Dulwich and West Norwood
Jan 7, 2024 18:56:12 GMT
Pete Whitehead, Robert Waller, and 1 more like this
Post by batman on Jan 7, 2024 18:56:12 GMT
edited to take into account the 2024 general election result
DULWICH & WEST NORWOOD
Despite the name Dulwich appearing at the front of this constituency name, this cross-borough constituency has a majority of its residents living in the London Borough of Lambeth, and has continued to do so after the boundary changes. This is a socially-mixed, in fact in parts very polarised constituency; but the polarity does not imply any degree of marginality, not nowadays. All of this territory has had Conservative MPs in at least some people's living memory, but not since 1992, and in the case of the Lambeth majority of the seat not for a generation longer than even that. Dulwich is a community known for some splendid & extremely expensive houses, and a major public school; it was also known to be the place of Margaret Thatcher's residence for a number of years. This makes Dulwich very different from the rest of its mostly inner-city and in many parts struggling borough of Southwark, but while it continued to elect at least some Conservative councillors at least fairly recently, this is no longer the case. This is a constituency in which the inner-city areas in the north were once challenged by more Conservative areas further south (this applied to both the Lambeth & Southwark elements of the seat), but not any more, and it has become a very safe Labour seat indeed. It was for a number of years associated with its MP, Labour Cabinet Minister Tessa Jowell who played an important in bringing the 2012 Olympics to London, but following her retirement and sad subsequent death from cancer it has now been represented by a much lower-profile MP, Labour's Helen Hayes, for what will exceed a decade not long into the present parliament.
West Norwood is a reasonable generic name for the Lambeth majority of the constituency, although it reaches deep into Brixton (a community which will continue to be split between constituencies as it long has) and also includes Herne Hill, which is a distinct area, and two other Hills, Tulse Hill (which merges fairly seamlessly into the south-eastern end of Brixton) and Gipsy Hill which has the same postcode as Norwood & Upper Norwood, which are almost all in the borough of Croydon and are not in this seat (and even more confusingly were not in the previous more laconically-named Norwood constituency either). West Norwood however is not the most geographically accurate name for the area, which is not unique in London (another example is East Finchley, which is by no means due east of Finchley Central). It lies roughly north-west of Norwood proper and Upper Norwood; South Norwood, which is also in the borough of Croydon, is more accurately named, and is quite a long way from this constituency's boundary along Crown Dale and Central Hill. The areas mentioned above, ignoring those which are not in Lambeth, remain somewhat socially mixed, but not as sharply so as Dulwich. Part of the West Dulwich community, bearing Dulwich's SE21 postcode, can also be found over the borough boundary here in Lambeth, and West Dulwich railway station which one passes on the South Circular Road is only yards inside the borough of Southwark; indeed, following ward boundary changes there is now a West Dulwich ward on Lambeth council, essentially replacing the former Thurlow Park ward. There are still some very good owner-occupied streets here, and Thurlow Park a generation ago was still able to elect Conservative councillors regularly. Those days are now, at least for the time being, gone. In the 2022 local elections Labour easily won this ward, gaining roughly two and a half times as many votes as the Tories who at least here do maintain a coherent minority vote. There remains a strong white middle-class, often public-sector-dominated presence here. In the more northerly wards in the Lambeth part of the constituency, all of which too have been redrawn and subject to name changes, the Tories have only nugatory remaining support, and the Liberal Democrats do little better too. Instead, the Labour Party faces competition principally from the Greens here, particularly amongst left-leaning public-sector professionals. There is of course a very large Black community particularly the closer one gets to Brixton, one of whose wards now bears the name Brixton Windrush and was able to elect a Labour councillor with the very familiar-sounding name of Scarlett O'Hara in the last borough elections. This part of Brixton has tended historically to be one of the very strongest Labour wards in the borough, but their majority is a little lower now, albeit still very comfortable over the Greens. Some of the council estates closest to central Brixton have been particularly troubled, particularly the Tulse Hill estate opposite the pleasant green expanse of Brockwell Park; it lies off the road Tulse Hill and is definitely in Brixton proper, rather than the actual area generally known as Tulse Hill which lies a little further south, centred around its station. And yet even this troubled estate, which has certainly seen murders in its time, abuts some still good-quality owner-occupied interwar streets with prosperous professionals living there. This is an ethnically diverse part of the world, by no means the exclusive preserve of Black residents as some might be led to think. Even the Black community is very diverse; although there remains a major Caribbean presence, there are now also many Africans, and even people from more surprising origins including Colombia. West Norwood is mostly to be found, as for many years, in the Knights Hill ward, Knights Hill being the main thoroughfare of the community. Not that many years ago it was still possible for the