Post by iainbhx on Dec 30, 2023 20:15:33 GMT
The town of Dudley goes back to Anglo-Saxon times and originates from a clearing in the forest that covered much of the West Midlands - Duddan Leah. It was originally a market town like several others around it and Dudley Castle, one of the dominating features of Dudley was built in 1070 and now contains the Zoo. It was built by Ansculf de Picquigny who managed to build a varied estate which contained lands in about a dozen counties which provided the Barons of Dudley with considerable wealth. Coal mining and iron mining came early to the area and Dudley became a borough sometime in the 13th century, indeed the holder of the barony of Dudley, Roger de Somery, granted the first market charter to Wolverhampton, something the denizens of Dudley like to remind the Dingles of every now and again. Dudley’s early prosperity failed during Tudor times and it didn’t start to take off again until the start of the Industrial Revolution, the combination of the early ingenuity of Dudd Dudley, Abraham Darby and Sir Clement Clerke changed iron production considerably and was one of the major steps in establishing Dudley’s prosperity, although it still remained a wretched place to live and was regarded as the unhealthiest town in England in the 1850’s. But it grew considerably and beyond its three ancient parishes which are remembered still in ward names. taking in settlements around it as the Black Country changed from villages and small towns with a craft and early industrial heritage into the modern conurbation. Dudley is regarded, at least by its inhabitants as the Capital of the Black Country and there is some basis in that claim.
Whilst Dudley did send two members to the 1294 Parliament, it did not do so again and was not represented in the House of Commons again until the Great Reform Act. It was, of course, represented the House of Lords by the Barons of Dudley and then the Earls of Dudley, but they had diverse interests not just the Worcestershire estate, although the Earls of Dudley certainly played their part in he growth of industry in the town and the area around. The pre-1918 seat varied between the Liberals and the Tories with both having long runs before changing the MP, but after 1918 and with the boundaries settled on being the then County Borough of Dudley plus the Parish of Dudley Castle which had a special status of its own at that time. The 1918 seat changed hands between Labour and Conservative, working-class Toryism was strong in Dudley but there was a more emphatic result in 1945, with Labour getting over 60% of the vote for George Wing, but that was to be the last election for Dudley alone until the one up-coming in the next twelve months.
Dudley was an exclave of Worcestershire and despite a number of small annexations was too small to remain a borough seat in 1950, it barely had 40,000 electors. So it was combined with Stourbridge but remained named Dudley and elected George Wigg in the Labour interest until he stepped down, Stourbridge provided most of the Tory vote but except in the 1968 by-election was outvoted by Labour votes. This seat ceased to exist in 1974.
In 1966, a great number of changes had been made in the West Midlands conurbation to local government, these were not entirely popular and some of them are still resented nearly 60 years later. Dudley annexed the vast majority of the Brierley Hill UD, two thirds of Sedgley UD, half of Coseley UD, a third of the tiny Amblecote UD and there were several other changes, for instance it lost Oakham and the higher ground of Tividale to Warley CB. The expanded Dudley CB was also transferred to Staffordshire. These changes were reflected in the 1974 review and Dudley became two seats, Dudley West and Dudley East - Dudley East was an expanded version of the old Dudley enclave, essentially adding Coseley and the sitting Dudley MP - Dr John Gilbert stood for that seat and held it reasonably comfortably throughout its existence, the seat changed in 1983 to reflect the further changes to become Dudley MBC and added the Quarry Bank and Cradley ward as it was then.
In 1997, Dudley became split the other way, North and South, Dudley East’s successor seat was really Dudley North, which lost Quarry Bank and Netherton and gained Sedgley and Gornal instead. John Gilbert retired in a hurry in 1997 and was replaced by Ross Cranston who was a bit left wing for Dudley (Dudley likes its Labour MP very much on the right of the party) but who did well enough in 1997 and 2001 but left Parliament before the 2005 election, he was replaced by Ian Austin who was more to Dudley’s taste, but it wasn’t the Tories who were particularly succeeding here, but parties of the further right, their vote rose from 2.2% in 1997 to 24% in 2015 whilst the Tories stayed essentially static in the 30’s. This was also reflected at the council level where UKIP had a couple of very good years in particular 2014. With the centre-right and the UKIP vote effectively united in 2017- Ian Austin managed to hang on by a slack handful of 22 votes over Pedmore councillor Les Jones. I honestly don’t think anyone else but a reincarnation of George Wigg could have managed it. Austin stood down in 2017, despite the name of the new Labour candidate - Melanie Dudley, she went down to Marco Long on a whopping 15.8% swing.
