Post by iainbhx on Dec 28, 2023 21:19:33 GMT
Again with thanks to previous work by iang
Halesowen has a long and storied history, certainly older than Stourbridge and there is much less question about it being a Black Country town or at least there wasn’t until the Nineties by which time it has been seen seen more as a Birmingham adjunct. It’s also seen as a bit funny and gaffers will tell you it’s because it’s really part of Shropshire and nothing to do with Staffordshire or Worcestershire. This is indeed true, it was moved into Worcestershire by the Counties (Detached Parts) Act - one of those things that traditional county windbags choose to ignore. It also cleared up an area of counter-enclaves and counter-counter enclaves mainly in and around what was called Warley Salop. It was a nail making town with some coal mining, although the mines were finished by the middle of the 19th century. it’s connection to the railway network was very short lived for passengers (except for workman’s trains to the Austin at Longbridge which lingered until 1958) but freight persisted until 1964. The town has a 1960’s shopping centre, the Cornbow, which has been “refreshed” a couple of times, it lost some trade to Merry Hill, but didn’t seem to be doing too badly until a few years ago, the town centre was known for some fairly quirky independent shops (a chemists that also sold model trains for instance) but most of those have gone now.
Halesowen’s early parliamentary electoral history is tied up with that of Stourbridge, firstly as part of the North Worcestershire seat and then as part of the Stourbridge seat of 1918-50. At the same time Halesowen grew apace, going from being part of the Stourbridge Sanitary District to being the Halesowen Rural District and then the Halesowen Urban District and finally it’s own Muncipal Borough in 1936. In 1950, it became part of the Oldbury and Halesowen seat, Oldbury and Halesowen was never completely safe for Labour, but was held by Arthur Moyle and John Horner successively, the increase in middle class housing in Halesowen brought by improved transport links of the M5 and the Halesowen Expressway signalled his doom in 1970 and the seat elected the political blight known as John Stokes. It transferred to Halesowen and Stourbridge in 1974, Oldbury having in 1966 becomes party of the County Borough of Warley which had its own seats.
In 1997 it was split from Stourbridge again and formed a cross border seat with the Rowley Regis area of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Sandwell, this was thought to be marginal, but was won by Sylvia Heal for Labour with a 10k majority, this decreased each time and Heal stood down in 2010 at which the seat which had very minor boundary changes was taken by James Morris for the Conservatives. Morris has increased his majority each time he has stood until it has reached a very large 12k, as in all of the Black Country seats there was a strong vote to leave in Halesowen and the 2019 manifesto resonated well in the seat.
The Halesowen & Rowley Regis constituency will lose the majority of its Sandwell section in Blackheath and Rowley and with it the '& Rowley Regis' part of the name. These areas are to be replaced with two wards from Stourbridge in the form of Cradley & Wollescote and Quarry Bank & Dudley Wood. Both the departing area and the new additions are more Labour than average for this constituency and the overall political effect will be broadly neutral.
The new seat is much more “Dudley” than “Sandwell”, only one ward of Sandwell is in the seat and its one that is a better fit for Dudley than Sandwell. There is also a small part of Blackheath to make the numbers up, but it is just the area of that ward south of the railway line where the housing comes off Station Road - the Station in question being Old Hill. Over all, it is a better off working class/lower middle class ward where people don’t have degrees, own their own home, do graft hard and aspire to retire to Devon. Fertile ground for working class Toryism of the right kind.
Halesowen North - Halesowen North consists of four area, two of which have very few residents, the Coombeswood area down by the Dudley Canal and the River Stour has several trading estates, a business park, a Macro, a B&Q and a big Co-op logistics centre, It has lots of jobs but few residents, Mucklow Hill which is nearly all park land lies between it and what locals would call “Hill & Cakemore” which is mainly owner occupied semis, further to the east is Hurst Green which contains some social housing and is a little more downmarket and looks more towards Blackheath than Halesowen for amenities etc, It’s politically marginal and has been since its creation, usually Labour in a good year for them, but has been known to return Conservatives not just in good years but also when Dudley Labour tries to foist a waste of space on them. It is 71.9% Owner Occupied and 77.4% White. At the time of writing Halesowen North has 2 Labour and 1 Conservative councillor.