Conservatives to win local elections in the ward, but they are now far, far behind Labour, and some distance behind the Greens too; it is now a very safe Labour ward indeed. There remain good owner-occupied residential streets in West Norwood, as well as some small council estates. It however has a distinctly scruffy air nowadays and it is no longer generally regarded as a particularly high-class residential area . To the south-east of here, Gipsy Hill is not that dissimilar in appearance, but continued to elect Conservative councillors for quite a bit longer, often, however, for relatively parochial reasons according to some observers. Labour does still face a strong challenge, but instead it now comes from the Green Party, who had councillors elected in the ward before the borough boundary changes, but narrowly lost out to Labour in 2022. Labour won a full slate of councillors in the Lambeth element of the constituency, and in general elections they may well lead by even further still. This Lambeth element is not that dissimilar to the Norwood constituency which existed until 1997. This was for a number of years a closely-fought marginal between Labour and the Tories, as was Dulwich. The seat was a Conservative gain in the 1950 general election, and it was not retrieved until John Fraser gained it in 1966. This was, however, to be the end of the Conservative era in the constituency, at least in parliamentary terms. It was still close in 1979, but Fraser made the most of a small but helpful boundary change in 1983 and was untroubled thereafter until his failure to be selected for the present seat in 1997. The Conservatives did however remain competitive there in GLC elections, triumphing against the swing in the final election of 1981, in what was seen as a major vote against Lambeth's then firebrand left-wing council leader, Ted Knight, who thus lost the seat in 2 consecutive GLC elections. The anti-Conservative trend was a gentle one at first, but has unmistakeably accelerated, in line with similar trends in other parts of inner London, in more recent years. The Greens have mostly taken over from the Tories as Labour's principal opponents in this territory, but despite a modest revival in the 2022 elections in other parts of Lambeth the Liberal Democrats remained essentially becalmed - but more later re the Liberal Democrats in this constituency.
Dulwich, as befits an area which was the basis for a marginal parliamentary seat for many years, is a very socially mixed part of London indeed. It has some serious wealth including private gated roads the likes of which cannot be found in almost any part of neighbouring Lambeth even though Lambeth certainly does have its upmarket neighbourhoods, and there is even a toll booth still in operation, the last in any suburban part of London. The most famous parts of the community, including the public school, lie towards its southerly end. There have always been working-class areas of Dulwich, some of which like areas further to the north and west have strong Black communities, and it has its share of tough council estates, and relatively run-down privately rented streets. In fact the most southerly ward, however, is not Village, which has the most conspicuous wealth, but Dulwich Wood, a rather more heterogeneous area which by inner London standards is relatively off the beaten track. This territory would in the past have been quite strongly fought over between Labour and the Conservatives, but here too the Tories are much weakened these days and lost by well over two to one in the 2022 elections, in which one of their defeated candidates was Peter Heaton-Jones, until 2019 the Tory MP for North Devon; he was not the only former Tory MP from the West Country to lose in the 2022 London local elections, as it happened too to Adrian Flook, former MP for Taunton, in Wandsworth. Further north Dulwich Village, which was not that many years ago a Tory stronghold, has now become a fairly safe Labour ward despite its school, its greenery and, at least in part, its wealth. The Tories and Greens in 2022 were locked in a fierce battle, but it was for the runner-up spot, well behind Labour who were not that far short of twice as many votes as either of them. The constituency is completed by what is now called Champion Hill ward, which essentially represents for the most part the East Dulwich community and includes Dulwich Hamlet, one of the most famous and long-established of non-league football clubs, though it does also take in part of the southern end of the Camberwell community, which now therefore will be split between no fewer than three constituencies, not unlike nearby Brixton. The streets are a bit more tightly-packed here, and it is a bit more like the inner-city territory one more readily associates with the borough of Southwark. This however has become a rather trendy and upcoming area, which was for a time able, like its more sedate neighbours to its south, to elect Liberal Democrat councillors. But since the coalition was formed they are much reduced here, and Labour has reasserted its more habitual big lead over mixed opposition, with the Tories as with so much of this seat bringing up the rear. Dulwich, like Norwood, as a constituency had long-term marginal characteristics, being a Tory gain over Labour in 1951 and a Labour gain in 1964 (when Sam Silkin, later the Solicitor-General, was elected); after a boundary change there was a short period of renewed Tory tenure from 1983 until Tessa Jowell succeeded where Kate Hoey had twice failed, and gained the seat in 1992. The Tories have plummeted rapidly and seemingly inexorably ever since, despite Margaret Thatcher's association with the area. If the Dulwich constituency still existed, it would now be completely safe for Labour in a way it never was when it did exist.
