UK Swing Maps

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The most interesting one is 1987 because you can see the impact of the Miners Strike extremely clearly. Spot which major coalfield looks more like the rest of the country than other coalfields...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I assume you're referring to Kent - certainly they seem to have voted as southerners rather than mining territory.

No, the Kent coalfield was tiny and only a small part of one constituency (Dover) so wouldn't count as 'major'. And was also ultra-militant, hilariously enough. I mean the Notts/Derbyshire coalfield.

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Yes, the bottom fell out of the historic Tory vote in a big way.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

2001 was such a weird election. One of the main swing patterns is associated with foot and mouth disease...

Here's a map for 2001 as well; note the heavy Tory swing in Havering & the Essex seats bordering London, as well as a lot of blue-collar Northern seats - perhaps the effect of their leader?

There is sometimes a little bounce for parties in places that their leader is from/strong associated with: William Hague hails from Rotherham and there was a definite uptick in support in that area (not that it was a useful uptick in support, obviously).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just as the presence of people like Ken Livingstone were thought to have hurt Labour in London (he saw a big drop in the Labour majority in his own seat), perhaps MPs like Dennis Skinner & Tony Benn had a similar effect in that part of the country? Areas like Sheffield or Liverpool seem to like hard-left MPs so Labour wasn't damaged there (in fact, did quite well!).

The main issue wrt the Notts/Derbyshire miners and the strike has already been mentioned, though the divisions within the NUM were older and had already hurt Labour in Nottinghamshire in 1983 (c.f. the close call in historically safe Mansfield despite its popular - and right-wing - MP).

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The history of the Notts miners is a complicated one - the miners union in the area was formed by a merger in the 30s of the original miners union and a breakaway company union - and a lot of tensions that had existed for a while started coming to the surface in the 70s, mostly because the Notts coalfield was one of the most productive in the country and as the Notts miners began to demand that this was reflected in wages and agreements.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is surprising, actually, is the extent to which the feature extends into Derbyshire.

The boundary is very arbitrary in places, I guess. Though the huge swing in Amber Valley (which was not a wholly coalfield seat - as you know - obviously - but casual observers might not) was pretty obviously caused by David Bookbinder* being the Labour candidate again, not the strike.

_{*The 'controversial' Hard Left leader of Derbyshire County Council. A bogeyman of the national newspapers and so on.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Googling him, he was also the candidate in High Peak in 74 and 79... wrong place, wrong time; I suppose if Amber Valley had existed in 74 and he'd been the candidate, he would have gotten into parliament.

He was even more unlucky than that: before '83 he had been selected for the Ilkeston constituency, which was a safe seat.* But then came the boundary changes in which the constituency was abolished: the eponymous (and v. Labour) town was added to Tory-leaning S.E. Derbyshire (renamed Erewash), and the rest was paired with a lot of Tory territory from the equally abolished Belper to former Amber Valley.

_{*Majority of 14.6% in '79. Might have been uncomfortably close in '83, but even he would have held on.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There were larger swings in places that had taken a particularly harsh battering after the financial crisis hit. The particularly large swings in and around Teesside can mostly be put down to the Corus works in Redcar closing just before the election. Of course there were... um... a lot of places further south where Labour did even worse than the swings suggest, very frequently losing about half their 2005 vote...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes: my point was that just looking at swings flatters our atrocious performance in large parts of the country...