Now with have a Dudley only seat reborn, 1974 has been reversed and much of Dudley South has gone into the new Kingswinford and South Staffordshire seat which if you squint at it funny, could pass for the old Brierley Hill seat in a bad light and has left one ward behind into Dudley North to form Dudley - that ward being Brockmoor and Pensnett.
This is a mainly white, mainly working-class, pro-Brexit seat, similar in many ways to the new Walsall. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that the Conservatives took its predecessor in 2019, though the scale of their victory comes as some surprise. It is 80% white, 11% Asian and 4% black. However, parts of the seat are much more diverse especially the old town centre wards. These central wards are also significantly deprived, St Thomas ranking in the 10% most deprived wards in the country, and Castle and Priory, containing the Priory estate, home of footballer and Munich air crash victim Duncan Edwards, only just outside it. None of the wards are especially affluent – Sedgley, the best off, ranks only ninth in Dudley’s twenty-four wards, behind most of the Kingswinford and Stourbridge wards.
Overall then, this is far from being a middle-class seat. It is 25% socially rented housing - some of which is in desperately poor nick and 15% privately rented. With 23% in total having a degree level qualification, it is way down on that particular list but high on the rank of constituencies that have residents without qualifications (almost 26%). The highest sector of the working population comes in the skilled trades, and plant and machine operatives also rank highly reflecting the heritage of the Black Country. In the circumstances of the 2019 election, this was exactly the sort of seat in which a pro-Brexit Conservative message would resonate and it isn’t the sort of place that has Bregrets, they’d do it again, but harder. It is the sort of place where with suitable local candidates and a decent campaign, Reform could do well as UKIP have done before both in the parliamentary seat and in the council elections. It is however, somewhat less aged than many other such seats, but I can assure you that the youth of Gornal are no less trenchant in their views than their gaffers and gammers. However, sitting Dudley North MP Marco Longhi, may well be able to defy the polls by a reasonable margin unless Labour find a suitable candidate. It says everything i love about the Black Country that the occasional mutterings I hear about Marco is that he’s from Walsall not that he’s half-Italian.
Brockmoor and Pensnett - both parts some what infamous locally, Brockmoor has a bad reputation it doesn’t really deserve these days, it is mainly an old Brierley Hill UDC council estate which had really chronic unemployment during the 80’s after Round Oak shut down and has a reputation for being very much on the rough side, I’ve never really had a problem with it and used to go drinking in some of the estate pubs after pike fishing in the Fens Pools. Pensnett is mainly a large trading estate these days, about half of it is old terraces and the rest a council estate, although a lot of it bought out. It was originally associated with several small collieries in the area. There’s been some new middle class housing development off Stallings Lane which was sold as “Kingswinford”. Snetter’s on the other hand have a bad reputation at best being described as occard (awkward contrarians) and at worst as liars and thieves. It used to be very reliably Labour but it had a high BNP then UKIP vote that and Dudley Labour’s usual selection tricks mean it went Tory in 2008 and also in 2019 and 2021. 88% White, 29% social rent, 28% with no qualifications. Currently has 2 Lab and 1 Con councillor, Conservative defending this year.
Castle and Priory - contains Dudley Castle and Zoo also contains the Black Country Museum (if you haven’t been, you should) and two thirds of the Wrens Nest Nature Reserve, various trading estates as well. Does not contain Dudley town centre, contains both the 1918-22 Priory Estate (grim) and the interwar Wrens Nest Estate (very grim), some more modern housing as well and some lower middle class housing around Dibdale. Fairly diverse with Bangladeshi and Black minorities, very working class. BNP nearly won it in 2004 in the all-ups with Simon Darby as their lead candidate, but its been reasonably solid for Labour ever since although it was a squeaker in 2021 by 39 votes. Might have voted Labour on GE Day in 2019, emphasis on the might. 75% White, 28% social rent, 24% no qualifications. 3 Labour councillors.
