Post by iainbhx on Feb 18, 2024 8:48:12 GMT
This is an entirely new seat or is it? It is made up of four wards of Walsall North (Birchhills-Leamore, Blakenhall, Bloxwich East and Bloxwich West) which make up 51.2% of the new seat and three and a part wards of Walsall South (St Matthews, Place, Palfrey and around 2/3rd of Paddock) which make up 48.8% of the new seat. In both cases, this is the majority of the previous seat, so it doesn’t have a clear predecessor seat - or does it? Whilst not identical it does have a fairly strong resemblance to the old Walsall seat which was based on the pre West Midlands Order - County Borough of Walsall. However, this was abolished in 1955 and Walsall has changed beyond recognition since the old seat last existed.
Walsall, of course, is originally an old market town probably dating back to Anglo-Saxon times but only starting to appear in records from the 12th century, it remained small until the 16th century, but in 200 years it grew from 2,000 people to 86,000 people, it was famous for its saddle manufacture - hence the nickname of the football club, the Saddlers, but also produced chains, buckles and plated ware, there was also a lot of quarrying for limestone in the region. Walsall acted as the larger town for a wider area aided by being a useful railway junction and became quite prosperous, especially in the area which is now part of the Paddock ward. Walsall became a municipal borough in the 1830’s and a county borough in 1889 which was the basis of the old Walsall parliamentary seat until 1955. The county borough included Bloxwich and didn’t change that much until the West Midlands Order of 1966.
The other named part of the seat, Bloxwich was also a small town of Mercian foundation, unlike Walsall, it is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Like Walsall it remained small until the Industrial Revolution at which point it became a place of many trades as well as a local market. It was most famed for the production of awl blades. Unlike many other small Black Country towns it did not have its own local government and was absorbed early into the County Borough of Walsall, it expanded greatly through the provision of council housing in several phases. Bloxwich, depending on how you define it which is always an art form in the Black Country, is around 25-33% of the population of the new seat. It doesn’t feel like a town on the up and its commercial centre is clearly mostly money launderers and charity shops.
Originally Walsall South was the Conservative seat and Walsall North the Labour seat, but the 1974 and 1983 revisions to the boundaries tipped with seats into being Labour-inclined marginals, during the 1983-1997 period neither of them looked particularly safe and their MPs tended to rely on their personal votes and in the case of Bruce George a certain amount of distancing from the Labour party. Bruce was an early pioneer of not putting your party on your leaflets. Both seats became safe during the Blair years but they both looked rocky in 2010 and if it wasn’t for a large UKIP/BNP vote in both seats they might have gone Conservative. That was probably the last time Walsall South was really marginal due to the demographic change in the area, but Walsall North still looked marginal in 2015 and as one of the highest Brexit voting seats went Conservative in 2017 and Eddie Hughes managed anotherlarge swing on top of that in 2019, he clearly had a large personal vote.
Pleck is a mainly residential ward to the west of Walsall centre, it extends out to the M6 and its eastern boundary is the Birmingham - Walsall railway line. It’s mainly residential although the Walsall Business Park is to be found here and the Walsall Manor hospital complex. It’s a majority-minority ward, only 33.9% of people here are white that almost has a South Asian majority (49.5%), most of the them are Muslim (39.9%) which is the largest religion in the ward. Only 45.8% of people own their own homes here with a large social sector (25.1%) and a lot of private rentals. 34.4% of people do routine or semi-routine work and only 14.7% are in white collar work, there are substantial numbers of full time students (10.8%). 31.6% of people have no qualifications and only 22% have a degree. It has very high levels of household deprivation. Pleck is usually very strongly Labour in local elections.
