Post by batman on Feb 3, 2024 21:51:16 GMT
edited to take into account the general election result
LEWISHAM NORTH
This is most certainly not a recreation of the 1950-1974 seat called Lewisham North, not least because that seat was named after Lewisham on its pre-1960s borough boundaries, and this one after its present boundaries. The pre-1974 seat had a few areas in common with this seat, but this seat is very much the linear successor to the outgoing Lewisham Deptford seat. The other Lewisham seats have compass points, and Deptford is by no means the best-known area in this constituency; it is thus no longer mentioned in the constituency title for the sake of consistency, despite its longevity as a constituency name. This is the most deprived and least middle-class of the just-under-3 Lewisham borough seats, and the one with the strongest Labour heritage. Deptford was a very early Labour gain, in 1906, and has only voted against the party once ever since, in their astonishing meltdown year of 1931. It has been one of the most consistently safe Labour seats anywhere in Britain, generally lacking the political drama that has flared up from time to time in some neighbouring seats with related social characteristics, and this renamed successor is also a very safe seat indeed for the party unlike its very dissimilar namesake up to 1974, which was consistently marginal throughout its rather short history and was won by both Labour & the Conservatives, Labour's wins including a gain in a 1957 by-election, a gain which was emphatically reversed in 1959 by the celebrity Tory candidate Christopher Chataway.
This constituency reaches the river at Evelyn ward, named after the diarist John Evelyn who lived in Deptford, in its manor house (in past years, Samuel Pepys too had a ward named after him). This is one of several wards making up this seat which have undoubtedly safe Labour characteristics and were won easily in the last local elections (and most previous ones too). This is the historic dockside area, with the Surrey Docks over the borough boundary in what is now Southwark lying north-west. The docks are gone but whereas some former dockyard areas have seen major development of in many cases exclusive private apartments this part of dockland remains of a mostly working-class social composition. Much of the constituency tends to be multiethnic & there is in particular a large Black community, with the African community now tending to outstrip the Caribbean one as has happened in many of inner London's working-class areas. The most working-class wards tend to see Labour well ahead but a coherent if not truly competitive Green vote providing at least some measure of opposition. Some of the wards especially in the north of the constituency have had a sufficiently working-class social composition to continue to elect Labour councillors throughout the history of the present Borough of Lewisham, even in the party's disastrous year of 1968. This applies also to Deptford ward itself which lies to the south of Evelyn, slightly inland from the river. This ward has a very strong council estate element and very little middle-class housing. Both Deptford & Evelyn wards are even safer than average for Labour in terms of this seat, with the Greens well over 2 to 1 behind at the last elections. Deptford has the distinction of being the first terminus of the very first passenger railway built in London, though it was soon extended to Greenwich and beyond, and its station very much continues to this day. To the west of Deptford lies New Cross Gate ward. New Cross station which along with New Cross Gate used to form twin terminals for the old East London tube line (formerly regarded as an albeit separate part of the Metropolitan line) is more or less equidistant between Deptford & New Cross Gate stations. New Cross Gate ward is also decidedly safe Labour and possessed of plenty of council housing, and not very high-end private rented accommodation. Indeed, the number of owner-occupied dwellings is one of the lowest in the land in the constituency as a whole, with these 3 northernmost wards being even lower still on this metric. In the north-west of the New Cross & Deptford communities lies another well-known landmark, the New Den stadium of Millwall football club, actually very close to South Bermondsey station, but just over the borough boundary from there. Millwall as many know is actually a small community in the Isle of Dogs, on the other side of the river in the borough of Tower Hamlets. Millwall FC started life there but moved across the river to New Cross in 1910, moving in 1993 a short distance to their present location, while keeping their old name (just as QPR did when moving south from the Queen's Park area many moons ago). The Greens take very slightly closer order to Labour here than in the other two wards previously discussed, but not much - it was one of the wards where they decided to stand only one candidate in an attempt to maximise their vote for that candidate. But with over 1400 votes the leading Labour candidate still outpolled the Greens' single candidate by not far short of a thousand. Labour's grip is very hard indeed to loosen in this neck of the woods.
