St Helens 2012. A working-class town for working-class people, Sentelens is another of those large towns in south Lancashire that just seem to merge into one another. Unlike many of the South Lancashire towns which essentially tied their fortunes to one industry, St Helens diversified rather; it was a centre of the Lancashire coalfield (the last Lancashire colliery to close was Parkside, near Newton-le-Willows), it was a centre for pharmaceuticals (Beechams, among whose offshoots was the orchestral conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, one of the controlling family) and it was, and remains, one of the world's most important centres for glass. Pilkington's factory produces the UK's entire output of plate glass and hence has been instrumental in turning modern architecture into the acres of glass and metal that we know and love today. On the other hand, even they are thinking of moving out.
The smaller towns in the district are just as varied; Haydock is best known for its racecourse, Newton-le-Willows is an ex-pit town which is very slowly turning into a commuter area for the entire North West, while Rainford is essentially for middle-class Scouse exiles who can't afford to live in Sefton. Rainford is not to be confused with Rainhill, which is the place where intercity railway travel started, with the victory of Rocket in the Liverpool and Manchester Railway's 1829 locomotive trials.
The modern stars of St Helens are just as working-class as the town's reputation; one big lad from the town won one flavour of the darts world championship last weekend, the town's rugby league team is one of the best in the world, and, er, Johnny Vegas. Contrary to popular belief, Napoleon was never here.
Continuously Labour-controlled from 1973 until the 21st century, by 2000 the Lib Dems had emerged as the major challengers, with an interesting patchwork of wards having developed with Labour and the Lib Dems having strong wards all over the place, the Tories confined to semi-rural Rainford and the more mixed Windle ward. Labour lost their majority at the 2004 election and in 2006 the Lib Dems took control in a coalition with the Conservatives. Labour got overall control back in 2010, and since then - well - there's nowhere the Lib Dem vote has melted away since 2010 quite so spectacularly as Merseyside. So now the Tories are confined to Rainford, the Lib Dems are confined to the posh village of Eccleston (which they do not look like losing any time soon) and everything else is Labour.
Changes based on 2008:
Lab gain from C
Windle
Lab gain from LD
Moss Bank
Newton
Sutton
Town Centre
Map:
Cartogram (showing each ward in proportion to its voting power):
Split wards are (not taking account of by-elections or defections):
Newton is 2Lab/1LD and the Liberal Democrats are defending in May.
Sutton is 2Lab/1LD and the Liberal Democrats are defending in May.
And, as a bonus, you can have the previously undrawn (by me) map for 2002 and 2003:
As a St Helens RL fan, I must point out it's Sint'elens by local vernacular. The other interesting things is that the accent on the West of the town is more Merseyside, the East more Lancashire. Therefore you can tell where people are from just by how they speak
Everything else is (unfortunately) entirely correct...