Halesowen South - Halesowen South is, I think, still Dudley’s most affluent ward, many people think it is Pedmore or Hayley Green but it isn’t. It is a distinctly lower middle class ward to most appearances, the interwar and post war housing of what has become known as Lapal or of those parts of Quinton over the M5 and newer housing from the sixties and seventies filing in the gaps between the town and the Manor Way bypass. It also has two substantial rural areas, the first around the old Halesowen Abbey and the hamlet of Uffmore, the second being a long finger from the actual hamlet of Lapal down to the small village of Illey which is expensive and very solidly Tory. How this was retained in 1973 when nearby Hunnington was transferred to Bromsgrove DC, is an interesting question. It also contains most of Halesowen Town Centre, although not many people live there. It is 85.5% White and 82.6% Owner Occupied, there is very little social housing in this ward (6.6%). At the time of writing Halesowen South has 3 Conservative councillors as it has done since its creation, even in 1995, a narrow victory was squeaked over the Labour party.
Hayley Green and Cradley South - Hayley Green has the reputation of being quite posh and is mainly housing about 50-60 years old, the ward also includes the rest of Hasbury and up on the hillside and on the other side of the Lutley Gutter, the Beacher’s Lane Estate, which is cut off from the rest of the ward and looks pretty grim - some of the houses will have great views though. It’s been solidly Tory since the year dot apart from the year UKIP got very close. It’s 88% White and 76.7% owner occupied. At time of writing Hayley Green has three Conservative councillors
Belle Vale - Belle Vale is to an extent dominated by the Lutley Gutter, an unfortunate name for a stream which keeps the nice houses in the woods on the west side of the stream from the more plebeian ones on the east side which contains some social housing and some older terraces amongst newer housing .Much of the ward is made up of Hawne and North Hasbury rather than Belle Vale itself which is quite small. It used to be competitive for Labour, but hasn’t been for a while unless UKIP were splitting the vote. 84.9% White and 63.6% Owner Occupied. At the time of writing Belle Vale has 3 Conservative Councillors
Quarry Bank and Dudley Wood - I don't really know the Dudley Wood end of the ward at all, I had a friend a KES who lived in Dudley Wood but I can't go off forty year old impressions, Quarry Bonk, sorry Bank, is where my mother grew up before they moved to Wall Heath in the 1950's and hence for reasons the family doctors was on the Thorns Road. It contains one of the smaller Mary Stevens parks, part of the huge and lovely Saltwells nature reserve - a few bits of industry and a declining commercial centre along Quarry Bank High Street. I certainly get the impression that this was an area in decline back in the 80's and it hasn't got much better since. Very strong UKIP vote here, but one of those places where Tory might just be a step too far at least in the Quarry Bank section. It’s normally solid for Labour, but has very occasionally gone Tory in their best years. It’s 89.1% White and 65.2% Owner occupied. At the time of writing the ward has 2 Labour and 1 Conservative councillor.
Cradley & Wollescote - Originally Cradley and Foxcote, but renamed because no-one really knew where Foxcote was and everyone knows where Wollescote is even if only part if it is in the ward. There still are substantial numbers of proper jobs in the Hayes which keeps people busy. There's a reasonable amount of social housing here but not as much as before they redeveloped the Tanhouse estate demolishing delightful tower blocks This ward should have been more competitive for the Tories than it turned out to be until recently. There has been some moderate infill housing because of easy access to Cradley Heath station, there were plans for a large amount of housing on Foxcote Farm which were very unpopular, mainly for NIMBY reasons but also because access to it is not going to be very good, this and the vaccine bounce cost Labour a seat to the Conservatives in 2021 and a very hard effort cost Labour a second seat in a 2023 by-election, this time not to the Tories but to the Liberal Democrats. It will still be a Lab/Con battle in the general election. It’s 78.6% White with parts of Wollescote being quite heavily Bangladeshi and 64.7% Owner Occupied. At the time of writing the ward is a three way split between Labour, Conservative and LibDem.
Cradley Heath and Old Hill - Two parts really, Cradley Heath which used to be one of the most traditional parts of the Black Country which is increasingly seen as a cheaper place to live by not so well off Brum commuters and Old Hill, which is proof that no matter how hilly, a council in the 50’s could put an estate up there. There’s a lot of council housing in this ward, it may even have been majority council housing back in the 1970’s. This ward may have been held by Labour on GE day in 2019, I emphasise the conditional tense here. It’s been Tory once in the last 20 years in a two-hoss race in 2008 and I remember that being regards a shock. 77.6% White and 52.9% Owner Occupied. It has three Labour councillors.
