Post by doktorb🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ on Dec 26, 2023 18:55:07 GMT
This is the original The Bishop version, hardly touched.
Barrow-in-Furness has been the basis of a parliamentary seat since the 1885 general election. An industrial town on the southern tip of the Furness peninsula (as its name suggests) it was originally created nearly two centuries ago (having been little more than an insignificant hamlet previously) on the back of local iron ore deposits - long since exhausted - and the resultant steel industry. By the time of WW1 had it was a best known for its local docks and associated shipbuilding industry, something which remains prominent to this day (unlike the mines, though their physical remains are still visible and dotted around the local landscape). Barrow also has a significant manufacturing element apart from BAE (whose imposing vista dominates the town) and is a retail centre for the surrounding area, which is through its geography somewhat cut off from the rest of historic Lancashire to the south of Morecambe Bay. In common with all other Cumbrian seats the constituency is overwhelmingly white British (97%, and over 98% white when "others" are included according to the 2011 census) and over 70% identified as "Christian", comfortably placing it in the top 100 UK seats in that regard.
Barrow-in-Furness has been the basis of a parliamentary seat since the 1885 general election. An industrial town on the southern tip of the Furness peninsula (as its name suggests) it was originally created nearly two centuries ago (having been little more than an insignificant hamlet previously) on the back of local iron ore deposits - long since exhausted - and the resultant steel industry. By the time of WW1 had it was a best known for its local docks and associated shipbuilding industry, something which remains prominent to this day (unlike the mines, though their physical remains are still visible and dotted around the local landscape). Barrow also has a significant manufacturing element apart from BAE (whose imposing vista dominates the town) and is a retail centre for the surrounding area, which is through its geography somewhat cut off from the rest of historic Lancashire to the south of Morecambe Bay. In common with all other Cumbrian seats the constituency is overwhelmingly white British (97%, and over 98% white when "others" are included according to the 2011 census) and over 70% identified as "Christian", comfortably placing it in the top 100 UK seats in that regard.
Barrow has a bit of a "rough" reputation with some, and was the subject of some maybe slightly unflattering comment in the early editions of the Almanac of British Politics which this forum's esteemed Robert Waller had a major part in creating. It is certainly true that its returning a Labour MP as early as 1906 was indicative of an already sizeable manual working class there, but it has always had a significant right wing vote and some comfortable middle class environs - notably Hawcoat in the town's NE, the one ward Labour have never ever won, plus others like Roosecote and Newbarns where the Tories have the edge in an "even" year. There is also Walney Island which has some of the best beaches in NW England, and nature reserves at both ends of its unusually elongated form - even if it is well settled in the middle section. The "traditional" seat, whilst dominated by Barrow, also contained the "historic" capital of Furness - the politically mixed Dalton-in-F - an originally iron ore town (Askam-in-F) which is these days mainly a commuter base, and a non-negligible amount of rural terrain including the picturesque Roa Island (actually connected to the mainland by a causeway)
After their 1906 breakthrough Labour held on until 1918 when a right wing "coalition" candidate ousted them, the seat was one of Labour's very few 1924 GE gains until it went back to the right in the 1931 landslide - but the Tories only held by 200 votes in 1935 and few were surprised when Labour won in 1945 (though the margin - over 12k votes - may have been) Thereafter the seat remained Labour at every GE until 1979, though the Tories were competitive at times (especially in the 1950s) and at the last outing in its old form sitting MP and outgoing Cabinet minister Albert Booth actually had a small swing in his favour against the national trend to win by 18% and a majority just under 8k. Then, two things happened.....
The first was a major expansion of a previously undersized seat to take in a much bigger slice of Furness, which apart from the market town of Ulverston was mostly rural and naturally favourable to the Tories - the second was the sudden and immediate salience of Labour defence policy; the shipyards had just started on the major updating of the UKs nuclear deterrent that would be the Trident programme, whilst Labour moved to a policy of strong opposition to British nuclear weapons. Tories subsequently made hay with Labour's "threat" to Barrow workers livelihoods - their 1980s posters memorably read simply "SAVE TRIDENT" with mention of the actual Tory party relegated to small print in the corner. The blue team's Cecil Franks took the redrawn seat to defeat Booth by close to 5k votes in 1983, and won almost as clearly 4 years later. In 1992 his luck came to an end as a combination of Labour ditching unilateralism and a general swing against the Tories amongst the C1/C2 voters well represented in the seat, led to John Hutton triumphing for Labour with a 3.5k majority which he expanded to 14k plus and 30% - Labour's highest ever in both respects - in 1997.
So all over? Not quite.
Hutton's majority was subsequently whittled away and when he stood down at the 2010 GE, Tories - who had done well in recent rounds of local elections - considered the seat winnable. In the event the new Labour candidate John Woodcock won by a surprisingly comfortable 5k despite the rejigged seat taking in some more rural territory to the north of Askam. Labour came back strongly at local level in the next few years only for Woodcock (who never quite achieved the big things predicted for him as an MP, partly due to personal problems) to face a new threat from a direction few would have predicted five years earlier - the "Great Scots Scare" the Tories whipped up post the 2014 referendum being particularly potent here as an all too plausible new "threat" was created of a minority Labour government being held to ransom by an anti-Trident SNP. Woodock's majority in 2015 fell to under 800, and he subsequently became totally estranged from the new left wing Labour leadership - culminating in an announcement just after May called her snap GE, that he would not be prepared to support Jeremy Corbyn as PM after the election. Regarded for this and other reasons (not least its vote, by around 60%, for Brexit in the 2016 referendum) as one of THE most "slam dunk" Tory gains in the 2017 GE, to the amazement of everybody - himself included - Woodcock clung on by just over 200 votes. However, a subsequent rapproachment with the Labour leadership did not last, and Woodcock ended up resigning the whip (clouded by a still unresolved sexual harassment claim) and actually recommending a Tory vote in 2019, though not joining up with the party himself.
And so it was third time lucky for Tory hopeful Simon Fell, who actually won fairly decisively (over 5k majority and his share up 5 points to 52%) Apart from the local and Brexit factors mentioned above, Labour have also undoubtedly suffered a bit from the more general demographic realignment of the past decade - though even this is not all one way with Ulverston acquiring a bit of an "alternative" bohemian tinge and thus becoming better territory for Labour. Boundary changes bring in Millom and the remote dales and crags beyond, including sparse population centres outside Ravenglass. This is going to remain a fascinating place electorally, as well as in other respects, for the foreseeable future.
