Hackney South and Shoreditch
2010 Results:
Conservative: 5800 (13.53%)
Labour: 23888 (55.74%)
Liberal Democrat: 9600 (22.4%)
UKIP: 651 (1.52%)
Green: 1493 (3.48%)
Christian: 434 (1.01%)
Independent: 141 (0.33%)
Others: 851 (1.99%)
Majority: 14288 (33.34%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 16555 (53%)
Liberal Democrat: 6644 (21.3%)
Conservative: 4382 (14%)
Respect: 1300 (4.2%)
Other: 2347 (7.5%)
Majority: 9911 (31.7%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 4524 (14%)
Labour: 17048 (52.9%)
Liberal Democrat: 6844 (21.2%)
Green: 1779 (5.5%)
Other: 2042 (6.3%)
Majority: 10204 (31.7%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 4180 (13.8%)
Labour: 19471 (64.2%)
Liberal Democrat: 4422 (14.6%)
Other: 2274 (7.5%)
Majority: 15049 (49.6%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 4494 (13.3%)
Labour: 20048 (59.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 5068 (15%)
Referendum: 613 (1.8%)
Other: 3523 (10.4%)
Majority: 14980 (44.4%)
Boundary changes: Minor changes to bring the seat into line with ward boundaries. Loses part of Lea Bridge and Dalston. Gains part of Hackney Central.
Profile: A safe Labour seat in the east end of London. Hackney South and Shoreditch covers Shoreditch and Hoxton, Haggerston, De Beauvoir, London Fields, South Hackney, Hackney Central, Clapton Park, Hackney Wick and Hackney marshes, where part of the Olympic park for 2012 is due to be built.
Given the areas transport links and close proximity to the city period properties in central Hackney are being to be gentrified, and areas like Hoxton and Shoreditch have become popular with artists and fashionable urban professionals. However, the vast bulk of this seat is still troubled, poverty ridden concrete council estates. At 58.5% the proportion of social housing is second only to Camerwell and Peckham within London.
Oddly enough two Labour MPs for Hackney South in a row have defected to the centre party. Ron Brown, MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch from 1974-1983 defected to the SDP in 1981, when he was defeated by Labour`s Brian Sedgemore. Sedgemore in turn defected to the Liberal Democrats shortly before 2005 when he stood down from Parliament. In the 1990s the Liberal Democrats enjoyed success at a local level here, but it never translated into Parliamentary strength and following a difficult period of Liberal Democrat-Conservative control of Hackney council they largely collapsed, leaving every council seat in this ward in the hands of Labour.
Current MP: Meg Hillier(Labour) born 1969. Educated at Oxford University. Former journalist. Islington councillor from 1994-2002. GLA member for North-East London from 2000-2004. First elected as MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch 2005. PPS to Ruth Kelly 2006-2007. Under-secretary of state at the Home Office since 2007 (more information at They work for you)
Simon Nayyar (Conservative) Educated at University of York. Managing director of a public affairs company.Meg Hillier(Labour) born 1969. Educated at Oxford University. Former journalist. Islington councillor from 1994-2002. GLA member for North-East London from 2000-2004. First elected as MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch 2005. PPS to Ruth Kelly 2006-2007. Under-secretary of state at the Home Office since 2007 (more information at They work for you)
Dave Raval (Liberal Democrat) born London. Educated at Cambridge University. Manages a business incubator for The Carbon Trust. Contested Bexleyheath and Crayford 2005.