Halesowen has a long and storied history, certainly older than Stourbridge and there is much less question about it being a Black Country town or at least there wasn’t until the Nineties by which time it has been seen seen more as a Birmingham adjunct. It’s also seen as a bit funny and gaffers will tell you it’s because it’s really part of Shropshire and nothing to do with Staffordshire or Worcestershire. This is indeed true, it was moved into Worcestershire by the Counties (Detached Parts) Act - one of those things that traditional county windbags choose to ignore. It also cleared up an area of counter-enclaves and counter-counter enclaves mainly in and around what was called Warley Salop. It was a nail making town with some coal mining, although the mines were finished by the middle of the 19th century. it’s connection to the railway network was very short lived for passengers (except for workman’s trains to the Austin at Longbridge which lingered until 1958) but freight persisted until 1964. The town has a 1960’s shopping centre, the Cornbow, which has been “refreshed” a couple of times, it lost some trade to Merry Hill, but didn’t seem to be doing too badly until a few years ago, the town centre was known for some fairly quirky independent shops (a chemists that also sold model trains for instance) but most of those have gone now.
Halesowen’s early parliamentary electoral history is tied up with that of Stourbridge, firstly as part of the North Worcestershire seat and then as part of the Stourbridge seat of 1918-50. At the same time Halesowen grew apace, going from being part of the Stourbridge Sanitary District to being the Halesowen Rural District and then the Halesowen Urban District and finally it’s own Muncipal Borough in 1936. In 1950, it became part of the Oldbury and Halesowen seat, Oldbury and Halesowen was never completely safe for Labour, but was held by Arthur Moyle and John Horner successively, the increase in middle class housing in Halesowen brought by improved transport links of the M5 and the Halesowen Expressway signalled his doom in 1970 and the seat elected the political blight known as John Stokes. It transferred to Halesowen and Stourbridge in 1974, Oldbury having in 1966 becomes party of the County Borough of Warley which had its own seats.
In 1997 it was split from Stourbridge again and formed a cross border seat with the Rowley Regis area of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Sandwell, this was thought to be marginal, but was won by Sylvia Heal for Labour with a 10k majority, this decreased each time and Heal stood down in 2010 at which the seat which had very minor boundary changes was taken by James Morris for the Conservatives. Morris has increased his majority each time he has stood until it has reached a very large 12k, as in all of the Black Country seats there was a strong vote to leave in Halesowen and the 2019 manifesto resonated well in the seat.
The Halesowen & Rowley Regis constituency will lose the majority of its Sandwell section in Blackheath and Rowley and with it the '& Rowley Regis' part of the name. These areas are to be replaced with two wards from Stourbridge in the form of Cradley & Wollescote and Quarry Bank & Dudley Wood. Both the departing area and the new additions are more Labour than average for this constituency and the overall political effect will be broadly neutral.
The new seat is much more “Dudley” than “Sandwell”, only one ward of Sandwell is in the seat and its one that is a better fit for Dudley than Sandwell. There is also a small part of Blackheath to make the numbers up, but it is just the area of that ward south of the railway line where the housing comes off Station Road - the Station in question being Old Hill. Over all, it is a better off working class/lower middle class ward where people don’t have degrees, own their own home, do graft hard and aspire to retire to Devon. Fertile ground for working class Toryism of the right kind.
Halesowen North - Halesowen North consists of four area, two of which have very few residents, the Coombeswood area down by the Dudley Canal and the River Stour has several trading estates, a business park, a Macro, a B&Q and a big Co-op logistics centre, It has lots of jobs but few residents, Mucklow Hill which is nearly all park land lies between it and what locals would call “Hill & Cakemore” which is mainly owner occupied semis, further to the east is Hurst Green which contains some social housing and is a little more downmarket and looks more towards Blackheath than Halesowen for amenities etc, It’s politically marginal and has been since its creation, usually Labour in a good year for them, but has been known to return Conservatives not just in good years but also when Dudley Labour tries to foist a waste of space on them. It is 71.9% Owner Occupied and 77.4% White. At the time of writing Halesowen North has 2 Labour and 1 Conservative councillor.