Palfrey, on the the other side of the Birmingham to Walsall railway is very similar to Pleck in terms of its composition. It is mainly residential, there is a lot of social housing, what employment land it has is mainly by the railway lines around Bescot. It is a majority Asian ward (61.1%) and only 27.3% of people are white, it is also just majority Muslim. 53.6% of people own their own homes here with 22.4% in social tenancies. The largest single group so people in the NS-Sec classification is Never Worked and Long Term Unemployed at a whopping 21%. 28.7% of people are in semi-routine and routine jobs, only 15.8% in white collar jobs, some 12.2% are students. 29.6% of people have no qualifications and only 22% have a degree. It includes much of Caldmore which is traditional terraces in some areas, there used to be high rises in Caldmore but most of them came down earlier this century. It also has high deprivation but not as high as Pleck. Palfrey is somewhat more competitive in local elections recently but returns Labour councillors, this competition is probably only at the local level.
St Matthews is Walsall’s central ward, taking the in commercial centre, hhe northern third of Caldmore and extended out to the Wolverhampton University campus, it also includes some newer housing north of the Broadway. It is just White majority (50.2%) with a large Asian minority (32,8%) many of whom are Muslims (25.3%). It’s a more mixed ward in terms of jobs with white collar work being on par with semi-routine and routine work, but it still a high number of full time students and double the national average of people who have never worked or are long term unemployed. 30.7% of people here are graduates and only 23.6% have no qualifications. Only 39.6% of people own their own homes here and just over a third have social tenancies. St Matthews usually sees Labour get the majority of the vote in local elections now, but it used to elect Conservatives from 2004 to 2010.
Paddock is the second most wealthy ward in Walsall and the affluent and spacious housing around Park Farm is included in the seat as is less well off terraces of The Chuckery, Gilletty Village which is also middle class and well off is split into Aldridge -Brownhills. Paddock is a majority-minority ward which is 48.4% Asian but Sikhs outnumber Muslims here, but only just. 39.8% of people have degrees here and only 20.1% have no qualifications. It’s the only part of Walsall MBC to have voted to remain in the EU. A whopping 80.7% of people own their own homes here and social rents are a mere 4%. 36.5% of people have white collar jobs here whilst only 18/4% have semi-routine and routine jobs. Paddock has elected Conservatives for the last 20 years without fail but the margins have become tighter.
Birchills Leamore is a council estate ward to the North of the centre of Walsall, Birchills near the centre contains several tower blocks as well as older private housing, Leamore is large council estate, there are areas of employment land scattered around the ward. Whilst Right to Buy has diminished Leamore as a purely social housing area, 40.7% of homes are still socially rented here whilst only 39.2% are owner occupied. It is majority White (71.4%) with a sizeable Asian Muslim minority and a smaller bloc minority. It is very working class 39.4% of people are in semi-routine or routine work and has nearly double the amount of people who have never worked or are long term unemployed. Only 21% of people are graduates here. Birchills-Leamore is competitive at the local level, or at least Cllr Gaz Ali keeps a seat for the Tories here.
Blakenall is similar to Birchills Leamore but on the other side of the Bloxwich Road and with less employment land, it also has a lot more green space specially in the north of the ward where there is new housing being built. The original Blakenall estate has been mainly been redeveloped or rebuilt and is a lot more mixed than it used to be, it’s still fairly grim in places and has the highest crime rate in Walsall. These days its only 37.9% social housing with 43.8% owner-occupied. It’s 70.8% White with an Asian and mainly muslim minority of 14.1% and a smaller black minority of 9.6%. Only 19.8% of people here are graduates and 31.5% have no qualifications. For those that work, because this is another ward with over double the national average of people who have never worked or who are long term unemployed (17.7%). 35.3% are in semi-routine or routine jobs and less than half of that in white-collar jobs. Blakenall has a long and complicated history at the local level mainly based around Comrade Pete and Comrade Dave, the last remnants of the leftwing Democratic Labour split of the 1980’s. They usually have one councillor but the Tories have become competitive here and it can best be described as a three way marginal. It probably favours Labour in general elections except in 2019.