Gornal - Gornal is one of the most Black Country places you can imagine, it is between Gornal, Tipton and Cradley Heath for most Black Country you can get. Originally part of Sedgley UDC, there’s three main sections to the ward, Lower Gornal, Gornalwood and The Straits., Everyone local knows where Gornalwood is because there’s only two working crematoria in Dudley, Stourbridge and Gornalwood, so there’s a very decent chance you’ll end up their for a funeral, couple of the local pubs make decent money out of private rooms for wakes. Gornalwood is mainly lower-middle class residential homes and isn’t that big because the Crem takes up a lot of room. The main part is Lower Gornal which has the old village with some terraced housing and a more modern council estate in the north which is next to Cotman Hill nature reserve which separates Lower Gornal from the Straits which is a large private estate out on the edge of the ward with limited access, the views are great, the houses not quite so great. Lower Gornal is, of course, the place where they famously put the pig on the wall to watch the band go by. Gornal is generally Tory, the UKIP surge here actually meant that Labour took seats in 2011 and 2012 and UKIP finally managed it 2014. This year’s blip saw the Tories hold it fairly narrowly over long-term deselected councillor - normally they pile up the votes here. 95% White, 20% for social rent, 25% with no qualifications. 3 Conservative councillors.
Sedgley - the posh bit of the seat, no seriously, it is and the core of the old Sedgley UDC, which got split up in 1966, most to Dudley but Gospel End to Seisdon RDC, Goldthorn Park to Wolverhampton. Deindustrialised early and became primarily residential using the decent access it has to both Dudley and Wolverhampton for jobs, the main exception to this was the Baggeridge Colliery, once the pride and joy of the Earls of Dudley, which was the Black Country’s last pit closing in 1968 and has now been very nicely redeveloped into a country park. This ward and Pedmore are often the seats of who ever is leader of the Dudley Tories. The wards did elect Bill Etheridge in 2014 which was UKIP’s wave year in Dudley 94% White, 14% Social Rent, 22% no qualifications. 3 Conservative councillors and that’s unlikely to change unless Reform UK get very busy on local elections.
St James’s - contains most of Dudley Town Centre, in which a few speculative modern trendy flats were built and are now mainly used as short term lets by ladies of negotiable virtue, city living never really took off here. Most residents live on the 50’s Russell’s Hall estate near the hospital of the same name, since the hospital opened, that area has got a lot better and a lot of the private rents are to NHS staff. Also contains a lot of Milking Bank which is mainly private development some of it on the site of the former hospital , Eve Hill which is fairly mixed and a lot of the old bad housing has gone and the area to the west of the town centre which has a lot of terraces and is fairly Asian. It has a complicated electoral history over the last four decades to say the least, back in the 70’s and 80’s it was competitive between Con and Lab, with Lab getting the upper hand eventually, but it could still spring a surprise as in 1992. by the late 90’s it has become competitive between Labour and the Libdems, and elected its first LibDem councillor 1999. In 2004, it elected 3 Liberal Democrats, one of which was one Malcolm Davis, Labour started taking these seats back in 2006 as the BNP and UKIP stared surging, Cllr Davis had switched to UKIP and only narrowly lost in 2007 to Labour, he took the seat back in 2008 but Labour took it back off him in 2012. It remained a close Labour UKIP ward until 2018, when Malcolm turned up again as a Tour candidate but he never quite managed it and it was Wayne Sullivan who took the ward in the 2021 Blue surge, the big surprise was the Tories winning it again in 2022. 74% White, 32% social rent, 26% with no qualifications. Currently 2 Labour and 1 Conservative councillor.
St Thomas’s - Mainly to the south east of the town centre stretching towards Oakham and Tividale, some terraces, quite a lot of old council housing, quite a lot of newer council housing replacing some old shoddy stock, has always been a poor area especially around Kates Hill. There are a couple of concentrations for bungalows and flats for older people. Unlike much of Dudley MBC, the minority here is Pakistani not Bangladeshi and has been concentrated in Kates Hill for several decades now. The Asian vote now effectively decides local elections here due to differential turnout but general elections can be different. 53% White (30% Asian, 7.5% Black), 28% Social Rent, 29% with no qualifications. Currently 3 Labour councillors.
