Post by batman on Feb 2, 2024 12:04:33 GMT
edited to take into account the 2024 general election result.
LEWISHAM EAST
This constituency has existed in one form or another continuously since 1974, before which there were Lewisham North and South constituencies, of which North was marginal and South was fairly safe Labour. There was also a Lewisham East seat before 1950, which was won by as eminent a Labour politician as Herbert Morrison, surely one of the very few Labour Party members ever to have had a pub (now sadly converted into something else) named after him, amongst many other distinctions. Lewisham East has not had an unbroken history as a safe Labour seat, but it has since WWII been a seat that the Tories only managed to win in their two greatest landslides, and even if the Tories were able to repeat these landslides in the future it would certainly be without winning this seat now, as like the former neighbouring seat of Lewisham West and so much of inner London it has decisively moved in a pro-Labour direction. In the boundary changes it has been modified, but remains clearly recognisable. As if Labour needed it, the boundary changes actually further strengthened their already large notional lead, but not by that much.
The communities included in this seat after boundary changes are Bellingham, Catford, Lee, Lee Green (the two areas are neighbouring but of rather contrasting character), Hither Green, Grove Park, Downham and arguably a small slice of Lewisham town itself. These are mixed areas with mixed political heritages, even if nowadays they can all be characterised as safe Labour. Mostly this is residential territory with the only shopping centre of importance being in Catford, although many voters in the north of the constituency would tend to look to Lewisham, and in the south to Bromley for this purpose. The constituency becomes, generally speaking, more inner-city in character the further north one goes, and somewhat more outer-suburban the further south though Catford has elements of both types. It is multiethnic and again this factor tends to increase in the north-west of the seat; there remains a bit of a White working-class Conservative vote in some wards, but this is particularly little in evidence in the north of the seat, and has faded elsewhere too. In the last local elections, Labour won every council seat making up this revised constituency with majorities ranging from comfortable to overwhelming. The constituency loses its most elegant areas, in Blackheath ward, in these changes and gains instead the perennial and very deprived major Labour stronghold of Bellingham - not that Blackheath, however, is poor territory for Labour, as over the years Labour has surprisingly frequently won council seats even there, Blackheath's historically more Conservative-leaning neighbourhoods tending to be in the section of that community which lies in the neighbouring borough of Greenwich. I will consider each ward more or less in geographical order.
Hither Green ward in the north-west corner of the seat is the most inner-city in character and probably the most multiethnic - as with much of inner south London, the largest BAME communities tend to be Black Caribbean, a very long-established community in the borough of Lewisham, and Black African. It includes, arguably, a small part of the Lewisham community and much of Lee as opposed to Lee Green. Hither Green station is a fairly important railway junction and commuters, though generally not the wealthier ones, can be found in good numbers. The housing here is rather typical of inner south London, mostly late 19th & early 20th century, the houses often split up into flats, but with some council estates too. In days gone by, when more of the houses were occupied in their entirety by a single family, the Tories could at least give Labour a reasonable run for their money, but no more (what a familiar refrain this is). In the last council elections, they shared last place with the Lib Dems, with the Greens, again not unusually for inner south-east London, providing the main, but unequal, opposition to Labour. The ward is close to Ladywell, which currently is the Greens' strongest ward in the borough, and perhaps has a little potential for the Greens, but Labour is currently a long way ahead, indeed more so than in most of the constituency.
To the south-east lies Lee Green ward, essentially the successor to the old St Mildred's. That ward was one of the small number of Tory strongholds for the first quarter of a century or so of the post-1960s borough of Lewisham (and indeed the former borough of that name), for example giving the Tories leads of well over 2 to 1 in both 1978 and 1982. They remained competitive here for a long while but after eventually losing the ward to Labour, as demographic change gradually eroded their base, the Liberal Democrats emerged as a worthwhile opposition, and they have just about remained in contention here, this being identifiably the least safe Labour ward in the constituency. Lee Green has quite large swathes of good-quality interwar owner-occupied semis and has been quite a popular area for upwardly mobile commuters, who however often aspire to move a little further out, and often do so. Its popularity with commuters is despite the fact that this is in the part of the constituency least well served by the railways, though much of the area is within reasonable walking distance of Lee station. It is very close to borough boundaries with both Greenwich and Bromley, and some of it would not look out of place in the pleasanter parts of the latter borough.
Further to the south-east still lies Grove Park. This has always been a socially-mixed area, containing working-class (and still mostly White) council estates, but also some good owner-occupied streets again mostly of an interwar character. This ward was the very last in the borough to be able to elect a Conservative councillor, and with some elements of a White working-class vote allied to a residual Conservative vote in the owner-occupied parts the ward still retains a rare coherent Conservative vote in a Lewisham council ward, although Labour is now in a fairly secure-looking lead. It lies close to some excellent residential areas over the borough boundary into Bromley. For the most part Grove Park does not have an obviously inner city character, although officially it is indeed in inner London along with the rest of the borough of Lewisham. Again its station is a junction not without importance and is used by residents over that borough boundary as well as those in Lewisham borough. As a socially mixed ward it has often had periods of political marginality, and has remained competitive for longer than the majority of wards in the borough.