Bloxwich East was historically regarded as the better of the two Bloxwich wards probably because of the streets behind the commercial centre of Bloxwich and Little Bloxwich. Otherwise it is dominated by the northern end of the Blakenall Heath estate and the Lower Farm estate. It is 89.5% White and majority Christian, 50.8% of people own their own home, 35.8% have a social tenancy. 31% of people are in semi-routine and routine work and only 17.8% in white collar jobs, there are high numbers of people who have never worked or who are long term unemployed. Only 18.5% of people are graduates, 31.6% have no qualifications. Bloxwich East used to be a very competitive ward between Lab and Con and saw high UKIP votes in 2014-2016 , it now looks more like a Conservative ward where Labour are still competitive put not winning.
Bloxwich West contains most of the older housing of old Bloxwich between the A34 and the railway station. It has two stations which means that iit is easy to commuter to Walsall and Birmingham, as the ward boundary is the A34 it also contains half of the commercial centre. It contains quite a lot of green space and most of the western boundary is green space or reservoirs. It is the whitest ward in the seat at 92% and majority Christian, 55.8% of people own their own home, 30.5% have a social tenancy. 36.2% do semi-routine and routine work whilst 21.5% are in white collar jobs. 20.3% are graduates here and only 28.1% have no qualifications. Bloxwich West is more Conservative inclined that Bloxwich East and except for 2010-12 has been won by them in recent times.
Overall, this is a majority white working class seat with a significant South Asian and mainly Muslim minority, Owner occupiers are only a plurality here and there is a very high level of socially rented household. There is significant deprivation, high unemployment and very high levels of people who do not work. The number of graduates here is low around 10% less than the national average and this is balanced by around 10% more people than the national average having no qualifications, This would not have been a seat where the Conservatives were competitive even 25 years ago. However, it is very strongly pro-Brexit and there has for a long time been a significant anti-Labour vote in the white councils estates.
The new seat produces a notional which is very close and the difference between the notionals very much comes down to one factor, how you treat the split of Paddock ward. It seems fairly clear to me that the parts of Paddock going into Aldridge-Brownhills are probably slightly less inclined to vote Labour than the parts that are being retained and therefore that the nationals with higher Labour scores are probably correct and that in 2019, this would have been been a very narrow Conservative victory as some of the best areas for the Tories in both seats have been moved to other seats.
Walsall, of course, is originally an old market town probably dating back to Anglo-Saxon times but only starting to appear in records from the 12th century, it remained small until the 16th century, but in 200 years it grew from 2,000 people to 86,000 people, it was famous for its saddle manufacture - hence the nickname of the football club, the Saddlers, but also produced chains, buckles and plated ware, there was also a lot of quarrying for limestone in the region. Walsall acted as the larger town for a wider area aided by being a useful railway junction and became quite prosperous, especially in the area which is now part of the Paddock ward. Walsall became a municipal borough in the 1830’s and a county borough in 1889 which was the basis of the old Walsall parliamentary seat until 1955. The county borough included Bloxwich and didn’t change that much until the West Midlands Order of 1966.
The other named part of the seat, Bloxwich was also a small town of Mercian foundation, unlike Walsall, it is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Like Walsall it remained small until the Industrial Revolution at which point it became a place of many trades as well as a local market. It was most famed for the production of awl blades. Unlike many other small Black Country towns it did not have its own local government and was absorbed early into the County Borough of Walsall, it expanded greatly through the provision of council housing in several phases. Bloxwich, depending on how you define it which is always an art form in the Black Country, is around 25-33% of the population of the new seat. It doesn’t feel like a town on the up and its commercial centre is clearly mostly money launderers and charity shops.
