Redistricting...Ireland?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's very hard to speculate. Somethings I don't really know...historically which party would do best in appealing to the rural vote - particularly small farmers and agri-labourers;

Agricultural labourers mostly vote Labour and have done since the '20's (there are, o/c, a hell of a lot less of them now than used to be the case. In some areas there's a direct link between the post-war collapse of agricultural employment and big falls in the Labour vote).

In Welsh terms, I tend to associate small farmers with Plaid, but before then with the Liberals.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Something that may be worth adding here is a little note on the appeal of the Labour Party in North Wales before it started to collapse* in the 1970's; it was largely based around the idea of economic modernisation in order to protect the traditional culture in the area. Labour M.P's (and councillers) would tend to campaign on issues like rural electrification, industrial growth or housing, while also being in favour of devolution and strict restrictions on the sale of alcohol (quite a few were high up in the dominant (in this case Calvinist Methodist) church).

*Which happend for various reasons including global economic problems (which effectively killed dead the hopes of industrial growth and economic modernisation) and the construction of the Tryweryn dam (which the party locally was strongly opposed to, but suffered from anyway. Partly because of the way Plaid cynically exploited the issue, but I digress...). It has actually recovered somewhat from it's '80's nadir though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A further 60-70 seats for the Liberals throughout the 20s would have delayed the rise of the Labour party

If those 60-70 seats had been in Great Britain, yes. Don't think it would have had much of an effect on Labour's electoral rise if those seats were all in Ireland though (I'm of the opinion that the events of 1923 were, by and large, irrelevant... at least as far as Labour is concerned).

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I would have thought an easier (and one actually grounded in some truth; not that smears tend to be all that truthfull, so perhaps that's by-the-by) smear against Labour would have involved making much of the tendency of the party (at the time) to be dominated by people who's religious views were largely found on the more evangelical side of Protestantism.

O/c even this early there were some constituencies in Britain (in Leeds and Manchester. Maybe some other cities as well (Glasgow?) but I'm not sure) in which local Labour parties had good relations with the Catholic Church.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(I'm now Cumbria.. Yay!

Whereabouts?

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This reminds me; it would be interesting to see how what would have been Northern Ireland would have developed politically in absense of partition and perpetual Unionist Party rule.

It might be worth mentioning that in the 1962 Stormont elections the NILP took as high a share of the vote province-wide as 25% (with the total Socialist vote being around 31% or so).
And o/c not everyone in the Unionist Party was right-wing in a conventional sense; those representing working class Belfast seats (the ones that the NILP or assorted Catholic Socialists didn't win) tended not to be and you have to wonder who their voters would have voted for in a more "normal" political situation.

Then o/c you have the Fundamentalist voters in rural Protestant areas. Why would they stick with the Tories in this scenario? After all, they eventually broke with the UUP at the start of the Troubles (after essentially threatening to do so for years).

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I was in Keswick when I first posted that,

Ah, I know Keswick. Nice town (if a little touristy in parts), strange politics.

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I know Carlisle as well. I quite like it, though some don't. Nothing even slightly odd about its politics though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The local Conservative club is outside my hostel as a matter of fact, it seems to be sponsored by some bitter or others (are all political party clubs in the UK sponspored by Alcohol.. It was like that in Lincoln too iirc.)

Labour Clubs, Conservative Clubs and so on don't usually have all that much to do with the political parties themselves, at least not directly.
One old joke is that more people in South Wales drink in Conservative Clubs than vote Tory.

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It's (usually) evenly divided between the three main parties to an absurd extent (controlling for personal votes anyway). They've even given up running candidates against each other at district and town level.

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Because I was told that in 2001, in one of those industrial seats that once had a Tory vote (not in Wales though. I forgot where.) the Tories polled fewer votes than their constituency party has members. And that this was due in part to the Conservative Club being seen as a place to decently drink in, away from pub fights etc.

