Politics of Edinburgh

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't know Edinburgh very well - there are some Tory wards where I wouldn't expect them to be, though probably anyone who knows Edinburgh would expect them there...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Interesting - diolch, etc. Must ask about another dark blue ward - the one in the east. Like I said, I don't know Edinburgh so apologies if this seems laughably obvious.

I did once do maps (long since lost) of the 2007 elections in Edinburgh out of curiosity - I seem to remember that the Labour and SNP patterns looked amusingly alike.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On the colour scheme issue, I started liking purple a while ago though don't think I've ever used it. Might cause problems if you were doing maps of the '80's, what with purple being the obvious SDP colour. Oh well.

Ah right, heard that name. Still weird to include it in the city.

You should know by now not to expect much sanity in local government boundaries in Britain. Actually, Edinburgh's is fairly reasonable. Have a look at the local authorities covering the Yorkshire cities.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What happened in '68?

The Wilson government was extremely unpopular by that point, and Labour did extremely badly in local elections just about everywhere (that is, even worse than the worst of the round just finished has been for the current government and even worse than the worst of local elections were for the Major government), though the scale differed from place to place - Labour didn't win a single ward in Birmingham that year, but held up fairly well in Coventry (much to the relief of Richard Crossman). London (which had then (and still does) all-out elections) in particular was a total disaster with Tory majorities (I think quite lopsided ones too) elected in such unlikely places as Islington and Hackney - there were significant longterm consequences of that as the old right-wing Morrision machine in the inner London boroughs was devastated to an extent that similar machines in other cities weren't, meaning that it was easier for various New Left groups to take over local Labour parties in London than elsewhere.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Old right-wing Morrison machine?

Now I'm interested. You must go on.

The political machine built by Herbert Morrison, basically. It dominated the politics of the LCC and of the boroughs within it from 1934 until the GLC elections of 1967 and the borough elections of 1968. It was structurally very different from other right-wing* municipal Labour machines (which were, and are, usually dominated by local Unions and people close to them - Birmingham Labour is a classic example - and which have rarely had more than a handful of individual Party members) in that it was a centralised mass-membership party. In each borough it tended to be dominated by Alderman and other senior councillors who had the same level of control over the Party in their own borough as Morrision (and later Isaac Hayward**) did over them. 1968 basically destroyed the machine because the organisation revolved around the Alderman and senior councillors - most of whom lost their seats that year. At the same time, individual membership of all political parties was dropping like a stone, removing the foundations of the system as well.

*a relative term of course... and sometimes less than that. Style, structure and sociology having as much to do with the label as politics in some cases.

**the longest serving head of elected London government; he was the leader of the LCC from 1947 until it was abolished in 1965.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So, then, it was an American-style machine?

No - it wasn't reliant on patronage (which is the key feature of classic American political machines) but on a large number of Party members. Though it was more like one than most right-wing municipal Labour machines (including the one in West Ham - which was only formally added to London in the '60's and was thus outside Morrison's influence. Labour control there goes back to the end of the 19th century) were and are.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If the LCC had remained, would Labour have been defeated in 1968?

The GLC elections were in 1967, but probably. However, they wouldn't have been defeated in 1977 (also a Tory landslide).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If the government was so unpopular, how did Labour do so well at the 1970 general election?

Well a lot of the reasons for the government's unpopularity were pretty superficial (devaluation for example) and when they went away...
Though, reading diaries and memoirs of Labour politicians from the time is hilarious - they were for the most part genuinely amazed at the sudden upturn in the Party's poll ratings and struggled to explain it.

But now we should probably end this threadjack

[Filuwaúrdjan]

To return this thread back on topic... details on the Moderates would be nice . I have a rough idea of what they were, but not much more than that.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just noticed something strange from parliamentary results in Edinburgh in the interwar period; the first is that West was actually won by Labour in 1929 (obviously on a split vote, but 38% in that part of that city in that year seems surprising) and near won in 1945. But the really interesting thing is this...

Edinburgh Central, % majorities

1918: Lab 2.6
1922: Lab 15.8
1923: Lab 35.8
1924: Lab 21.0
1929: Lab 35.2
1931: Con 23.1
1935: Con 12.6 (note: Labour gained East, previously much weaker than Central, that year)
1945: Lab 21.0

...which produced a reaction of "wtf". I'm wondering whether slum clearance in the Old Town (if there was any; I don't know much about Edinburgh's municipal history during this period) might explain it. The electorate in 1918 was a tad under 31,000, peaked at about 41,000 in 1929 (the first election after the equalisation of the franchise) and was down to 33,000 in 1945.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't think there was a boundary change during the period?

The only boundary changes during the period were in constituencies that had become too large, so, no.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ah, that would explain things somewhat. Anything on the weird results in Central?