Polly Lane (Green) 
Michael King (UKIP)
John Williams (Christian Party) 
Denny de la Haye (Independent) Self employed web developer.Paul Davies (Communist League)Ben Rae (Liberal)Nusret Sen (Direct Democracy Communist)Michael Spinks (Independent)Jane Tuckett (Independent)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 96269
Male: 47.7%
Female: 52.3%
Under 18: 25%
Over 60: 13.6%
Born outside UK: 34.6%
White: 57.7%
Black: 27.8%
Asian: 6.7%
Mixed: 4.4%
Other: 3.5%
Christian: 54.1%
Hindu: 0.7%
Jewish: 1.2%
Muslim: 12.9%
Sikh: 0.6%
Full time students: 9.1%
Graduates 16-74: 30%
No Qualifications 16-74: 30.7%
Owner-Occupied: 27.3%
Social Housing: 58.5% (Council: 36.3%, Housing Ass.: 22.2%)
Privately Rented: 11.8%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 11.2%
The collapse of the Lib Dem local government base in this seat requires some explanation. They used to enjoy massive support in the Shoreditch area, in the old wards of Wenlock and Moorfields and not a little in other wards like Wick, Queensbridge and Victoria. In 2002 when the new wards were first fought the Lib Dems won not a single seat here. I know they have similarly collapsed in Tower Hamlets next door but I think there may be different factors at play here. I dont know the answer though. I’m asking
The LDs were identified in the public mind locally with the financial problems, service failiures like the outsourcing of revenues and benefits and political instability when Hackney was a hung council (1996-2001). One of their councillors was jailed for electoral fraud in 2001 and although he sat for a Hackney North ward it had a borough-wide impact.
Organisationally their electoral machine collapsed between 1998 and 2002 – 4 key LD councillors who each probably delivered a ward in the constituency electorally did not restand in 2002 – and the council LD group had become very factionalised and unstable internally.
Thanks for the explanation Luke. Its even more curious that the only seats the LDs did hold in 2002 was in Cazenove which was the succesor ward to Northwold where the elctoral fraud had taken place. Perhaps they effected a succesful electoral fraud in that year too!
This borough and this seat does seem to have a particularly eccentric and erratic voting behaviour, especially at individual ward level. De Beauvoir which had been a Lib /Lab marginal was won by the Tories in the mid 90s, only to become safely Labour in ’02 and ’06 – completely against the tide in London. If the figures I have are correct Moorfields went from overwhelmingly LD in 1994 to overwhelmingly Tory in 1998 and (as Hoxton) Labour in 2002 (65% Tory in 1998 compared with 9.5% in 1994 – surely not ? )
There is a lot of unpredictability here to be sure, except ofcourse it is easy to predict the winner in parliamentary contests here.
This result in 2005 was not bad for Labour at all considering Sedgemore’s eve-of-poll defection and when compared to the party’s rather shaky results elsewhere in inner North London. There is some evidence that Labour has succesfully played off its opponents against each other in some local wards.
Labour’s recovery at local level has been remarkable. It wasn;t so long ago that the Lib Dems were able to win most of the wards in this seat and some of them were safe for that party. Now even as Labour were trounced elsewhere in London in 2006 this constituency returned a full slate of Labour councillors – one of very few in the country where this is now the case (East Ham is another)
It looks like Brian Sedgemore’s defection had the opposite effect on Hackney’s local politics to the one he was hoping for.
I was the Conservative candidate in 2005 and the history is a bit more involved.
The LDs lost out in an all-postal Council vote experiment in 2002, because they ran their usual campaign targetting the last week, only to find lots of people had already voted. They did lose key activists and that usually presages an LD collapse. The Tories have had key activists defect to them from the LDs and they have had good local people in certain places. However, the nature of the place is that they tend to be transitory and the spark dies.
The LDs though, have not recovered and the Tories are very much the opposition to Labour now, especially having taken a seat in the formerly safe Labour ward of Queensbridge early in 2005. Labour of course through everything at that ward in 2006 to get Andrew Boff, (later one of four wannabe Tory mayoral candidates), out.
In Parliamentary terms, the LDs got the benefit of the big anti-Labour/anti-war swing in 2005, which is not suprising given the bohemian nature of the place. My vote did go up though!
There is a suggestion developing that urban Lib-Dems are finding it difficult to keep/find their place in the new environment. Hackeny may have been a pre-cursor of this.
Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.
I remember Andrew Boff was the Tory candidate who had the near-impossible job of trying to hold Hornsey and Wood Green in 1992 against Barbara Roche’s challenge.
I was disappointed to see the Tories have fallen back in the De Beavoir Town area,
having snatched a couple of council by-elections in May 1992 – at around the bottom of the early 1990s recession, but on the same day as the short honeymoon local elections (before Black Wednesday).
I think they might have won a seat there in 1994 aswell, but the 2006 result still had Labour at nearly three times as many votes as the Tories. I wonder why they fell back here, in a relatively good year.