One of the Liverpool seats maybe? Walton and West Derby (where the Tories are, at best, a fringe party these days) were both Tory until 1964 and had large Tory votes until the 1980's. Could also be Manchester Blackley (ditto. Amusingly the Crumpsall ward (currently the personal fiefdom of the Labour leader of the City Council) was a safe Tory ward until the mid '80's or so).

In Wales another factor would be the traditional alliance between the Tories and the brewers (meaning that the beer in the Conservative Club's was better than elsewhere).
Thinking along those lines a bit more, the Tories (in Wales at least) used to hold their meetings in pubs, while the Liberals held theirs in Chapels.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I actually have some maps of NILP and Catholic Socialist support already. I'll go and dig 'em up.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The main map shows the highest percentage ever polled by the NILP in each constituency; in several cases this was the only time the NILP ever ran a candidate for the seat. The NILP had a lot of trouble finding candidates outside Belfast; especially in rural Catholic areas. The white areas are constituencies that the NILP never fought.
The Belfast inset shows the results of the 1962 elections. The NILP did not run candidates in Falls, Dock, Central, Shankill and Windsor. The first three were all held (and won by) Catholic Socialists of various different stripes, while Shankill was held by Desmond Boal (an economically left-wing Unionist who had voted with the NILP for a motion of censure of Unionist economic policy). The NILP never ran a candidate in Windsor for obvious reasons.

Further notes:

1. While the NILP was, fundamentally, a non-sectarian party, it's quite clear that most of its voters were working class Protestants and that class was a better predictor of its support patterns than liberal non-sectarian sentiment (that most of the party's voters eventually ended up voting DUP or PUP is fairly well documented and shouldn't be at all surprising).

2. The NILP was not the only Socialist party active in Northern Ireland at the time; various Catholic Socialists ran well in Belfast from the '40's onwards, and a hardline Unionist party (the Commonwealth Labour Party) broke away in the '40's and polled well in some strongly Protestant constituencies (over 40% in Ards for instance).
A mention should also be given to the Communists who, somewhat improbably, managed to poll a quarter of the vote in West Down in 1945.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ehh.. Wow.

My reaction as well!

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I'll have a proper look now.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

ULSTER

North Antrim:
Includes: Current UK constituency of North Antrim
Analysis: In this scenario North Antrim would quite possibly be the strongest Tory seat in the whole of the United Kingdom (again, I'm imagining no Ultra-Protestant breakaway). Strong socially conservative views pre-dominate. Clann na Gael or Labour would probably come a very distant second.

Winner of 2005 General Election: Sammy Wilson (Conservative)

Disagree; without the hyped-up "threat" of a Catholic takeover it's hard to see the uneasy alliance between the fundamentalists and the Unionist Party (ie; Tories) lasting for very long. I actually have a strong suspicion that this would (eventually) be a Labour seat; it's a very working class area and the traditional populist undercurrent here is as much anti-"Big House" Unionism as anti-Catholic. Would depend, more than most seats in Northern Ireland, on events since the '20's though.

Fascinating area, btw.

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Would eventually turn into a safe Labour seat (Larne obviously has a lot of Labour potential, but so do the north Belfast suburbs).

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A safe Tory seat early on, but would eventually have turned into a Labour/Tory marginal. Whether this would have happend in the '60's or the '80's is the interesting question here.

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Not sure about this one either; West Belfast was always surprisingly hostile to the old Nationalist Party, while various Socialist parties and factions always did well. Like North Antrim, much depends on "events", but remember; it did vote for Gerry Fitt for years.

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Would be a safe Labour seat (and as a shipbuilding constituency, likely since 1935). There is actually a large (by Northern Ireland standards...) middle class element to the seat (the far east of the seat), but not enough to cause Labour any problems. I suspect that the Tories would actually do extremely badly here (are you at all familier with the way voting patterns have changed in Liverpool since the War?)

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Another safe Labour seat, though likely since the '60's in this case (despite being more working class than East).

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Could well be Labour, but I actually think that's less likely than in the other three Belfast seats. Worth noting that the old Ulster Liberal Party broke double digits here in 1962.