The wards to the south of these are Telegraph Hill and Brockley. The name of the former is a bit of a puzzle to many since there is no actual road in the area called Telegraph Hill, nor is the area widely known as this, but there is a small park (in two parts, in fact, split in two by a road junction) called Telegraph Hill Park. This ward essentially is the southern end of the New Cross Gate community south of the A202 main road, and lying to the west of the railway line, plus the thin strip of the Brockley community lying between the railway line (including Brockley station) and the boundary with the borough of Southwark just east of Nunhead. It has plenty of multi-occupied privately-rented housing mixed in with council estates and its social composition is not that different from the areas to its north. There used to be tremendous political pitch-battles between Labour and various independent non-Labour-Party left-wingers, with the latter occasionally actually prevailing in local elections. However Labour seem to have come out on top in these battles ultimately, and despite the Party seeing a more centrist leadership by the time of the local elections than had been the case up to early 2020 Labour were no longer opposed by non-Labour explicitly left-wing candidates, instead seeing a fairly worthwhile challenge from the Greens for whom the demography of the ward is not unremittingly hostile. Labour were at least made to work for their outright victory, but still prevailed with a majority of nearly 700 for the bottom Labour candidate over the top Green; rather oddly, both the Greens and the Lib Dems opted to stand 2 candidates for the 3 seats in the ward. To underline how fundamentally poor this territory has long been for the Tories, two of their candidates fell below the 100-vote mark. Brockley ward itself also includes for its part the southern end of the New Cross community, which means that Goldsmith's College, part of the University of London, actually lies within the ward, almost equidistant between New Cross & New Cross Gate stations (these days part of the Overground and also on National Rail). The presence of students is part of the reason why this constituency has an unusually young age profile, and why the Conservatives are extremely weak here, though in days long gone by Brockley had enough middle-class residents to have a coherent Tory vote. (There has not, however, always been a ward called Brockley.) Brockley was able, unlike so much of this constituency, to elect non-Labour councillors for quite a number of years, as it was the powerbase of the prominent London Green Party figure Darren Johnson. He and his successors were able to split this ward with Labour for several elections, helped it seems anecdotally by the student vote. However they were eventually beaten by Labour, and rather surprisingly they decided not to target the ward in the last local elections, deciding instead to concentrate principally on neighbouring Ladywell. Labour has now opened up a big lead over them although there is a feeling amongst some that if the Greens put the work in they could again challenge them seriously here.
Ladywell ward lies to the south-east of Brockley and immediately to its east is Lewisham Central ward, which basically does what it says on the tin. Ladywell is distinctly the larger in area of the two wards. Ladywell in days gone by was able sometimes, though not usually, to elect Conservative councillors, but had by 1986 taken on essentially safe Labour characteristics, perhaps not unlike some wards in neighbouring boroughs. It does have a little more middle-class owner-occupied housing than some of the wards to its north, but still multi-occupancy and private renting is the most salient. Labour did have one rather narrow by-election win over the Greens some years ago, and the Greens decided that its demography and history was sufficiently favourable for them to target it in 2022 ahead of Brockley, where they had previously actually won elections. They fell short, but not by much, with their leading candidate polling over 1800 votes. Lewisham Central, as befits a rather narrow ward which is not entirely residential, has a smaller population and elects only two councillors. It by contrast is a Labour stronghold, with the Greens easily beaten in the last elections. There is a larger Black population here than the rest of the south of the constituency, and Labour neither has had nor will expect to have in the future any serious electoral difficulties in the ward.
