Previewing the Biddulph (Staffordshire) and Stevenage by-elections of 19th January 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
There are three by-elections on 19th January 2023, for four seats. Three of them are in the same small town on the northern edge of the Midlands, with which we start:
Biddulph North
Staffordshire county council; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Ian Lawson; and
Biddulph West
Staffordshire Moorlands council; a double by-election caused by the deaths of Conservative councillor Lawson and independent councillor Hilda Sheldon.
Welcome to the Garden Town of Staffordshire, as Biddulph likes to advertise itself. Located a few miles north of the Potteries conurbation, Biddulph is tucked away in a Pennine valley between the high ground of Biddulph Moor to the east and Mow Cop to the west.
Mow Cop effectively marks the western edge of the Pennine high ground, and in good weather it is a fantastic viewpoint for the Cheshire plain with views extending as far as Snowdon. The Cheshire/Staffordshire boundary runs along the crest of a ridge which extends north-east from Mow Cop and divides Biddulph from the Cheshire plain.
January isn’t the time of year when gardens at at their best, so anybody coming from afar to campaign in this by-election may be wondering what the Garden Town title is all about. However, on days of better weather the National Trust property of Biddulph Grange, just to the north of the town, is well worth a visit. The Victorian mansion of that name was once home to James Bateman, who had a huge passion for horticulture and laid out a notable garden on his estate with all sorts of different themes — Egyptian here, Chinese there, and so on.
The Biddulph North division of Staffordshire county council takes in the West and North wards of the town plus the village of Biddulph Moor to the east. This lies on high ground, through which runs the main watershed of Great Britain. Biddulph’s valley drains to the north, with Biddulph Brook flowing into the Irish Sea via the rivers Dane, Weaver and Mersey. Biddulph Moor, on the other hand, is notable as the source of the UK’s third-longest river: the Trent, which drains to the south through Stoke before taking a lazy course towards the Humber estuary and the North Sea, rises here.
In 2011 Biddulph Moor ward’s British-born population (98.8%) was the highest of any ward in the West Midlands and in the top 15 wards in England and Wales; it also made the top 50 wards in England and Wales for its White British population (98.6%). Biddulph North ward (centred on Biddulph Grange) was in the top 40 wards in England and Wales for owner-occupation (92.7% of households) and in the top 100 for White British population (98.4%). Biddulph West ward (which includes the town centre) was in the top 90 wards for residents born in the UK (98.4%). I’m still using 2011 census figures here because as far as I’m aware we don’t yet have figures by ward from the 2021 census, but this is clearly a corner of the country which immigration has passed by.
The Biddulph North county division had been held by Ian Lawson of the Conservatives since he gained the seat from Labour in 2009. He had turned it into a safe seat, and he was re-elected for a fourth term of office in 2021 with a 58–36 lead over Labour.
Since 2009 the Conservatives have enjoyed a large majority on Staffordshire county council, but Staffordshire Moorlands district council has been a different matter. This has been under Conservative leadership since 2007, but the party hasn’t had a majority for all of that period. Staffordshire Moorlands is an area which tends to elect a lot of independent councillors, and the 2019 elections here returned a hung council: 25 Conservatives, 17 independents, 13 Labour councillors and a Lib Dem. Since 2019 there have been three by-elections in the town of Cheadle, all of which resulted in the Conservatives gaining independent seats; that plus some defections mean that the Conservative group now has the 29 seats it needs for a majority, notwithstanding Ian Lawson’s death.
The Staffordshire Moorlands parliamentary seat has voted for the government at every election since it was created in 1983, although this has more to do with decisions of the Boundary Commission than actual swings or even marginality: the 1997–2010 constituency of that name included Kidsgrove, which was a strongly Labour-voting town at the time, whereas the current seat doesn’t include Kidsgrove and is safely Conservative in general elections. Since 2010 the local MP has been Karen Bradley, who was a Cabinet minister throughout the May administration: first as culture secretary, then with the Northern Ireland portfolio. In a notorious 2018 interview with The House magazine (link), Bradley admitted that she hadn’t fully understood Northern Irish politics before taking on the brief:
“I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought for example in Northern Ireland, people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice-versa. So, the parties fight for the election within their own community. Actually, the unionist parties fight the elections against each other in unionist communities and nationalists in nationalist communities. That’s a very different world from the world I came from.”
