Post by iainbhx on Jan 20, 2024 12:31:21 GMT
Again with thanks to @iang for his original Warley profile which I have borrowed from heavily.
In one sense, Smethwick has never really gone away, it’s just been re-badged and re-styled several times, the old Smethwick constituency core became Warley East, which then became Warley and which is now being renamed Smethwick again, there will be a sticker on the back which says “With added Blackheath”. Just like Warley was the old Warley East with added Langley. I suppose we should be grateful that it isn’t Smethwick, Warley, Langley and Blackheath. If anyone from the Smethwick of 1945 would recognise it is another question although the seat remains now as it was then a fairly safe seat for Labour.
The seat is mainly residential, there are industrial areas mainly on the north side of the BCN Main Line canal and some smaller areas in Blackheath and Langley Green, many brownfield sites have already been used such as the Cape Hill brewery which is now a housing estate. The former GKN site at Grove Lane is becoming the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital which replaces the old City Hospital and after several delays may open in Spring 2024. There are several larger areas of green space, Warley Woods Park being the largest followed by the West Smethwick park which runs into the Oldbury Cemetery. However, the seat is quite short on green spaces which is why there has been a massive row about building on the former Brandhall Gold Club. There are several commercial areas but the overall tone of the seat is residential from the terraces of Smethwick through the municipal estates of Langley Green to the detached houses of Old Warley.
As such, since 1945, it has almost continuously been represented by just three Labour MPs – Patrick Gordon-Walker from 1945 to 64, Andrew Faulds the actor from 1966 to 1997, and John Spellar, swopping over from the abolished Warley West, since then. It has also been represented by two other MPs since World War Two. One, Alfred Dobbs, set an unwanted record, surely never to be broken, for the briefest tenure of any British MP, ever. Elected in the 1945 Labour landslide, he was killed in a car accident the following day. The other, and the only non-Labour MP to represent this constituency or its predecessors in modern times, was local primary head teacher and Alderman Peter Griffiths, elected in 1964. The details of the story are probably too well known to extensively recount here, but in a massive deviation from the national trend, Griffiths took the seat from Gordon Walker (whose vote had been slightly but steadily declining from its peak in 1945), using local fears of increasing “coloured” immigration to the area, and helped by a notorious local if unofficial slogan associating the Labour Party with these fears. His representation prompted a visit to Smethwick from Malcolm X, less than a fortnight before his assassination. There is now a blue plaque in Marshall Street commemorating the visit, and brief film footage can be found on YouTube. Griffiths’ tenure was to be brief, losing to Andrew Faulds in 1966. He was to return to Parliament in 1979 representing Portsmouth North for eighteen years, without the controversy of his earlier career. Faulds defended a seat that was sometime perhaps closer that he liked and certainly required some work before handing over to Spellar. Spellar’s reign has been fairly effortless, the Tories slow collapse in the West of the seat and the east of the seat being much more resistant to the blandishments of UKIP have provided him with a safe seat. Whilst knocking on as we say locally, Spellar seems set to continue for another term in the new seat.
Parts of Smethwick are rather different to the Sandwell norm, Bearwood is much more middle class than most of the rest of Sandwell and with a bit of a poundshop Moseley feel to it. Old Warley has some more staid middle class areas as well especially around Warley Woods and there are a few middle class areas in Blackheath these days. Because of this its not quite as working class as either the other two Sandwell seats and also has slightly less social housing overall, it does have a lot of grim terraces in Smethwick proper and plenty of slum landlords in that area as well. Overall, it is 54% Owner Occupied with 23% in Social Housing and a higher private rental sector than most Black Country seats, the level of social housing ranges from 9% in Abbey to 32% in Soho & Victoria, the real outlier is St Pauls which is only 19% social rented.
Educational results are low as well, only 25% have degrees, whilst 28.4% have no qualifications which as the seat is generally fairly young is really low for degrees and high for no qualifications. Here the Smethwick wards perform a little better than you’d expect and the Black Country wards are worse than you’d expect, Abbey, however, is graduate rich. Elementary occupations rule the roost here at 16.5% whilst skilled trades (a Black Country speciality) is only 10%, buy 11.3% work as process, plant or machine operatives which is a lingering part of the old industrial heritage. But this isn’t a seat of managers and professionals, except for Abbey and to a lesser extent Old Warley. Similarly, economic activity is a lot lower than you’d expect from a younger age profile seat, unemployment is nearly double the national average and deprivation in more than one dimension is 26.3%
It is also substantially less white than the other Sandwell seats, although the addition of Blackheath has brought it back to 47.4% White whilst the old Warley seat was 43.7% White. Three of the wards in particular are majority minority - Smethwick is 35% White, but St Pauls is 18.5% and Soho & Victoria is 16.4% . Also it is worth noting that like in the Tipton area, there are more Muslims in the seat than Sikhs/Hindus, although there is only really a large difference in Soho & Victoria or St Pauls and there are more Sikhs/Hindus in Langley and Old Warley and Smethwick is effectively a tie. There is also a decent sized Black population in the area, mainly Afro-Caribbean in descent especially in the three Smethwick wards. Overall, the Asian Minority is 31.3% and the Black minority is 11%. there are higher than normal number of people who are of mixed or other ethnic groups.
This can make local elections sometimes produce some odd results and leads to an awful lot of communalist politics and balancing of slates for the council, which also leads to some poor quality candidates being selected and this being Sandwell, elected, However, it makes very little difference at the national level where there is strong backing for John Spellar, however, should he stand down, the selection will be one to watch and there are likely to be rattles thrown out of prams during the process. At the local level Blackheath and Old Warley are still competitive and in 2021 Old Warley elected a Conservative councillor but he has since left the group over the Brandhall golf club issue but still supports the party nationally. There’s still a decent Conservative vote in Bristnall and Langley as well which overall means that this seat should be fairly solidly Labour but not monolithically so in a par election.