After the boundary changes, the constituency is completed by a very contrasting ward, Blackheath, which was like Ladywell & central Lewisham part of the old Lewisham North constituency as well as this essentially new one. Blackheath is a historic and in parts actually beautiful part of south-east London, but as a community crosses the borough boundary with Greenwich (in fact, this also could be said to apply to the community of Deptford well to its north-west). Many of the wealthiest residential streets in Blackheath are found in Greenwich borough rather than Lewisham, and the streets of Blackheath ward in the borough of Lewisham are much more densely-packed, and of at times contrasting character. The ward has its council estates, and also further away from the railway station some less upmarket multi-occupied housing. Blackheath is sometimes seen as the nearest equivalent south-east London has to Hampstead in north London, and there is a little element of the well-to-do intellectual left-wing vote to be found here too, although that factor can sometimes be exaggerated. At least in terms of its Lewisham section, Blackheath actually has a surprisingly long Labour-inclined heritage; it was competitive in the inaugural election to the present-day borough of Lewisham in 1964, and was very narrowly won by Labour for example in 1978, which was a fairly though not overwhelmingly poor year for Labour (the Tories took 4 London borough councils from them, including Wandsworth). The Tories eventually ceased to be even slightly competitive in the ward, and uniquely in this constituency it is the Liberal Democrats who now are best at giving Labour a run for their money, their veteran ex-Bromley campaigner Chris Maines falling just over 200 votes short in the last elections. This is recognisably still by some distance the most upmarket and prosperous ward in the constituency, indeed it is hard to say with any certainty that any ward in the whole borough is better-off, but it is not immune from the demographic trends which have ruined most of inner London from a Conservative point of view. This boundary change constitutes an attractive addition to what is often seen as a predominantly rather dowdy constituency, but has done Labour no electoral harm.
This piece of inner-city South London still mostly looks the part of a Labour stronghold, and it certainly is just that. Lancashire-born Vicky Foxcroft had succeeded Dame Joan Ruddock as the local Labour MP in 2015 and was easily re-elected in 2024. Her Labour share of the vote dropped nearly 12%, not all that unusually for inner south London that year , but the vote shares of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives declined too, from already low bases. The big gainers were the Greens, who have become the main opposition in most of this constituency's wards at local level, and they achieved the relatively dizzy heights of just under 22% of the vote; this however still left them a long way behind Labour, whose majority remained well in excess of 15,000. There are few constituencies in London which have given Labour an almost trouble-free time since WWII such as they have enjoyed here, and there are no signs that this is about to change; two of its wards are competitive, but the rest essentially are not, and while the name of this seat may be changing its political preferences will not be doing so.
LEWISHAM NORTH
This is most certainly not a recreation of the 1950-1974 seat called Lewisham North, not least because that seat was named after Lewisham on its pre-1960s borough boundaries, and this one after its present boundaries. The pre-1974 seat had a few areas in common with this seat, but this seat is very much the linear successor to the outgoing Lewisham Deptford seat. The other Lewisham seats have compass points, and Deptford is by no means the best-known area in this constituency; it is thus no longer mentioned in the constituency title for the sake of consistency, despite its longevity as a constituency name. This is the most deprived and least middle-class of the just-under-3 Lewisham borough seats, and the one with the strongest Labour heritage. Deptford was a very early Labour gain, in 1906, and has only voted against the party once ever since, in their astonishing meltdown year of 1931. It has been one of the most consistently safe Labour seats anywhere in Britain, generally lacking the political drama that has flared up from time to time in some neighbouring seats with related social characteristics, and this renamed successor is also a very safe seat indeed for the party unlike its very dissimilar namesake up to 1974, which was consistently marginal throughout its rather short history and was won by both Labour & the Conservatives, Labour's wins including a gain in a 1957 by-election, a gain which was emphatically reversed in 1959 by the celebrity Tory candidate Christopher Chataway.