Originally Walsall South was the Conservative seat and Walsall North the Labour seat, but the 1974 and 1983 revisions to the boundaries tipped with seats into being Labour-inclined marginals, during the 1983-1997 period neither of them looked particularly safe and their MPs tended to rely on their personal votes and in the case of Bruce George a certain amount of distancing from the Labour party. Bruce was an early pioneer of not putting your party on your leaflets. Both seats became safe during the Blair years but they both looked rocky in 2010 and if it wasn’t for a large UKIP/BNP vote in both seats they might have gone Conservative. That was probably the last time Walsall South was really marginal due to the demographic change in the area, but Walsall North still looked marginal in 2015 and as one of the highest Brexit voting seats went Conservative in 2017 and Eddie Hughes managed anotherlarge swing on top of that in 2019, he clearly had a large personal vote.
Pleck is a mainly residential ward to the west of Walsall centre, it extends out to the M6 and its eastern boundary is the Birmingham - Walsall railway line. It’s mainly residential although the Walsall Business Park is to be found here and the Walsall Manor hospital complex. It’s a majority-minority ward, only 33.9% of people here are white that almost has a South Asian majority (49.5%), most of the them are Muslim (39.9%) which is the largest religion in the ward. Only 45.8% of people own their own homes here with a large social sector (25.1%) and a lot of private rentals. 34.4% of people do routine or semi-routine work and only 14.7% are in white collar work, there are substantial numbers of full time students (10.8%). 31.6% of people have no qualifications and only 22% have a degree. It has very high levels of household deprivation. Pleck is usually very strongly Labour in local elections.
Palfrey, on the the other side of the Birmingham to Walsall railway is very similar to Pleck in terms of its composition. It is mainly residential, there is a lot of social housing, what employment land it has is mainly by the railway lines around Bescot. It is a majority Asian ward (61.1%) and only 27.3% of people are white, it is also just majority Muslim. 53.6% of people own their own homes here with 22.4% in social tenancies. The largest single group so people in the NS-Sec classification is Never Worked and Long Term Unemployed at a whopping 21%. 28.7% of people are in semi-routine and routine jobs, only 15.8% in white collar jobs, some 12.2% are students. 29.6% of people have no qualifications and only 22% have a degree. It includes much of Caldmore which is traditional terraces in some areas, there used to be high rises in Caldmore but most of them came down earlier this century. It also has high deprivation but not as high as Pleck. Palfrey is somewhat more competitive in local elections recently but returns Labour councillors, this competition is probably only at the local level.
St Matthews is Walsall’s central ward, taking the in commercial centre, hhe northern third of Caldmore and extended out to the Wolverhampton University campus, it also includes some newer housing north of the Broadway. It is just White majority (50.2%) with a large Asian minority (32,8%) many of whom are Muslims (25.3%). It’s a more mixed ward in terms of jobs with white collar work being on par with semi-routine and routine work, but it still a high number of full time students and double the national average of people who have never worked or are long term unemployed. 30.7% of people here are graduates and only 23.6% have no qualifications. Only 39.6% of people own their own homes here and just over a third have social tenancies. St Matthews usually sees Labour get the majority of the vote in local elections now, but it used to elect Conservatives from 2004 to 2010.
Paddock is the second most wealthy ward in Walsall and the affluent and spacious housing around Park Farm is included in the seat as is less well off terraces of The Chuckery, Gilletty Village which is also middle class and well off is split into Aldridge -Brownhills. Paddock is a majority-minority ward which is 48.4% Asian but Sikhs outnumber Muslims here, but only just. 39.8% of people have degrees here and only 20.1% have no qualifications. It’s the only part of Walsall MBC to have voted to remain in the EU. A whopping 80.7% of people own their own homes here and social rents are a mere 4%. 36.5% of people have white collar jobs here whilst only 18/4% have semi-routine and routine jobs. Paddock has elected Conservatives for the last 20 years without fail but the margins have become tighter.