De Beauvoir
London 2008 results – Hackney South & Shoreditch (new boundaries):
{Excluding postal votes}
Mayor:
Lab – 12,070 (58.02%), C – 4,448 (21.38%), LD – 1,749 (8.41%), Green – 1,173 (5.64%)
Constituency Vote, (North East):
Lab – 9,064 (43.91%), Green – 3,275 (15.87%), C – 3,258 (15.78%), LD – 2,737 (13.26%)
List:
Lab – 8,568 (41.26%), Green – 3,432 (16.53%), C – 3,056 (14.72%), LD – 2,180 (10.50%)
POSTAL VOTES for whole of Hackney:
Mayor: Lab – 9,759 (52.32%), C – 5,096 (27.32%), LD – 1,739 (9.32%), Green – 980 (5.25%)
Constituency: Lab – 7,732 (41.68%), C – 4,249 (22.91%), LD – 2,525 (13.61%), Green – 2,373 (12.79%)
List: Lab – 7,335 (39.51%), C – 4,126 (22.23%), Green – 2,356 (12.69%), LD – 1,815 (9.78%)
Hackney South & Shoreditch represented 47.86% / 47.80% / 47.83% of non-postal Hackney votes for the 3 sections respectively.
Big Ken boost here over the GLA, and indeed over 2005 GE.
Looks like Tory vote would be respectable/up when Postals added in.
The Lib Dems have selected Dave Raval here.
The Conservatives have selected Simon Nayyar here.
35-38% BME Community ( Black & Asian) will play a crucial role at next election. If they remain loyal to Labour then Tories have no chance of winning the seat.
Atiq, the Tories have no chance of winning this seat. At all.
Does anyone know why the North East London tranche appears to be selecting in alphabetical order, whereas the South London tranche selected by winnability?
Has the main part of Hackney (including the site of the Hackney Empire) been in Hackney S & Shoreditch since the 1983 redistribution? Before then was it in Hackney Central 1955-83 and Hackney South 1885-1955?
Harry
Might I suggest that you ask fewer of these questions about constituencies in one go as they are disappearing off the Recent Comments list before they can be answered.
It would also make sense if you asked them when Pete Whitehead was on the site as he’s the most likely source of the information you want.
Which seats have included the Hackney Central area? Obviously it was in Hackney before 1885 and then most probably in the Hackney Central division until 1950
I find it somewhat strange that the area itself is named as for a constituency or ward, as opposed to just ‘Hackney’
Which constituency included central Shoreditch (Shoreditch High Street and Shoreditch Church) from 1885 to 1918? It was either Haggerston or Hoxton
Of course after 1918 all of Shoreditch has been in one constituency
Lab Hold= 8,000 maj
I’m running as an independent in this constituency this year (2010).
Ben Rae standing for the Liberal party
Lab Hold
Maj 7500
Lab maj 7,000
Full list (and the longest ballot paper of 2010)
Paul Davies (Communist League )
Denny de la Haye ( Independent )
Meg Hillier (Labour Co-op )
Michael King ( UKIP)
Polly Lane (Green)
Simon Nayyar ( Conservative)
Ben Rae ( Liberal )
Dave Raval ( Liberal Democrat )
Nusret Sen ( Direct Democracy (Communist))
Michael Spinks (Independent )
Jane Tuckett ( Independent)
John Williams (Christian Party )
Michael Spinks – wasn’t he knocked out in about 90 seconds by Mike Tyson?
Doktorb – isn’t this ballot paper the same length as the one in Luton South?
I make it eleven candidates in Bethnal Green and Bow and Camberwell and Peckham, then there are several constituencies with ten candidates.
Apparently one slogan of the “Direct Democracy (Communist) Party” is “Party of Stalin”!
Yes, probably Tyson’s all time best performance (though to be fair to Spinks he was first man to defeat Larry Holmes when he was on verge of equalling Marciano’s unbeaten record).
Anyhow, on topic, Labour by about 8,500 or so from LD’s here.
I stand corrected – Luton South, and HSaS, are the longest ballots in the country this year.
Michael Spinks is standing here on a platform of opposition to the London Olympics. Mr Spinks is MD of the Essex Flour & Grain Company – based at Hackney Wick. According to the Hackney Gazette he believes that “…the demands of security during the summer of 2012 will make it impossible to operate our business.”