Upper Gornal and Woodsetton - Woodsetton is Gornal for beginners, its industry has long gone except for Holden’s Brewery, the brewery tap of which attracts a fairly large number of visitors each year. Part of Woodsetton was gobbled up by Dudley in the 1920’s to form the Priory Estate and Woodsetton has above average levels of social housing even for this area. Upper Gornal is Gornal for experts, its historic limestone quarries now turned into another country park and it is mainly private housing and it is a very insular community even by Black Country standard. Upper Gornal is heavily Conservative voting, Woodsetton is very changeable and as such the ward is very competitive these days. 91% White, 24% Social Rent, 27% no qualifications. Currently 2 Labour and 1 Conservative councillor.
Whilst Dudley did send two members to the 1294 Parliament, it did not do so again and was not represented in the House of Commons again until the Great Reform Act. It was, of course, represented the House of Lords by the Barons of Dudley and then the Earls of Dudley, but they had diverse interests not just the Worcestershire estate, although the Earls of Dudley certainly played their part in he growth of industry in the town and the area around. The pre-1918 seat varied between the Liberals and the Tories with both having long runs before changing the MP, but after 1918 and with the boundaries settled on being the then County Borough of Dudley plus the Parish of Dudley Castle which had a special status of its own at that time. The 1918 seat changed hands between Labour and Conservative, working-class Toryism was strong in Dudley but there was a more emphatic result in 1945, with Labour getting over 60% of the vote for George Wing, but that was to be the last election for Dudley alone until the one up-coming in the next twelve months.
Dudley was an exclave of Worcestershire and despite a number of small annexations was too small to remain a borough seat in 1950, it barely had 40,000 electors. So it was combined with Stourbridge but remained named Dudley and elected George Wigg in the Labour interest until he stepped down, Stourbridge provided most of the Tory vote but except in the 1968 by-election was outvoted by Labour votes. This seat ceased to exist in 1974.
In 1966, a great number of changes had been made in the West Midlands conurbation to local government, these were not entirely popular and some of them are still resented nearly 60 years later. Dudley annexed the vast majority of the Brierley Hill UD, two thirds of Sedgley UD, half of Coseley UD, a third of the tiny Amblecote UD and there were several other changes, for instance it lost Oakham and the higher ground of Tividale to Warley CB. The expanded Dudley CB was also transferred to Staffordshire. These changes were reflected in the 1974 review and Dudley became two seats, Dudley West and Dudley East - Dudley East was an expanded version of the old Dudley enclave, essentially adding Coseley and the sitting Dudley MP - Dr John Gilbert stood for that seat and held it reasonably comfortably throughout its existence, the seat changed in 1983 to reflect the further changes to become Dudley MBC and added the Quarry Bank and Cradley ward as it was then.
In 1997, Dudley became split the other way, North and South, Dudley East’s successor seat was really Dudley North, which lost Quarry Bank and Netherton and gained Sedgley and Gornal instead. John Gilbert retired in a hurry in 1997 and was replaced by Ross Cranston who was a bit left wing for Dudley (Dudley likes its Labour MP very much on the right of the party) but who did well enough in 1997 and 2001 but left Parliament before the 2005 election, he was replaced by Ian Austin who was more to Dudley’s taste, but it wasn’t the Tories who were particularly succeeding here, but parties of the further right, their vote rose from 2.2% in 1997 to 24% in 2015 whilst the Tories stayed essentially static in the 30’s. This was also reflected at the council level where UKIP had a couple of very good years in particular 2014. With the centre-right and the UKIP vote effectively united in 2017- Ian Austin managed to hang on by a slack handful of 22 votes over Pedmore councillor Les Jones. I honestly don’t think anyone else but a reincarnation of George Wigg could have managed it. Austin stood down in 2017, despite the name of the new Labour candidate - Melanie Dudley, she went down to Marco Long on a whopping 15.8% swing.
Now with have a Dudley only seat reborn, 1974 has been reversed and much of Dudley South has gone into the new Kingswinford and South Staffordshire seat which if you squint at it funny, could pass for the old Brierley Hill seat in a bad light and has left one ward behind into Dudley North to form Dudley - that ward being Brockmoor and Pensnett.