One noteworthy feature about the election result here in the 2019 general election, of course on its former boundaries. Very unusually indeed, there was no Liberal Democrat candidate. This is because it was designated a "Unite to Remain" constituency, which was nothing to do with, for example, Unite The Union remaining affiliated to the Labour Party, but was a scheme whereby one of the two most strongly pro-Remain (in the EU) parties stood down in favour of the other. Here, the Liberal Democrats stood down in favour of the Greens, who thus achieved the largest increase in their share of the vote of any British constituency. This put the Greens in second place, ahead of the Tories, but of course still way behind Labour who despite a 4% drop in their share of the vote still polled over 65%. As well as their generally strong performance in many London seats being a factor, Helen Hayes would have benefitted very slightly from the well-known phenomenon of first-time incumbency in 2017, whereas that was no longer the case in 2019. In 2024, the Liberal Democrats re-entered the fray, and perhaps not that surprisingly the Greens had only a very modest increase in their share of the vote. The Conservatives suffered a further decline in their already strikingly small vote, and Labour a smaller decline. All this left Labour still on over 60% of the vote, their highest share of any London constituency. This constituency has been safe for Labour for a while now, but it is only in most recent times that, in terms of London's seats, it has reached the summit in terms of safety for Labour.
This constituency was spared drastic changes in the end in the boundary review. It is a mixture in terms of ethnicity, social class and wealth. But it is probably true to say that not many of the most senior and well-paid private-sector professionals tend to aspire to live there in the way they once did, even if they might continue to send their children to Dulwich College. It has become, one might say, just another inner South London safe Labour seat. Part of what is nowadays this constituency became well-known in many parts of the world in 1981 when the Brixton riots took place, and serious tensions remain in some parts of the constituency. But that tension rarely extends to the electoral process; the days when the Tories could seriously challenge Labour in this swathe of London appear to be in the past now, and it is not surprising that a forecast on the UK Polling Report site of a possible Tory gain here in the 2010 general election was treated with general derision.
DULWICH & WEST NORWOOD
Despite the name Dulwich appearing at the front of this constituency name, this cross-borough constituency has a majority of its residents living in the London Borough of Lambeth, and has continued to do so after the boundary changes. This is a socially-mixed, in fact in parts very polarised constituency; but the polarity does not imply any degree of marginality, not nowadays. All of this territory has had Conservative MPs in at least some people's living memory, but not since 1992, and in the case of the Lambeth majority of the seat not for a generation longer than even that. Dulwich is a community known for some splendid & extremely expensive houses, and a major public school; it was also known to be the place of Margaret Thatcher's residence for a number of years. This makes Dulwich very different from the rest of its mostly inner-city and in many parts struggling borough of Southwark, but while it continued to elect at least some Conservative councillors at least fairly recently, this is no longer the case. This is a constituency in which the inner-city areas in the north were once challenged by more Conservative areas further south (this applied to both the Lambeth & Southwark elements of the seat), but not any more, and it has become a very safe Labour seat indeed. It was for a number of years associated with its MP, Labour Cabinet Minister Tessa Jowell who played an important in bringing the 2012 Olympics to London, but following her retirement and sad subsequent death from cancer it has now been represented by a much lower-profile MP, Labour's Helen Hayes, for what will exceed a decade not long into the present parliament.