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A Tory seat in all but very unusual circumstances methinks. O/c it should be noted that Bob McCartney was as much a Labour M.P as the SDLP's are, but his election (and re-election) was a total fluke.

It should be noted that a Tory polled 32% here in the '92 General Election.

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In terms of class and so on, this is very like South Antrim and its voting patterns would, probably, be quite alike.

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There are indicators that Labour could do well here (not least the 40% polled by Commonwealth Labour in Ards in the '40's), but there are also indications that it could be one of the Tories better seats as well (a Tory candidate polled 15% here in '92. Nowhere near North Down levels o/c, but much higher than anywhere else).

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Quite possible; this was one of the Nationalist Party's strongholds after all.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Something very strange happend to some of the posts in this thread; I did manage to save this one though:

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Boo! Maybe I want an argument

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Labour always had a similar position on Irish issues to the Liberals; that's the main reason why the word "eventually" crops up a lot in my comments on the Antrim seats.

But if all of Ireland had remained part of the U.K it's hard to see Labour ignoring Ireland (as it did in real life) for too long; it's certain that the NILP and Irish Labour parties would have merged into Labour (but I think there would have been some organisational independence; especially in around Belfast) and it's likely that the party would (eventually) target what is now Northern Ireland (the economy of which was based around textiles and shipbuilding) quite seriously.
Labour-in-Ireland's internal tensions could well be quite "fun".

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I think 1929 might have been too late a date to save the Tories in much of Northern Ireland; but it would be early enough to keep them in a stronger position than class would suggest for a few decades. The big question is why things would have started to fall apart for them; I think the '60's is the obvious decade, but I can't imagine a peacetime Greater Belfast reacting with anything other than utter hatred to Thatcherite economic policies, so a further fall in the '80's seems likely. O/c maybe the Tories would have an electoral pact with your NPP by then? (presuming that nothing happens to seriously inflame sectarian tensions o/c).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Upper Bann:
Constituency contains Portadown, Drumcree and other Sectarian flashpoints. Making this an unlikely Labour constituency. The divisions here would be between CnaG and the Tory-Unionists, with the latter in ascendancy.

Winner of the 2005 General Election: David Trimble (Conservative)

The NILP was capable of polling well across Armagh; and that was before all the New Town developments (and the less said about those the better...).
I suspect that this would normally be a safe Labour constituency (from the '70's onwards anyway) but much more volatile than the working class Belfast seats (the model here is Irvine in Ayrshire, btw).

Local politics would be nasty; I suspect that a BNP-like party would probably poll very well in places.

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Probably a three-way marginal between IPP, CnaG and Labour (as surprising as this might seem, South Armagh was held by the NILP from 1938 until 1945).

I'm going to have to have a close look at the old Nationalist party vote, btw.

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Agree with the overall picture, but the details are confused and interesting; South Tyrone had a decent-sized NILP vote (though I think some of that seat is in Mid Ulster. Wonder where the Labour vote came from...), South Fermanagh was probably the safest Nationalist seat in Northern Ireland, while the other two Fermanagh seats actually gave double figures to Liberal candidates occasionally.

Also note; most Anglican constituency in Northern Ireland.

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Yeah; this is basically the Catholic equivilent of North Antrim.

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Sounds about right.

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Sounds about right (not sure if it would be even "fairly safe", but the Tories would do better here than in most of the rest of Northern Ireland).

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Would be a safe Labour seat.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually Afleitch (or Al, or whoever..) I have to ask a question, In Britain do they divide constituencies by Electorate or by Total legal inhabitants (including those under 18).. This would make quite a difference actually.

Electorate

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There are a lot of New Town's over here, so I don't see why it would exist.

Btw, how much Irish demographic stuff be there online?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Some detailed descriptions of the Dublin seats would be nice

(when thee posts them I'll have a guess at how they'd vote. As I have no life either).

I think, the Irish equivalent to Crouch end is here but also has some very working class areas.

Crouch End is LibDem

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Finished North Dublin now and have completed Cork - Douglas & Ringaskiddy - very interesting constituency actually..

Cool

I'll have a look over them now