Birchills Leamore is a council estate ward to the North of the centre of Walsall, Birchills near the centre contains several tower blocks as well as older private housing, Leamore is large council estate, there are areas of employment land scattered around the ward. Whilst Right to Buy has diminished Leamore as a purely social housing area, 40.7% of homes are still socially rented here whilst only 39.2% are owner occupied. It is majority White (71.4%) with a sizeable Asian Muslim minority and a smaller bloc minority. It is very working class 39.4% of people are in semi-routine or routine work and has nearly double the amount of people who have never worked or are long term unemployed. Only 21% of people are graduates here. Birchills-Leamore is competitive at the local level, or at least Cllr Gaz Ali keeps a seat for the Tories here.
Blakenall is similar to Birchills Leamore but on the other side of the Bloxwich Road and with less employment land, it also has a lot more green space specially in the north of the ward where there is new housing being built. The original Blakenall estate has been mainly been redeveloped or rebuilt and is a lot more mixed than it used to be, it’s still fairly grim in places and has the highest crime rate in Walsall. These days its only 37.9% social housing with 43.8% owner-occupied. It’s 70.8% White with an Asian and mainly muslim minority of 14.1% and a smaller black minority of 9.6%. Only 19.8% of people here are graduates and 31.5% have no qualifications. For those that work, because this is another ward with over double the national average of people who have never worked or who are long term unemployed (17.7%). 35.3% are in semi-routine or routine jobs and less than half of that in white-collar jobs. Blakenall has a long and complicated history at the local level mainly based around Comrade Pete and Comrade Dave, the last remnants of the leftwing Democratic Labour split of the 1980’s. They usually have one councillor but the Tories have become competitive here and it can best be described as a three way marginal. It probably favours Labour in general elections except in 2019.
Bloxwich East was historically regarded as the better of the two Bloxwich wards probably because of the streets behind the commercial centre of Bloxwich and Little Bloxwich. Otherwise it is dominated by the northern end of the Blakenall Heath estate and the Lower Farm estate. It is 89.5% White and majority Christian, 50.8% of people own their own home, 35.8% have a social tenancy. 31% of people are in semi-routine and routine work and only 17.8% in white collar jobs, there are high numbers of people who have never worked or who are long term unemployed. Only 18.5% of people are graduates, 31.6% have no qualifications. Bloxwich East used to be a very competitive ward between Lab and Con and saw high UKIP votes in 2014-2016 , it now looks more like a Conservative ward where Labour are still competitive put not winning.
Bloxwich West contains most of the older housing of old Bloxwich between the A34 and the railway station. It has two stations which means that iit is easy to commuter to Walsall and Birmingham, as the ward boundary is the A34 it also contains half of the commercial centre. It contains quite a lot of green space and most of the western boundary is green space or reservoirs. It is the whitest ward in the seat at 92% and majority Christian, 55.8% of people own their own home, 30.5% have a social tenancy. 36.2% do semi-routine and routine work whilst 21.5% are in white collar jobs. 20.3% are graduates here and only 28.1% have no qualifications. Bloxwich West is more Conservative inclined that Bloxwich East and except for 2010-12 has been won by them in recent times.
Overall, this is a majority white working class seat with a significant South Asian and mainly Muslim minority, Owner occupiers are only a plurality here and there is a very high level of socially rented household. There is significant deprivation, high unemployment and very high levels of people who do not work. The number of graduates here is low around 10% less than the national average and this is balanced by around 10% more people than the national average having no qualifications, This would not have been a seat where the Conservatives were competitive even 25 years ago. However, it is very strongly pro-Brexit and there has for a long time been a significant anti-Labour vote in the white councils estates.
The new seat produces a notional which is very close and the difference between the notionals very much comes down to one factor, how you treat the split of Paddock ward. It seems fairly clear to me that the parts of Paddock going into Aldridge-Brownhills are probably slightly less inclined to vote Labour than the parts that are being retained and therefore that the nationals with higher Labour scores are probably correct and that in 2019, this would have been been a very narrow Conservative victory as some of the best areas for the Tories in both seats have been moved to other seats.
