’s right flank, Martin was elected Speaker in 2000, becoming the first Catholic Speaker since the Reformation, and one of the few (possibly the only?) from a working-class background. Going from a sheet metal worker to Speaker of the House was a huge personal triumph, but his speakership was a turbulent one, and he was ultimately forced to resign in 2009 by his perceived lethargic response to the expenses scandal. Martin died in 2018, and is widely seen as having been a poor speaker, although Labour’s arch-unionist Tam Dalyell has written an interesting counterpoint.
Upon Martin’s resignation, a by-election was called for November 2009. Coming just a year after their sensational victory in Glasgow East, the SNP had high hopes of snagging a second Glasgow seat. In the event, the by-election proved to be a dull affair, with the Labour and Co-operative candidate, Willie Bain, securing nearly 60% and the SNP a very distant second. Indeed, the by-election was more notable for having a pathetically low turnout of 33%, and for being the first political outing of one Ruth Davidson. As for Bain, he was a Springburn boy done good, having become a law lecturer at the University of Strathclyde. One of the more competent figures of Scottish Labour’s twilight years, he was seen as something of a rising star, and this reputation and his seat’s long Labour pedigree meant that even as the 2015 Labour apocalypse loomed, few expected him to lose his seat. In the event, he lost with a huge swing of 39% to the SNP, in what was both the biggest shock of the night and the perfect summation of Scottish Labour’s fate.
Bain’s vanquisher was Anne McLaughlin, a perennial SNP candidate who had briefly served as an MSP on the Glasgow regional list. McLaughlin quite justifiably took great pleasure in calling herself the biggest swinger in Scottish history, but rather ironically, she herself was brought down by an impressive swing of nearly 13% just two years later. Replacing her was Paul Sweeney, a young and well-credentialed Labour and Co-operative candidate. Despite his potential, Sweeney himself lost the seat two years later on a less crazy swing of only 4%, and McLaughlin took back her old seat for the SNP.
Why did Labour briefly regain this seat in 2017? Firstly, this is simply a seat where people like the Labour Party, and even the SNP landslide wasn’t enough to erase that. This remains Labour’s strongest seat in Glasgow, and even in 2015 they didn’t slip below 33%. Secondly, this has been identified as the most left-wing seat in the UK, and as a result Corbyn and his platform would have played well here. Many left-wing nationalists briefly abandoned the SNP in favour of what they saw as a resurgence of the “real” Labour Party. Thirdly, Sweeney ran a brilliant local campaign, and he took the SNP by surprise as they thought they had buried Labour. Of course, by 2019 the latter two of these factors had melted away – Corbyn’s popularity had cratered, and the SNP had learnt the right lessons from 2017. This seat is now high on Labour’s target list, and probably their most likely gain in Glasgow. It is hard to see them becoming a serious Scottish party – or for that matter, winning a majority in the Commons – without taking it back. It is, put simply, a must-win for the party.
2011 Census, old boundaries
Age 65+ 15.3% 430/650
Owner-occupied 37.2% 624/650
Private rented 12.2% 444/650
Social rented 49.0% 3/650
White 89.2% 449/650
Black 4.4% 116/650
Asian 5.4% 212/650
Managerial & professional 17.2%
Routine & Semi-routine 30.5%
Degree level 16.7% 597/650
No qualifications 42.5% 1/650
Students 10.1% 143/650
General Election 2019: Glasgow North East
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
SNP Anne McLaughlin 15,911 46.9 +4.7
Labour Co-op Paul Sweeney 13,363 39.4 -3.5
Conservative Lauren Bennie 3,558 10.5 -2.4
Liberal Democrats Nicolas Moohan 1,093 3.2 +1.2
SNP Majority 2,548 7.5
2019 electorate 61,075
Turnout 33,925 55.5 +2.5
SNP gain from Labour Co-op
Swing 4.1 Lab to SNP
Boundary Changes
Glasgow North East consists of
77.3% of Glasgow North East
39.6% of Glasgow East
3.8% of Glasgow Central
Map
www.bcomm-scotland.independent.gov.uk/sites/default/files/glasgow_north_east.pdf
2019 Notional Results on New Boundaries (Denver for Rallings and Thrasher)
| SNP | 20375 | 47.8% |
| Lab | 16098 | 37.7% |
| Con | 4686 | 11.0% |
| LD | 1449 | 3.4% |
| Green | 65 | 0.2% |
| | ||
| Majority | 4277 | 10.0% |