“With any significant interruption of vehicle movements onto and away from our site, our current customers will have to get their supplies elsewhere, and we will soon cease to have a business.”
“Mr Spinks, a candidate in Islington South in 1992, is standing under the banner of “Justice for Victims of the Olympics” in Hackney South & Shoreditch.”
Lab 15500
LD 8500
Con 5500
Green 3000
Others 3500
LAB HOLD
It has oft been mentioned by various media that Luton South had the largest number of candidates at this election with 12.
In fact it jointly shared that honour with this constituency where as well as Con/Lab/LD/UKIP/Green there was a Liberal, a Christian, 2 Communists and 3 Independents including Mr Spink mentioned above who finished bottom of the poll with 20 votes.
I see this has already been discussed above. I think the BBC didn’t read it either because they repeated the line about Luton South a number of times on thursday night.
If there were single constituencies for Hackney, Stoke Newington, Shoreditch, Islington and Finsbury what would the results be?
Why hasn’t Meg Hillier thrown her hat into the ring for the Labour leadership? I think she’d be an excellent leader. She’s clever, personble and highly-articulate. I could see her being a threat to Cameron if she were Labour leader.
“If there were single constituencies for Hackney, Stoke Newington, Shoreditch, Islington and Finsbury what would the results be?”
Finsbury would be a grossly undersized seat. It would have been won by the SDP in 1983 and 1987 and by the LDs in 2005 – I suspect it narrowly went back to Labour this time. Shoreditch rather mirrored the situation in Finsbury being the area of greatest strength in Hackney in the 80s and 90s but I doubt they came very close to carrying it in a general election and their support has collapsed there since anyway.
Herbert Morrison was MP for this seat from 1923-24, 1929-31 and 1935-45.
In those days the areas which now comprise Hackney N & Stoke Newington were pretty pro-Conservative, and it was only after WWII that it became a Labour area. More often than not nowadays the Northern seat of the borough give Labour larger majorities than this one, even though all of Hackney’s opposition councillors since 2006 have been in that seat.
For the mapmakers out there it might be interesting to see comparisons of riot areas to YES to AV areas.
I don’t think there’s any correlation. Hackney had the strongest yes vote in the country (which I guess is what prompted the question) and Haringey also voted yes, but Croydon and Enfield were more negative than average for London. Outside London, the only yes votes came in Cambridge, Oxford, and one constituency in each of Edinburgh and Glasgow, none of which saw any rioting.
There was apparently some troble in Oxford but I haven’t heard any detail. In any case the point is correct – there isn’t really likely to be a correlation as the type of people rioting for the most part wouldn’t have voted in the referendum. The only connection I can think is that certain trendy leftie middle class types (who made up the bulk of Yes to AV voters) seem to have a penchant for living in shithole areas, because they enjoy the ‘rich diversity’ and the ‘vibrancy’. A few of them may start to conclude that areas like Hackney are a little bit too ‘vibrant’ even for their tastes
Yes a lot of them will move out over the next couple of years but they won’t want to admit it.
I wonder if the riots might bring property prices crashing down in the worst-affected areas. This might then have interesting and unpredictable consequences on other parts of London.
And who will buy these beautifully restored Victorian houses from the champagne socialists of Stoke Newington and Camberwell? Will they be willing to sell at a significant loss to move to a less vibrant more suburban neighbourhood, and indeed could they afford to?
It would be a shame to see gentrification turned around and for all those restored Victorian properties to fall back into disrepair.
Politically, Clapham is the most interesting of the affected areas and the one where the gentrification has been most helpful for the Tories.
Some friends of ours own a flat on Lavender Hill in Clapham, the road where the rioting was centred. They were on holiday in Australia last week. Also a business associate and friend of mine lives in a beautiful Victorian house close to Clapton station in Hackney, a few roads from the worst of the riots there. Thank God his house and ostentatious 1980s Jaguar escaped unscathed. It will be fascinating to see their long-term reactions to the riots in their areas.
The Miliband and Hillier types are more consumed by a hatred of Tories and “capitalism” to move out of vibrant areas like this.