West Norwood is a reasonable generic name for the Lambeth majority of the constituency, although it reaches deep into Brixton (a community which will continue to be split between constituencies as it long has) and also includes Herne Hill, which is a distinct area, and two other Hills, Tulse Hill (which merges fairly seamlessly into the south-eastern end of Brixton) and Gipsy Hill which has the same postcode as Norwood & Upper Norwood, which are almost all in the borough of Croydon and are not in this seat (and even more confusingly were not in the previous more laconically-named Norwood constituency either). West Norwood however is not the most geographically accurate name for the area, which is not unique in London (another example is East Finchley, which is by no means due east of Finchley Central). It lies roughly north-west of Norwood proper and Upper Norwood; South Norwood, which is also in the borough of Croydon, is more accurately named, and is quite a long way from this constituency's boundary along Crown Dale and Central Hill. The areas mentioned above, ignoring those which are not in Lambeth, remain somewhat socially mixed, but not as sharply so as Dulwich. Part of the West Dulwich community, bearing Dulwich's SE21 postcode, can also be found over the borough boundary here in Lambeth, and West Dulwich railway station which one passes on the South Circular Road is only yards inside the borough of Southwark; indeed, following ward boundary changes there is now a West Dulwich ward on Lambeth council, essentially replacing the former Thurlow Park ward. There are still some very good owner-occupied streets here, and Thurlow Park a generation ago was still able to elect Conservative councillors regularly. Those days are now, at least for the time being, gone. In the 2022 local elections Labour easily won this ward, gaining roughly two and a half times as many votes as the Tories who at least here do maintain a coherent minority vote. There remains a strong white middle-class, often public-sector-dominated presence here. In the more northerly wards in the Lambeth part of the constituency, all of which too have been redrawn and subject to name changes, the Tories have only nugatory remaining support, and the Liberal Democrats do little better too. Instead, the Labour Party faces competition principally from the Greens here, particularly amongst left-leaning public-sector professionals. There is of course a very large Black community particularly the closer one gets to Brixton, one of whose wards now bears the name Brixton Windrush and was able to elect a Labour councillor with the very familiar-sounding name of Scarlett O'Hara in the last borough elections. This part of Brixton has tended historically to be one of the very strongest Labour wards in the borough, but their majority is a little lower now, albeit still very comfortable over the Greens. Some of the council estates closest to central Brixton have been particularly troubled, particularly the Tulse Hill estate opposite the pleasant green expanse of Brockwell Park; it lies off the road Tulse Hill and is definitely in Brixton proper, rather than the actual area generally known as Tulse Hill which lies a little further south, centred around its station. And yet even this troubled estate, which has certainly seen murders in its time, abuts some still good-quality owner-occupied interwar streets with prosperous professionals living there. This is an ethnically diverse part of the world, by no means the exclusive preserve of Black residents as some might be led to think. Even the Black community is very diverse; although there remains a major Caribbean presence, there are now also many Africans, and even people from more surprising origins including Colombia. West Norwood is mostly to be found, as for many years, in the Knights Hill ward, Knights Hill being the main thoroughfare of the community. Not that many years ago it was still possible for the Conservatives to win local elections in the ward, but they are now far, far behind Labour, and some distance behind the Greens too; it is now a very safe Labour ward indeed. There remain good owner-occupied residential streets in West Norwood, as well as some small council estates. It however has a distinctly scruffy air nowadays and it is no longer generally regarded as a particularly high-class residential area . To the south-east of here, Gipsy Hill is not that dissimilar in appearance, but continued to elect Conservative councillors for quite a bit longer, often, however, for relatively parochial reasons according to some observers. Labour does still face a strong challenge, but instead it now comes from the Green Party, who had councillors elected in the ward before the borough boundary changes, but narrowly lost out to Labour in 2022. Labour won a full slate of councillors in the Lambeth element of the constituency, and in general elections they may well lead by even further still. This Lambeth element is not that dissimilar to the Norwood constituency which existed until 1997. This was for a number of years a closely-fought marginal between Labour and the Tories, as was Dulwich. The seat was a Conservative gain in the 1950 general election, and it was not retrieved until John Fraser gained it in 1966. This was, however, to be the end of the Conservative era in the constituency, at least in parliamentary terms. It was still close in 1979, but Fraser made the most of a small but helpful boundary change in 1983 and was untroubled thereafter until his failure to be selected for the present seat in 1997. The Conservatives did however remain competitive there in GLC elections, triumphing against the swing in the final election of 1981, in what was seen as a major vote against Lambeth's then firebrand left-wing council leader, Ted Knight, who thus lost the seat in 2 consecutive GLC elections. The anti-Conservative trend was a gentle one at first, but has unmistakeably accelerated, in line with similar trends in other parts of inner London, in more recent years. The Greens have mostly taken over from the Tories as Labour's principal opponents in this territory, but despite a modest revival in the 2022 elections in other parts of Lambeth the Liberal Democrats remained essentially becalmed - but more later re the Liberal Democrats in this constituency.
