Lewisham East
2010 Results:
Conservative: 9850 (23.61%)
Labour: 17966 (43.06%)
Liberal Democrat: 11750 (28.16%)
UKIP: 771 (1.85%)
Green: 624 (1.5%)
English Democrat: 426 (1.02%)
Others: 332 (0.8%)
Majority: 6216 (14.9%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Labour: 17771 (47.3%)
Conservative: 8784 (23.4%)
Liberal Democrat: 8028 (21.4%)
Other: 2978 (7.9%)
Majority: 8987 (23.9%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 7512 (24.1%)
Labour: 14263 (45.8%)
Liberal Democrat: 6787 (21.8%)
Green: 1243 (4%)
UKIP: 697 (2.2%)
Other: 625 (2%)
Majority: 6751 (21.7%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 7157 (23.8%)
Labour: 16116 (53.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 4937 (16.4%)
UKIP: 361 (1.2%)
BNP: 1005 (3.3%)
Other: 464 (1.5%)
Majority: 8959 (29.8%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 9694 (25.9%)
Labour: 21821 (58.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 4178 (11.2%)
Referendum: 910 (2.4%)
Other: 805 (2.2%)
Majority: 12127 (32.4%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Heidi Alexander (Labour) Lewisham councillor since 2004.
Jonathan Clamp (Conservative) born London. Senior manager for BT. Kensington and Chelsea councillor 2002-2006.Heidi Alexander (Labour) Lewisham councillor since 2004.Pete Pattisson (Liberal Democrat) Journalist and teacher. Lewisham councillor.Priscilla Cotterell (Green) Roderick Reed (UKIP) James Rose (English Democrat) George Hallam (Community Need Before Private Greed)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 94123
Male: 48%
Female: 52%
Under 18: 23.3%
Over 60: 17.1%
Born outside UK: 19.1%
White: 73%
Black: 17.7%
Asian: 3.9%
Mixed: 3.8%
Other: 1.6%
Christian: 64.3%
Hindu: 1.9%
Muslim: 3.8%
Full time students: 4.8%
Graduates 16-74: 26.7%
No Qualifications 16-74: 25.4%
Owner-Occupied: 58.6%
Social Housing: 28.8% (Council: 22.4%, Housing Ass.: 6.5%)
Privately Rented: 10.6%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 10.2%
yes we have.
Quite a few seats in half way out south London in particular are like this.
I can’t quite work out which is the more extreme case, Mitcham and Morden seems to have a very loyal Labour vote aswell.
Most of Bromley may be quite nice but my experience of Bexley is that it is far from leafy. What I’ve seen was dominated by horrible White Van Man territory. It’s the kind of place people move to from the East End because they don’t like living near “Effnicks.”
Most of the tory voters who lived in Lewisham in the 1980′s have now probably moved out to places like Orpington or Sevenoaks.
Slightly sweeping to say “most”, Adam! A lot changes in 25 years or so. Many will have moved further than just down the road into Kent.
And if you look at the age profile of voters (particularly Tories) in 1983/1987, perhaps the largest number will have moved very much further afield to a somewhat less corporeal realm than any of Lewisham, Orpington or even Sevenoaks.
I’d like to get all the Lewisham seats on consistent boundaries actually, from 1979 to 2010 to compare across, but the picture is so clear anyway, it may not be the most pressing priority.
The census of 2011 will demonstrate some major changes in the middle-to-outer south east London demographics which I don’t think are yet widely recognised. The ethnic minority population is spreading outwards rapidly and is reaching places like Eltham, Erith, Bexleyheath and Croydon in very large numbers. Lewisham (both West and East, not to mention Deptford which is very different) already has a sufficiently high concentration of ethnic voters to make is completely barren territory for the Conservatives. Eltham may have also gone that way, though more marginally, and there are now large numbers of Nigerians and other west Africans in Bexley – not just in Thamesmead. Croydon Central’s ethnic vote will also have increared considerably since 2005, let alone 2001. Mitcham and Morden has already been discussed.
Bexley is very much white van and taxi driver territory, though it still has Grammar Schools which makes it attractive at a lower price that Bromley. But its ethnic mix is changing visibly from one year to the next.
Getting back to Lewisham, its attraction is that it has street upon street of Victorian and Edwardian housing, and planty of 1920s too. With the exception of Downham/Bellingham it seem to have fewer large estates than many other boroughs (or are they just better hidden?). But is seems to share the characteristic of places like Waltham Forest and Newham in having vast numbers of eastern Europeans – including many Russians, Ukranians and Albanians – presumably because it is cheap.
Oh dear, Benjamin.
Your disparraging remarks about the people of Bexley may yet appear on a leaflet near you.
Glad to be of help. There may be some very nice bits but the areas I’ve seen driving through were all as I described and quite depressing
On the Bexleyheath thread Pete and I had an interesting discussion about how the area was a lot drabber than we imagined.
I think the area south of Bexleyheath town centre is quite nice though, if you go down Townley Road towards the village area.
It’s got a slightly forbidding feel to it north of the town centre as you get near Erith.
“Oh dear, Benjamin.
Your disparraging remarks about the people of Bexley may yet appear on a leaflet near you”
Benjamin needn’t worry. Even more than in Tower Hamlets the LDs are a spent force in Bexley nowadays. They tend to come fourth behind the BNP now in wards they used to win a few years ago
(to be fair though, his description is not entirely inaccurate – as you say we discussed this and I think Old Bexley is quite nice but Bexleyheath and especially Welling are pretty drab)
It is pretty drab, but I think it probably does provide reasonable schools, low crime etc, gardens.
Lewisham is 39th most deprived local authority in Britain.
Its interesting that Blackheath has continued to drift away from the Conservatives as I have always associated it with other middle class liberal areas such as Hampstead, Richmond and Chiswick which have apparantly trended towards the Conservatives as City professionals have moved in.
I would have thought this would also have occured in Blackheath with its proximity to the City and Canary Wharf.
Remember though that Blackheath is actually split into two wards as well as being split across two boroughs. You have Blackheath ward in Lewisham and Blackheath Westcombe in Greenwich. The latter is the more affluent of the two and is still a good ward for the Conservatives as they have two of the three councillors with Labour holding the other council seat. Unlike Lewisham, Greenwich does not have the Lib Dem presence that can be found throughout Lewisham which is why the Tories are still competitive there while being almost totally absent in Lewisham aside from two councillors in Grove Park.
Blackheath is not in the same class as Hampstead or Richmond.
It is more like Muswell Hill or Hornsey, ie. comfortable middle class media/public sector professionals rather than really serious wealth. This accounts for the Tory vote being less resilient than in places mentioned above where there are huge concentrations of city money.
Also the Blackheath ward in Lewisham includes areas well beyond the village including some poor council estates towards central Lewisham and since 2002 areas south of the railway line in Lee. In this respect it is more similar to the Highgate ward in Camden
It is suprising that Downham has not trended more towards the Conservatives like many other LCC estates have done over the last 10 or so years and has seem to prefer the LibDems. Surely if the Tories put in a good fight locally in Ward elections could they not take a seat there? It seems odd that the Conservatives are not particularly strong in the South of the borough given its close proximity to Bromley.
Or is this estate one where demograhics are now working against this happening?