This is a mainly white, mainly working-class, pro-Brexit seat, similar in many ways to the new Walsall. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that the Conservatives took its predecessor in 2019, though the scale of their victory comes as some surprise. It is 80% white, 11% Asian and 4% black. However, parts of the seat are much more diverse especially the old town centre wards. These central wards are also significantly deprived, St Thomas ranking in the 10% most deprived wards in the country, and Castle and Priory, containing the Priory estate, home of footballer and Munich air crash victim Duncan Edwards, only just outside it. None of the wards are especially affluent – Sedgley, the best off, ranks only ninth in Dudley’s twenty-four wards, behind most of the Kingswinford and Stourbridge wards.
Overall then, this is far from being a middle-class seat. It is 25% socially rented housing - some of which is in desperately poor nick and 15% privately rented. With 23% in total having a degree level qualification, it is way down on that particular list but high on the rank of constituencies that have residents without qualifications (almost 26%). The highest sector of the working population comes in the skilled trades, and plant and machine operatives also rank highly reflecting the heritage of the Black Country. In the circumstances of the 2019 election, this was exactly the sort of seat in which a pro-Brexit Conservative message would resonate and it isn’t the sort of place that has Bregrets, they’d do it again, but harder. It is the sort of place where with suitable local candidates and a decent campaign, Reform could do well as UKIP have done before both in the parliamentary seat and in the council elections. It is however, somewhat less aged than many other such seats, but I can assure you that the youth of Gornal are no less trenchant in their views than their gaffers and gammers. However, sitting Dudley North MP Marco Longhi, may well be able to defy the polls by a reasonable margin unless Labour find a suitable candidate. It says everything i love about the Black Country that the occasional mutterings I hear about Marco is that he’s from Walsall not that he’s half-Italian.
Brockmoor and Pensnett - both parts some what infamous locally, Brockmoor has a bad reputation it doesn’t really deserve these days, it is mainly an old Brierley Hill UDC council estate which had really chronic unemployment during the 80’s after Round Oak shut down and has a reputation for being very much on the rough side, I’ve never really had a problem with it and used to go drinking in some of the estate pubs after pike fishing in the Fens Pools. Pensnett is mainly a large trading estate these days, about half of it is old terraces and the rest a council estate, although a lot of it bought out. It was originally associated with several small collieries in the area. There’s been some new middle class housing development off Stallings Lane which was sold as “Kingswinford”. Snetter’s on the other hand have a bad reputation at best being described as occard (awkward contrarians) and at worst as liars and thieves. It used to be very reliably Labour but it had a high BNP then UKIP vote that and Dudley Labour’s usual selection tricks mean it went Tory in 2008 and also in 2019 and 2021. 88% White, 29% social rent, 28% with no qualifications. Currently has 2 Lab and 1 Con councillor, Conservative defending this year.
Castle and Priory - contains Dudley Castle and Zoo also contains the Black Country Museum (if you haven’t been, you should) and two thirds of the Wrens Nest Nature Reserve, various trading estates as well. Does not contain Dudley town centre, contains both the 1918-22 Priory Estate (grim) and the interwar Wrens Nest Estate (very grim), some more modern housing as well and some lower middle class housing around Dibdale. Fairly diverse with Bangladeshi and Black minorities, very working class. BNP nearly won it in 2004 in the all-ups with Simon Darby as their lead candidate, but its been reasonably solid for Labour ever since although it was a squeaker in 2021 by 39 votes. Might have voted Labour on GE Day in 2019, emphasis on the might. 75% White, 28% social rent, 24% no qualifications. 3 Labour councillors.
Gornal - Gornal is one of the most Black Country places you can imagine, it is between Gornal, Tipton and Cradley Heath for most Black Country you can get. Originally part of Sedgley UDC, there’s three main sections to the ward, Lower Gornal, Gornalwood and The Straits., Everyone local knows where Gornalwood is because there’s only two working crematoria in Dudley, Stourbridge and Gornalwood, so there’s a very decent chance you’ll end up their for a funeral, couple of the local pubs make decent money out of private rooms for wakes. Gornalwood is mainly lower-middle class residential homes and isn’t that big because the Crem takes up a lot of room. The main part is Lower Gornal which has the old village with some terraced housing and a more modern council estate in the north which is next to Cotman Hill nature reserve which separates Lower Gornal from the Straits which is a large private estate out on the edge of the ward with limited access, the views are great, the houses not quite so great. Lower Gornal is, of course, the place where they famously put the pig on the wall to watch the band go by. Gornal is generally Tory, the UKIP surge here actually meant that Labour took seats in 2011 and 2012 and UKIP finally managed it 2014. This year’s blip saw the Tories hold it fairly narrowly over long-term deselected councillor - normally they pile up the votes here. 95% White, 20% for social rent, 25% with no qualifications. 3 Conservative councillors.