Halesowen South - Halesowen South is, I think, still Dudley’s most affluent ward, many people think it is Pedmore or Hayley Green but it isn’t. It is a distinctly lower middle class ward to most appearances, the interwar and post war housing of what has become known as Lapal or of those parts of Quinton over the M5 and newer housing from the sixties and seventies filing in the gaps between the town and the Manor Way bypass. It also has two substantial rural areas, the first around the old Halesowen Abbey and the hamlet of Uffmore, the second being a long finger from the actual hamlet of Lapal down to the small village of Illey which is expensive and very solidly Tory. How this was retained in 1973 when nearby Hunnington was transferred to Bromsgrove DC, is an interesting question. It also contains most of Halesowen Town Centre, although not many people live there. It is 85.5% White and 82.6% Owner Occupied, there is very little social housing in this ward (6.6%). At the time of writing Halesowen South has 3 Conservative councillors as it has done since its creation, even in 1995, a narrow victory was squeaked over the Labour party.
Hayley Green and Cradley South - Hayley Green has the reputation of being quite posh and is mainly housing about 50-60 years old, the ward also includes the rest of Hasbury and up on the hillside and on the other side of the Lutley Gutter, the Beacher’s Lane Estate, which is cut off from the rest of the ward and looks pretty grim - some of the houses will have great views though. It’s been solidly Tory since the year dot apart from the year UKIP got very close. It’s 88% White and 76.7% owner occupied. At time of writing Hayley Green has three Conservative councillors
Belle Vale - Belle Vale is to an extent dominated by the Lutley Gutter, an unfortunate name for a stream which keeps the nice houses in the woods on the west side of the stream from the more plebeian ones on the east side which contains some social housing and some older terraces amongst newer housing .Much of the ward is made up of Hawne and North Hasbury rather than Belle Vale itself which is quite small. It used to be competitive for Labour, but hasn’t been for a while unless UKIP were splitting the vote. 84.9% White and 63.6% Owner Occupied. At the time of writing Belle Vale has 3 Conservative Councillors
Quarry Bank and Dudley Wood - I don't really know the Dudley Wood end of the ward at all, I had a friend a KES who lived in Dudley Wood but I can't go off forty year old impressions, Quarry Bonk, sorry Bank, is where my mother grew up before they moved to Wall Heath in the 1950's and hence for reasons the family doctors was on the Thorns Road. It contains one of the smaller Mary Stevens parks, part of the huge and lovely Saltwells nature reserve - a few bits of industry and a declining commercial centre along Quarry Bank High Street. I certainly get the impression that this was an area in decline back in the 80's and it hasn't got much better since. Very strong UKIP vote here, but one of those places where Tory might just be a step too far at least in the Quarry Bank section. It’s normally solid for Labour, but has very occasionally gone Tory in their best years. It’s 89.1% White and 65.2% Owner occupied. At the time of writing the ward has 2 Labour and 1 Conservative councillor.
Cradley & Wollescote - Originally Cradley and Foxcote, but renamed because no-one really knew where Foxcote was and everyone knows where Wollescote is even if only part if it is in the ward. There still are substantial numbers of proper jobs in the Hayes which keeps people busy. There's a reasonable amount of social housing here but not as much as before they redeveloped the Tanhouse estate demolishing delightful tower blocks This ward should have been more competitive for the Tories than it turned out to be until recently. There has been some moderate infill housing because of easy access to Cradley Heath station, there were plans for a large amount of housing on Foxcote Farm which were very unpopular, mainly for NIMBY reasons but also because access to it is not going to be very good, this and the vaccine bounce cost Labour a seat to the Conservatives in 2021 and a very hard effort cost Labour a second seat in a 2023 by-election, this time not to the Tories but to the Liberal Democrats. It will still be a Lab/Con battle in the general election. It’s 78.6% White with parts of Wollescote being quite heavily Bangladeshi and 64.7% Owner Occupied. At the time of writing the ward is a three way split between Labour, Conservative and LibDem.
Cradley Heath and Old Hill - Two parts really, Cradley Heath which used to be one of the most traditional parts of the Black Country which is increasingly seen as a cheaper place to live by not so well off Brum commuters and Old Hill, which is proof that no matter how hilly, a council in the 50’s could put an estate up there. There’s a lot of council housing in this ward, it may even have been majority council housing back in the 1970’s. This ward may have been held by Labour on GE day in 2019, I emphasise the conditional tense here. It’s been Tory once in the last 20 years in a two-hoss race in 2008 and I remember that being regards a shock. 77.6% White and 52.9% Owner Occupied. It has three Labour councillors.