Dulwich, as befits an area which was the basis for a marginal parliamentary seat for many years, is a very socially mixed part of London indeed. It has some serious wealth including private gated roads the likes of which cannot be found in almost any part of neighbouring Lambeth even though Lambeth certainly does have its upmarket neighbourhoods, and there is even a toll booth still in operation, the last in any suburban part of London. The most famous parts of the community, including the public school, lie towards its southerly end. There have always been working-class areas of Dulwich, some of which like areas further to the north and west have strong Black communities, and it has its share of tough council estates, and relatively run-down privately rented streets. In fact the most southerly ward, however, is not Village, which has the most conspicuous wealth, but Dulwich Wood, a rather more heterogeneous area which by inner London standards is relatively off the beaten track. This territory would in the past have been quite strongly fought over between Labour and the Conservatives, but here too the Tories are much weakened these days and lost by well over two to one in the 2022 elections, in which one of their defeated candidates was Peter Heaton-Jones, until 2019 the Tory MP for North Devon; he was not the only former Tory MP from the West Country to lose in the 2022 London local elections, as it happened too to Adrian Flook, former MP for Taunton, in Wandsworth. Further north Dulwich Village, which was not that many years ago a Tory stronghold, has now become a fairly safe Labour ward despite its school, its greenery and, at least in part, its wealth. The Tories and Greens in 2022 were locked in a fierce battle, but it was for the runner-up spot, well behind Labour who were not that far short of twice as many votes as either of them. The constituency is completed by what is now called Champion Hill ward, which essentially represents for the most part the East Dulwich community and includes Dulwich Hamlet, one of the most famous and long-established of non-league football clubs, though it does also take in part of the southern end of the Camberwell community, which now therefore will be split between no fewer than three constituencies, not unlike nearby Brixton. The streets are a bit more tightly-packed here, and it is a bit more like the inner-city territory one more readily associates with the borough of Southwark. This however has become a rather trendy and upcoming area, which was for a time able, like its more sedate neighbours to its south, to elect Liberal Democrat councillors. But since the coalition was formed they are much reduced here, and Labour has reasserted its more habitual big lead over mixed opposition, with the Tories as with so much of this seat bringing up the rear. Dulwich, like Norwood, as a constituency had long-term marginal characteristics, being a Tory gain over Labour in 1951 and a Labour gain in 1964 (when Sam Silkin, later the Solicitor-General, was elected); after a boundary change there was a short period of renewed Tory tenure from 1983 until Tessa Jowell succeeded where Kate Hoey had twice failed, and gained the seat in 1992. The Tories have plummeted rapidly and seemingly inexorably ever since, despite Margaret Thatcher's association with the area. If the Dulwich constituency still existed, it would now be completely safe for Labour in a way it never was when it did exist.
One noteworthy feature about the election result here in the 2019 general election, of course on its former boundaries. Very unusually indeed, there was no Liberal Democrat candidate. This is because it was designated a "Unite to Remain" constituency, which was nothing to do with, for example, Unite The Union remaining affiliated to the Labour Party, but was a scheme whereby one of the two most strongly pro-Remain (in the EU) parties stood down in favour of the other. Here, the Liberal Democrats stood down in favour of the Greens, who thus achieved the largest increase in their share of the vote of any British constituency. This put the Greens in second place, ahead of the Tories, but of course still way behind Labour who despite a 4% drop in their share of the vote still polled over 65%. As well as their generally strong performance in many London seats being a factor, Helen Hayes would have benefitted very slightly from the well-known phenomenon of first-time incumbency in 2017, whereas that was no longer the case in 2019. In 2024, the Liberal Democrats re-entered the fray, and perhaps not that surprisingly the Greens had only a very modest increase in their share of the vote. The Conservatives suffered a further decline in their already strikingly small vote, and Labour a smaller decline. All this left Labour still on over 60% of the vote, their highest share of any London constituency. This constituency has been safe for Labour for a while now, but it is only in most recent times that, in terms of London's seats, it has reached the summit in terms of safety for Labour.
This constituency was spared drastic changes in the end in the boundary review. It is a mixture in terms of ethnicity, social class and wealth. But it is probably true to say that not many of the most senior and well-paid private-sector professionals tend to aspire to live there in the way they once did, even if they might continue to send their children to Dulwich College. It has become, one might say, just another inner South London safe Labour seat. Part of what is nowadays this constituency became well-known in many parts of the world in 1981 when the Brixton riots took place, and serious tensions remain in some parts of the constituency. But that tension rarely extends to the electoral process; the days when the Tories could seriously challenge Labour in this swathe of London appear to be in the past now, and it is not surprising that a forecast on the UK Polling Report site of a possible Tory gain here in the 2010 general election was treated with general derision.