Grove Park merges into Downham as one travels west. The two areas have some similarities, but while Downham has its owner-occupied streets, both of older and of interwar vintage, it is mostly 20th century council estate in character. As such it has a largely Labour heritage, but this was interrupted for some years, in this case by the Liberal Democrats, and in fact it is the last Lewisham ward to have, to date, been lost outright by Labour. For quite some time the Lib Dems' local champion was Duwayne Brooks, who was already well-known from the days when, as the friend of Stephen Lawrence, he had to witness the brutal racist murder of his friend. Brooks stood as the Lib Dem candidate for directly-elected Mayor of Lewisham, but after his surely inevitable defeat by Labour found a new political home in the Conservative Party, attempting more recently to gain his new party's nomination for the prestigious executive position of Mayor of London. Although he did not stand in the last local elections in this borough (he stood unsuccessfully in Bexley), he appears to have taken quite a lot of anti-Labour voters with him, and the Tories have managed to build up a fairly coherent, but not truly competitive, vote. This comes from similar sources to that in Grove Park, a mixture of White working-class voters in the council estates and more traditional middle-class owner-occupied Tory support (this has also been a notable feature in another neighbouring ward, Catford South). Labour however won very comfortably in the last elections. The north-east of this community is sometimes locally known as Southend, presumably referring to its position as being the south end of Catford rather than being a homage to an Essex estuarial seaside resort. One surprising find in the north-west of the community is Beckenham Hill station, and to its south Beckenham Place Park, which are in this borough rather than in Bromley like the rest of Beckenham. This locale is generally substantially less middle-class than Beckenham "proper" the other side of the park.
North of Beckenham Hill station lies Bellingham ward, which is small enough to have two rather than three councillors. This is probably the most deprived part of the constituency although it does have some competition in that regard. It is a heavily council-estate area with a large Black population, and was previously always in Lewisham West (with or without Penge). Bellingham is by some distance the safest Labour ward in the constituency, and that is saying quite a lot. Unlike other wards, its safety is not a recent phenomenon, but has lasted the entire history of the present-day London Borough of Lewisham, even in 1968 seeing Labour survive the cull of so many of their councillors with a clear majority. In 2022 Labour won with a majority of nearly four to one over the Conservatives, and the latter can only really console themselves that, stuck as it is in the middle of a safe Labour seat, it can at least do them no wider electoral damage any more.
The constituency is completed by its largest single component, Catford. Catford has an unglamorous reputation, partly because of its rather down-at-heel shopping area, but also perhaps because of its association with a now-closed greyhound racing track. In fact, Catford has some very good owner-occupied residential areas, especially in the southern of its two wards, Catford South as it is today. The former Catford ward saw a long string of surprisingly easy Conservative wins, their traditional middle-class (but certainly not superwealthy) owner-occupied vote being supplemented by a bit of a White working-class vote especially after Margaret Thatcher's time as Conservative leader. Catford ward was rather oddly for some time in a salient of Lewisham West which jutted obtrusively into Lewisham East, but a more logical arrangement now pertains. However, Catford never really looked entirely the part of a Tory stronghold and eventually, though it really did take quite a long time, Labour did manage to break through, and since then the principal opposition to them in the successor Catford South ward has tended to be from the Liberal Democrats who have supplanted the Tories more successfully than in Grove Park or Downham. However, it would be stretching it to describe them as truly competitive with Labour, although it is recognisably by some distance their strongest ward in the constituency apart from Lee Green. The north of the community is represented in Rushey Green ward as it has been called pretty much throughout the borough's history. If there was a village green here, it no longer exists in a recognisable form. This is more inner-city, a little scruffier, and has more multi-occupancy (and probably council estate presence too) than Catford South ward. It has always been Labour-inclined, but the strength of this inclination has distinctly increased as the years have progressed. The Greens have done well to build up a coherent vote in this ward, situated as it is next to their strongest Borough ward of Ladywell, but they remain well behind Labour. The demography of this ward, like Hither Green, suggests they may have some potential, but whether they have the resources in terms of people and money to target it as they have Ladywell, and in the past Brockley, remains to be seen. Labour is not as strong here as in Bellingham, but they remain well ahead and it is a ward which typically gives them few if any electoral headaches.
The days that the Tories could aspire to win here are well in the past now, as with so much of inner south London. This seat does not quite have the strength of Labour tradition that neighbouring Lewisham North (formerly, essentially, Lewisham Deptford) has, but it is a totally safe seat nonetheless, and rather surprisingly in the 2024 election Labour's victory was by an even wider margin than in Lewisham North; perhaps this territory has less Green potential than some parts of the latter seat. Its previous MP, Heidi Alexander, resigned in 2018 to accept a position working on the team of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and in the by-election Labour, despite looming electoral clouds on the horizon, had no trouble in holding on in the shape of their present MP Janet Daby who easily held the seat at the last general election. The Green vote rose quite sharply, and Labour's declined, but by only 4.5% which was not bad at all in the context of their other inner south London results. The Conservatives however declined still further, by over 9%. The Greens now have a reasonably clear second place here, but they still have an electoral mountain to climb to oust Daby and Labour.