This constituency reaches the river at Evelyn ward, named after the diarist John Evelyn who lived in Deptford, in its manor house (in past years, Samuel Pepys too had a ward named after him). This is one of several wards making up this seat which have undoubtedly safe Labour characteristics and were won easily in the last local elections (and most previous ones too). This is the historic dockside area, with the Surrey Docks over the borough boundary in what is now Southwark lying north-west. The docks are gone but whereas some former dockyard areas have seen major development of in many cases exclusive private apartments this part of dockland remains of a mostly working-class social composition. Much of the constituency tends to be multiethnic & there is in particular a large Black community, with the African community now tending to outstrip the Caribbean one as has happened in many of inner London's working-class areas. The most working-class wards tend to see Labour well ahead but a coherent if not truly competitive Green vote providing at least some measure of opposition. Some of the wards especially in the north of the constituency have had a sufficiently working-class social composition to continue to elect Labour councillors throughout the history of the present Borough of Lewisham, even in the party's disastrous year of 1968. This applies also to Deptford ward itself which lies to the south of Evelyn, slightly inland from the river. This ward has a very strong council estate element and very little middle-class housing. Both Deptford & Evelyn wards are even safer than average for Labour in terms of this seat, with the Greens well over 2 to 1 behind at the last elections. Deptford has the distinction of being the first terminus of the very first passenger railway built in London, though it was soon extended to Greenwich and beyond, and its station very much continues to this day. To the west of Deptford lies New Cross Gate ward. New Cross station which along with New Cross Gate used to form twin terminals for the old East London tube line (formerly regarded as an albeit separate part of the Metropolitan line) is more or less equidistant between Deptford & New Cross Gate stations. New Cross Gate ward is also decidedly safe Labour and possessed of plenty of council housing, and not very high-end private rented accommodation. Indeed, the number of owner-occupied dwellings is one of the lowest in the land in the constituency as a whole, with these 3 northernmost wards being even lower still on this metric. In the north-west of the New Cross & Deptford communities lies another well-known landmark, the New Den stadium of Millwall football club, actually very close to South Bermondsey station, but just over the borough boundary from there. Millwall as many know is actually a small community in the Isle of Dogs, on the other side of the river in the borough of Tower Hamlets. Millwall FC started life there but moved across the river to New Cross in 1910, moving in 1993 a short distance to their present location, while keeping their old name (just as QPR did when moving south from the Queen's Park area many moons ago). The Greens take very slightly closer order to Labour here than in the other two wards previously discussed, but not much - it was one of the wards where they decided to stand only one candidate in an attempt to maximise their vote for that candidate. But with over 1400 votes the leading Labour candidate still outpolled the Greens' single candidate by not far short of a thousand. Labour's grip is very hard indeed to loosen in this neck of the woods.
The wards to the south of these are Telegraph Hill and Brockley. The name of the former is a bit of a puzzle to many since there is no actual road in the area called Telegraph Hill, nor is the area widely known as this, but there is a small park (in two parts, in fact, split in two by a road junction) called Telegraph Hill Park. This ward essentially is the southern end of the New Cross Gate community south of the A202 main road, and lying to the west of the railway line, plus the thin strip of the Brockley community lying between the railway line (including Brockley station) and the boundary with the borough of Southwark just east of Nunhead. It has plenty of multi-occupied privately-rented housing mixed in with council estates and its social composition is not that different from the areas to its north. There used to be tremendous political pitch-battles between Labour and various independent non-Labour-Party left-wingers, with the latter occasionally actually prevailing in local elections. However Labour seem to have come out on top in these battles ultimately, and despite the Party seeing a more centrist leadership by the time of the local elections than had been the case up to early 2020 Labour were no longer opposed by non-Labour explicitly left-wing candidates, instead seeing a fairly worthwhile challenge from the Greens for whom the demography of the ward is not unremittingly hostile. Labour were at least made to work for their outright victory, but still prevailed with a majority of nearly 700 for the bottom Labour candidate over the top Green; rather oddly, both the Greens and the Lib Dems opted to stand 2 candidates for the 3 seats in the ward. To underline how fundamentally poor this territory has long been for the Tories, two of their candidates fell below the 100-vote mark. Brockley ward itself also includes for its part the southern end of the New Cross community, which means that Goldsmith's College, part of the University of London, actually lies within the ward, almost equidistant between New Cross & New Cross Gate stations (these days part of the Overground and also on National Rail). The presence of students is part of the reason why this constituency has an unusually young age profile, and why the Conservatives are extremely weak here, though in days long gone by Brockley had enough middle-class residents to have a coherent Tory vote. (There has not, however, always been a ward called Brockley.) Brockley was able, unlike so much of this constituency, to elect non-Labour councillors for quite a number of years, as it was the powerbase of the prominent London Green Party figure Darren Johnson. He and his successors were able to split this ward with Labour for several elections, helped it seems anecdotally by the student vote. However they were eventually beaten by Labour, and rather surprisingly they decided not to target the ward in the last local elections, deciding instead to concentrate principally on neighbouring Ladywell. Labour has now opened up a big lead over them although there is a feeling amongst some that if the Greens put the work in they could again challenge them seriously here.