Well, we all have to learn somewhere. If you’re like Karen Bradley and looking with some bemusement at an unfamiliar political scene, don’t worry: Andrew’s Previews and Britain Elects are here to help you with that sort of thing. However, Biddulph West ward is rather a tough place to brief readers on because its previous election results in this century defy analysis. The 2003 election here returned two Lib Dem councillors and a Ratepayer, who was elected with a majority of one vote over Labour. They were cleared out at the 2007 election at which an independent slate won all three seats. Top of the poll that year, and at every election since, was Hilda Sheldon.
The independent domination of Biddulph West ward didn’t stick. In 2011 independent councillor Frank Harris stood down and his seat was gained by Labour. In 2015 independent councillor Elaine Baddeley lost her seat to the Conservatives’ county councillor Ian Lawson, producing a three-way Independent/Conservative/Labour split in the ward. The 2019 election confirmed that unusual three-way split, with shares of the vote being 52% for Hilda Sheldon, 25% for Labour and 22% for the Conservatives — a rather poor Conservative performance, especially given that their slate was guaranteed one seat due to insufficient opposition candidates.
Hilda Sheldon was probably the person most responsible for my description of Biddulph as the Garden Town of Staffordshire. Sheldon was appointed MBE in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to Biddulph in Bloom, which she ran for nearly three decades alongside her day job running a shoe shop in the town.
On 8th June 2022 Hilda Sheldon’s family reported her missing after she left her home without her keys, money or glasses. Shortly afterwards her body was recovered from a nearby reservoir. She was 80 years old. An inquest in September heard that Sheldon had been behaving out of character in the months leading up to her death and that she had left a note for her family. The coroner recorded a verdict of suicide.
In October 2022, district and county councillor Ian Lawson passed away at the age of 85 after a long illness. He had served on the county council since 2009 and on the district council since 2015, and he was chairman of Staffordshire county council for three years from 2012 to 2015.
A double by-election is being held today in Biddulph West ward to replace both the late councillors, the Conservatives’ Ian Lawson and independent Hilda Sheldon. Sheldon’s popularity in the ward was such that there a lot of votes up for grabs here, and two independent candidates are hoping to follow in her footsteps: Neil Eardley and Alistair McLoughlin both already represent this ward on Biddulph town council, and they are hoping to step up to Staffordshire Moorlands council. The Conservatives nominated two candidates for the two seats, but one of them has withdrawn; their remaining candidate is Rathi Pragasam, who is standing under the label “Local Conservatives” while giving an address in Stoke-on-Trent. She is a businesswoman described as “the Diversification Diva”. Given that Labour finished second here last time they might fancy their chances with their slate of Dave Proudlove and Charlotte “Charlie” Smith; Proudlove is a writer and photographer who contested Biddulph South ward in 2019, while Smith is a Biddulph town councillor. Last on a ballot paper of seven candidates for two seats is Ian Waite for the Green Party.
Rathi Pragasam is also the defending Conservative candidate in the Biddulph North county council by-election. Here she is up against Labour candidate Nigel Yates, who has been the party’s Staffordshire Moorlands district councillor for Biddulph West ward since 2019. Completing the county ballot paper is another Staffordshire Moorlands councillor: Andrew Hart has sat on the district council as an independent since winning a December 2004 by-election in Biddulph North ward, and he is also a Biddulph town councillor. Those are your candidate lists for two fascinating by-elections.
