Andrew Morrison, an accountant and Conservative candidate for Glasgow City Council, profiles the constituency of Glasgow North East, where a by-election is due to take place over the summer, once its sitting MP, Speaker Michael Martin, resigns from Parliament next month.
Another year, and yet another key by-election in an area of Glasgow neglected by political parties and their media entourage. By the time polling day in Glasgow North East comes, a year will have passed since the SNP’s John Mason won a totemic victory against Labour in Glasgow East.
The former stomping ground where Sir Teddy Taylor cut his political teeth, Springburn, is in the heart of Glasgow North East. Once the home to many locomotive factories, the area used to produce approximately 25% of all the trains in the world. Maintaining a theme common to most inner-city areas of Glasgow, the community never quite recovered from the decline in heavy industry and manufacturing.
Glasgow North East encompasses some of the most deprived wards in Glasgow City Council on the basis of a host of typical measurements: the percentage of owner-occupied houses, the number of households with no access to a car, the proportion of people who have never worked or claim benefits are all worse than average compared to the city as a whole. In many respects, the area is even more deprived than Glasgow East.
On the political history of the area, the last time the constituency was contested by the Conservatives was in 1997. After the Labour incumbent Michael Martin was elected Speaker in 2000, the party kept to tradition and did not contest the seat against the Speaker in both the 2001 and 2005 General Elections. The SNP, on the other hand, continued to stand a candidate, along with the usual fringe parties such as the BNP. Michael Martin, although criticised for being an ineffective Speaker, is respected in the area as an MP.
The local Conservative Association Chairman, Randle Wilson, has spoken of his personal respect for Michael Martin too:
“Although Michael and I are obviously different politically, I respect him as a person and he served his constituents the best he could. This constituency is not fertile territory for the Conservatives, but we have a band of dedicated activists in Glasgow who will pool together and show that there are no no-go areas for the party in this city.”
I have to agree – we are the only party capable of the real change everyone in this country needs and we have a democratic duty to ensure as many people as possible, in every community, hear our message of change and have the opportunity to vote for it.
In 2005, when Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party stood a candidate in the constituency for the first time, there was ostensibly some confusion among the electorate. Although this fringe party only achieved 0.3% of the Scottish national vote, they pulled 14.2% of the vote in Glasgow North East. The theory I would offer to explain this anomaly would be that uninformed voters cast their vote for the only candidate to have ‘Labour’ under their name on the ballot paper, which Michael Martin would obviously not have had as the Speaker candidate.
Professor Bill Miller of Glasgow University recently stated on Scottish TV that the swing required by the SNP to take the seat is smaller than that achieved in Glasgow East: being 17.8% versus the 22.5% swing achieved by John Mason last year. I would argue that a substantial proportion of the Socialist Labour Party’s votes were intended to be cast for a Labour Party candidate. On the basis of that assumption, the SNP actually require a much higher swing of 24.9%.
That is not to say another shock defeat is off the cards, because Labour have been heavily damaged by the ongoing expenses fiasco, and their national support has fell further than it had done at the time of the Glasgow East by-election. Their dire situation is far from envious. The fight the SNP have on their hands is still colossal though – especially considering John Mason won his by-election on the back of his high-profile as the SNP group leader in Glasgow City Chambers, and the fact he was a popular and well-established Councillor for a ward within the Glasgow East area. The SNP have no such figure to represent them in Glasgow North East.
All of that considered, if the Nationalists do win the seat, then the shockwaves that will be sent through Number Ten this time around will be much more significant and may even topple Gordon Brown himself.