Ladywell ward lies to the south-east of Brockley and immediately to its east is Lewisham Central ward, which basically does what it says on the tin. Ladywell is distinctly the larger in area of the two wards. Ladywell in days gone by was able sometimes, though not usually, to elect Conservative councillors, but had by 1986 taken on essentially safe Labour characteristics, perhaps not unlike some wards in neighbouring boroughs. It does have a little more middle-class owner-occupied housing than some of the wards to its north, but still multi-occupancy and private renting is the most salient. Labour did have one rather narrow by-election win over the Greens some years ago, and the Greens decided that its demography and history was sufficiently favourable for them to target it in 2022 ahead of Brockley, where they had previously actually won elections. They fell short, but not by much, with their leading candidate polling over 1800 votes. Lewisham Central, as befits a rather narrow ward which is not entirely residential, has a smaller population and elects only two councillors. It by contrast is a Labour stronghold, with the Greens easily beaten in the last elections. There is a larger Black population here than the rest of the south of the constituency, and Labour neither has had nor will expect to have in the future any serious electoral difficulties in the ward.
After the boundary changes, the constituency is completed by a very contrasting ward, Blackheath, which was like Ladywell & central Lewisham part of the old Lewisham North constituency as well as this essentially new one. Blackheath is a historic and in parts actually beautiful part of south-east London, but as a community crosses the borough boundary with Greenwich (in fact, this also could be said to apply to the community of Deptford well to its north-west). Many of the wealthiest residential streets in Blackheath are found in Greenwich borough rather than Lewisham, and the streets of Blackheath ward in the borough of Lewisham are much more densely-packed, and of at times contrasting character. The ward has its council estates, and also further away from the railway station some less upmarket multi-occupied housing. Blackheath is sometimes seen as the nearest equivalent south-east London has to Hampstead in north London, and there is a little element of the well-to-do intellectual left-wing vote to be found here too, although that factor can sometimes be exaggerated. At least in terms of its Lewisham section, Blackheath actually has a surprisingly long Labour-inclined heritage; it was competitive in the inaugural election to the present-day borough of Lewisham in 1964, and was very narrowly won by Labour for example in 1978, which was a fairly though not overwhelmingly poor year for Labour (the Tories took 4 London borough councils from them, including Wandsworth). The Tories eventually ceased to be even slightly competitive in the ward, and uniquely in this constituency it is the Liberal Democrats who now are best at giving Labour a run for their money, their veteran ex-Bromley campaigner Chris Maines falling just over 200 votes short in the last elections. This is recognisably still by some distance the most upmarket and prosperous ward in the constituency, indeed it is hard to say with any certainty that any ward in the whole borough is better-off, but it is not immune from the demographic trends which have ruined most of inner London from a Conservative point of view. This boundary change constitutes an attractive addition to what is often seen as a predominantly rather dowdy constituency, but has done Labour no electoral harm.
This piece of inner-city South London still mostly looks the part of a Labour stronghold, and it certainly is just that. Lancashire-born Vicky Foxcroft had succeeded Dame Joan Ruddock as the local Labour MP in 2015 and was easily re-elected in 2024. Her Labour share of the vote dropped nearly 12%, not all that unusually for inner south London that year , but the vote shares of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives declined too, from already low bases. The big gainers were the Greens, who have become the main opposition in most of this constituency's wards at local level, and they achieved the relatively dizzy heights of just under 22% of the vote; this however still left them a long way behind Labour, whose majority remained well in excess of 15,000. There are few constituencies in London which have given Labour an almost trouble-free time since WWII such as they have enjoyed here, and there are no signs that this is about to change; two of its wards are competitive, but the rest essentially are not, and while the name of this seat may be changing its political preferences will not be doing so.
