Lewisham West and East Dulwich
Feb 1, 2024 14:12:09 GMT
Robert Waller, andrewp, and 1 more like this
Post by batman on Feb 1, 2024 14:12:09 GMT
Fairly minor editing of my previous profile to acknowledge the general election result.
LEWISHAM WEST AND EAST DULWICH
This is yet another new cross-borough constituency, crossing borough boundaries that have not been previously traversed for parliamentary elections (though the boundaries between other pairs of boroughs have been). This new seat is not by any means one of the most illogical, as the boundary between Lewisham & Southwark in the Dulwich area is not particularly obvious at times (unless of course one is going past a road sign welcoming you to either borough!), and one can reasonably say that the Sydenham community crosses the borough boundary, although the majority of it is in Lewisham. Like every single seat in inner South London, this started its new life as a Labour seat, in this case a super-safe one. It might be surmised that there is not much distance between the boundaries of quite a number of boroughs in this part of south-east London, and that would be true; it is possible to make a straight journey of less than a couple of miles and pass through several different boroughs. Both constituent boroughs of this new seat are Labour-controlled, in the case of Lewisham no opposition councillors at all having been elected since as long ago as 2014. There are no Conservative councillors at all in this new seat, and have not been for quite a long time now. The Tories started in a distant second place on notional 2019 figures, but had to settle for fourth place when the election came, with the Greens emerging, not all that unexpectedly, as the nearest (though still extremely distant) challenger to Labour in this seat.
Taking the Lewisham section first. There was a Lewisham West seat continuously until 2010 throughout our living memory up to then. However, the community of Lewisham itself never featured in it, its core areas instead being Forest Hill and Sydenham. Much of the pre-1960s borough of Lewisham (basically, the present-day borough minus the communities that made up Deptford as a borough and parliamentary constituency) was socially mixed and tended to be marginal. Lewisham West changed hands in 1945, 1950, 1966, 1970, 1974, 1983 and finally in 1992, between the two major parties, Labour of course winning (through Arthur Skeffington, later to become an MP on the other side of London, in Hayes & Harlington) in 1945, and so on. Several MPs including Skeffington went on to represent other constituencies after losing here, other examples being the Conservatives Patrick McNair-Wilson and, more prominently later on, John (Selwyn) Gummer who was a rare bearded Conservative in those days, and latterly the well-groomed & rather telegenic John Maples who returned in Stratford-on-Avon but was deprived of a longer career by illness and then sadly his death. Labour's Chris Price however gained the seat in 1974 after previously representing Birmingham Perry Barr, losing the seat to Maples in 1983. Maples's defeat in 1992, to Labour's Jim Dowd, has a very definite air of finality about it now, as the Tories started to lose the ability to compete with Labour in this territory in the early 1990s and this trend accelerated greatly thereafter. Labour always had its strongholds in Lewisham West, amongst these being on the old ward boundaries Rushey Green, Bellingham (very much a perennial Labour stronghold) and to a lesser extent Forest Hill ward, but the Tories had some areas of real strength too. In the western part of the Forest Hill community, closer to the borough boundary with Southwark and thus to more prosperous Dulwich, used to be Horniman ward, which for many years was a very safe Tory ward with some excellent mostly early 20th century houses, and in days gone by Sydenham was a large enough community to have two rather contrasting wards, East and West. Sydenham West like Horniman was a very reliable Tory ward, even in very good Labour years, and it was to be a long time before Labour started to become competitive and then start winning in these wards or their modern equivalents. Nowadays, both Forest Hill and Sydenham have a ward to themselves, and they can both be classified as safe Labour, such opposition as they encounter coming mainly from the Greens. These communities have long had a strong Black community, and some other BAME residents, but the majority of White people who still populate them tend to be, as with so much of inner London, public-sector, often "intellectual", and younger than the national average, voters who generally no longer associate themselves with the Conservatives. Multi-occupancy has risen, again hardly an unique phenomenon in inner London, and wealthier managerial and executive private-sector workers now tend to be found further out, although not necessarily that much further out as they certainly can still be found in Beckenham nearby, for example. The word "trendy" could reasonably describe some of these older suburbs these days, perhaps even "designer-scruffy" in the case of some areas. To the east of Forest Hill and the north of Sydenham lies Perry Vale, not in any way to be confused with the rather more recent suburbia of Perivale in the borough of Ealing. This territory is not dissimilar and has enough of the above-mentioned voters to have elected Liberal Democrat councillors, like Forest Hill in fact, only a few elections ago, but their vote of course plummeted in the 2014 post-Coalition election and they are nowhere now. Labour has a very strong lead here over the Greens, in fact slightly higher even than the two previously mentioned wards. The remaining Lewisham ward, Crofton Park, has an interesting electoral history. It was for many years part of the (Lewisham) Deptford constituency, but was a little aberrant in its social composition, much less uniformly working-class than other areas that made up that constituency, such as Deptford itself and New Cross. It also includes elements of the Honor Oak and, to a lesser extent at its fringes, Brockley communities. This was the only ward in that constituency with a record of electing Tory councillors with any regularity, though it was never a safe Tory ward. In the end the same factors which have so rapidly eroded the Tory vote in so much of inner London did their work here too, and opposition to Labour gradually came more and more from the Liberal Democrats who were from time to time able to elect councillors here. They in turn saw their vote hammered in 2014, but the anti-Labour vote still remains, now represented predominantly not by the Tories or Lib Dems, but by the Greens. The Greens ran Labour relatively close here in 2022, in fact closer than they managed in nearby Brockley, where they had councillors (or at least a councillor) for a number of years, though less so than in Ladywell which was their principal target and where they only narrowly missed out. This is the one ward in the Lewisham part of the constituency where the Greens could in the future provide a worthwhile challenge to Labour, at least on paper, although the demography of the other Lewisham wards suggests at least some potential for them there too. Labour's undimmed traditional stronghold of Bellingham is not included in the new seat, but the party was still able rack up a sizeable lead in the four Lewisham borough wards nonetheless even though the Greens had a fairly good general election in much of inner London.