Sedgley - the posh bit of the seat, no seriously, it is and the core of the old Sedgley UDC, which got split up in 1966, most to Dudley but Gospel End to Seisdon RDC, Goldthorn Park to Wolverhampton. Deindustrialised early and became primarily residential using the decent access it has to both Dudley and Wolverhampton for jobs, the main exception to this was the Baggeridge Colliery, once the pride and joy of the Earls of Dudley, which was the Black Country’s last pit closing in 1968 and has now been very nicely redeveloped into a country park. This ward and Pedmore are often the seats of who ever is leader of the Dudley Tories. The wards did elect Bill Etheridge in 2014 which was UKIP’s wave year in Dudley 94% White, 14% Social Rent, 22% no qualifications. 3 Conservative councillors and that’s unlikely to change unless Reform UK get very busy on local elections.
St James’s - contains most of Dudley Town Centre, in which a few speculative modern trendy flats were built and are now mainly used as short term lets by ladies of negotiable virtue, city living never really took off here. Most residents live on the 50’s Russell’s Hall estate near the hospital of the same name, since the hospital opened, that area has got a lot better and a lot of the private rents are to NHS staff. Also contains a lot of Milking Bank which is mainly private development some of it on the site of the former hospital , Eve Hill which is fairly mixed and a lot of the old bad housing has gone and the area to the west of the town centre which has a lot of terraces and is fairly Asian. It has a complicated electoral history over the last four decades to say the least, back in the 70’s and 80’s it was competitive between Con and Lab, with Lab getting the upper hand eventually, but it could still spring a surprise as in 1992. by the late 90’s it has become competitive between Labour and the Libdems, and elected its first LibDem councillor 1999. In 2004, it elected 3 Liberal Democrats, one of which was one Malcolm Davis, Labour started taking these seats back in 2006 as the BNP and UKIP stared surging, Cllr Davis had switched to UKIP and only narrowly lost in 2007 to Labour, he took the seat back in 2008 but Labour took it back off him in 2012. It remained a close Labour UKIP ward until 2018, when Malcolm turned up again as a Tour candidate but he never quite managed it and it was Wayne Sullivan who took the ward in the 2021 Blue surge, the big surprise was the Tories winning it again in 2022. 74% White, 32% social rent, 26% with no qualifications. Currently 2 Labour and 1 Conservative councillor.
St Thomas’s - Mainly to the south east of the town centre stretching towards Oakham and Tividale, some terraces, quite a lot of old council housing, quite a lot of newer council housing replacing some old shoddy stock, has always been a poor area especially around Kates Hill. There are a couple of concentrations for bungalows and flats for older people. Unlike much of Dudley MBC, the minority here is Pakistani not Bangladeshi and has been concentrated in Kates Hill for several decades now. The Asian vote now effectively decides local elections here due to differential turnout but general elections can be different. 53% White (30% Asian, 7.5% Black), 28% Social Rent, 29% with no qualifications. Currently 3 Labour councillors.
Upper Gornal and Woodsetton - Woodsetton is Gornal for beginners, its industry has long gone except for Holden’s Brewery, the brewery tap of which attracts a fairly large number of visitors each year. Part of Woodsetton was gobbled up by Dudley in the 1920’s to form the Priory Estate and Woodsetton has above average levels of social housing even for this area. Upper Gornal is Gornal for experts, its historic limestone quarries now turned into another country park and it is mainly private housing and it is a very insular community even by Black Country standard. Upper Gornal is heavily Conservative voting, Woodsetton is very changeable and as such the ward is very competitive these days. 91% White, 24% Social Rent, 27% no qualifications. Currently 2 Labour and 1 Conservative councillor.