The large Southwark minority in this new seat consists of three wards, on their current boundaries Dulwich Hill, Goose Green and Peckham Rye. All of these wards, too, are safe Labour, in fact in 2022 with larger majorities than the Lewisham wards in the case of the last two mentioned. Goose Green is not a rural part of the Falkland Islands which has been mysteriously added to the constituency, but in fact is really the East Dulwich mentioned in the constituency title. (The fact that the compass point appears before Dulwich shows that East Dulwich is a recognisable area, whereas the Lewisham in the constituency title refers to the borough not the actual town of Lewisham itself.) East Dulwich was never the wealthiest corner of Dulwich, the college and other symbols of social status and prosperity being found further south-west for the most part, but it is not really poor either. It has like some of the Lewisham wards mention above acquired a rather trendy and alternative demographic, and at times in the last generation Labour has had worthwhile and at times successful challenges from the Lib Dems. Here too, however, the latter have gone a long way backwards, although they do at least retain a coherent vote, more so than anywhere else in this constituency. Labour won by well over 2 to 1 over them in the 2022 elections. Peckham Rye is contiguous with Peckham itself, but is not very similar in its character or social composition. For many years it was winnable for the Conservatives with Labour only being competitive in their strongest years, but as the 1990s progressed the Lib Dems became the principal opposition to Labour, the rather trendy educated middle-class demographic of much of the ward proving increasingly fertile ground for them and more difficult territory for the Tories. Here too, however, yet again the Lib Dems have fallen back a very long way, in fact to a distant last place. There is some evidence that, although the area looks physically very different from central Peckham, demographic change emanating from there may be strengthening Labour still further, and the overwhelming Labour victory in the 2022 elections, for example, certainly hints at that. This is an area which has been in a number of different constituencies in successive boundary revisions, sometimes paired with Dulwich, at other times with Peckham. The remaining ward is Dulwich Hill, which rather confusingly perhaps lies due east of Dulwich itself, whereas East Dulwich is in fact to its north-east (compare the rather inaccurate compass points in, for example, different parts of Finchley). This ward is a mixture of often very good-quality owner-occupied houses and flats, multi-occupied older homes and a bit of council estate. With its greater proximity to Dulwich village, it does retain a bigger anti-Labour vote than the other two Southwark wards included in the seat, but is still safe enough for Labour at present. A solidary Green polled 698 votes, ahead of the still just-about-coherent (in terms of vote share) Lib Dems in the last council elections, but that still left them well behind Labour.
This chunk of inner south-east London is in so many ways typical, multiethnic (though with the Black population much higher than that of other ethnic minorities), broadly with the emphasis on public sector and educational employment, a little arty perhaps, and tinged with trendiness mixed in with a bit of scruffiness. Like so many other areas, it has wards with long marginal heritages which have now lost that heritage and most of their Conservative voters, and have become increasingly safe Labour, particularly since the anti-Coalition reaction amongst so many slightly-left-of-centre voters after 2010. This seat saw Labour's vote share drop in common with many inner-city constituencies, but was regarded as highly unlikely to give Labour many headaches, and indeed it did not. Its activists will have predominantly worked in other seats, principally Beckenham & Penge one suspects. The Greens won the battle for second place with quite a bit to spare, but the battle for first was never a proper battle here. The local MP for much of this territory since 2017, Ellie Reeves, is together with her husband John Cryer (who represented Leyton & Wanstead up to the 2024 election) part both by blood & by marriage part of a very notable modern-day Labour family. She starts the parliament as Chair of the Labour Party, and may cherish hopes of further advancement such as has occurred to her still better-known sister Rachel, first female Chancellor of the Exchequer.