Biddulph North
Parliamentary constituency: Staffordshire Moorlands
Staffordshire Moorlands wards: Biddulph Moor, Biddulph North, Biddulph West
ONS Travel to Work Area: Stoke-on-Trent
Postcode districts: CW12, ST7, ST8, ST13
Andrew Hart (Ind)
Rathi Pragasaam (C)
Nigel Yates (Lab)
May 2021 result C 1819 Lab 1127 Grn 213
May 2017 result C 1808 Lab 1111 LD 168
May 2013 result C 1084 Lab 904 UKIP 852 LD 139
June 2009 result C 1539 Lab 1130 LD 811
May 2005 result Lab 2862 LD 1891 Ind 1832
Previous results in detail
Biddulph West
Parliamentary constituency: Staffordshire Moorlands
Staffordshire county council division: Biddulph North
ONS Travel to Work Area: Stoke-on-Trent
Postcode districts: ST7, ST8
Neil Eardley (Ind)
Alistair McLoughlin (Ind)
Rathi Pragasam (C)
Dave Proudlove (Lab)
Charlie Smith (Lab)
Ian Waite (Grn)
May 2019 result Ind 873 Lab 423 C 374/325/179
May 2015 result Ind 1306/866 C 1052 Lab 984/789 Grn 382
May 2011 result Ind 904/584/410 Lab 593 Moorlands Democratic Alliance 441 C 290 LD 137/89/87
May 2007 result Ind 842/561/543 Ratepayers (Staffordshire Moorlands) 425 LD 373/200 Lab 340/313
May 2003 result LD 640/620 Ratepayers (Staffordshire Moorlands) 455 Lab 454/413/307 Ind 249 C 249
Previous results in detail
Bedwell
Stevenage council, Hertfordshire; caused by the resignation of Labour councillor Matt Creasey.
Staffordshire Moorlands and Stevenage are next to each other in this preview and in the Local Elections Archive Project’s index of councils, but this is a quirk of the alphabet rather than indicating they are similar areas. If Biddulph is a corner of the country which immigration has largely passed by, then our Labour defence this week is in a place which wouldn’t exist if it were not for people moving there from other parts of the country.
Welcome to the UK’s oldest New Town. Stevenage has quite a long history despite that: it is located on the Great North Road and the East Coast Main Line, and as such it was a location for coaching inns long before post-war town planners got their hands on the place.
The town’s railway station was resited next to the new town centre (rather than next to the old town centre, almost a mile to the north) in 1973. It is the first stop out of London for LNER intercity trains. Stevenage’s modern town centre was the first shopping area in Britain designed from the outset to be fully pedestrianised, and the passage of time has shown up some of the disadvantages of being first; regeneration of the town centre has been on the council’s agenda for quite a while now.
On the opposite side of the station is a commercial and industrial area dominated by a large and very new building, officially opened in 2021 by the then prime minister Boris Johnson, which is the UK headquarters of the space and defence division of Airbus. Stevenage is a major location for the UK’s space industry, and a number of satellites and satellite components manufactured in Stevenage have ended up in orbit under the auspices of the European Space Agency. This is not an EU body, and the UK remains a major player in the ESA’s space programme.
The Bedwell area itself is New Town housing to the east of the town centre, built in 1952. Its New Town origins can still be seen in that 43% of the ward’s households (as of 2011) are socially rented. Despite all those trains to London, this is not a commuter area. The eastern boundary of Bedwell ward passes through the Fairlands Valley Park, an oasis of green space in the middle of the urban area.
Stevenage council is one of the few districts which has had a Labour majority continuously since the 1974 reform. There’s nothing to suggest that this will change in the near future. The current council has 23 Labour councillors plus this vacancy, against nine Conservatives and six Lib Dems.
As with Staffordshire Moorlands, the Stevenage parliamentary seat has voted for the winning party at every election since its creation in 1983. Stevenage town isn’t quite large enough for a parliamentary seat of its own, so the constituency of that name takes in some rural parishes to the south and east of the town, including Knebworth. This creates what is traditionally a marginal parliamentary seat, although Stephen McPartland currently enjoys the largest Conservative majority in the constituency’s 39-year history. McPartland had a brief period as a junior Home Office minister at the end of the Johnson administration, but he has spent most of his 12 years in the Commons on the backbenches. He was chairman of the Regulatory Reform select committee from 2017 until it was wound up in 2021.
Bedwell ward, by contrast, is a safe Labour unit. Stevenage has one of the UK’s oldest ward maps, with the town’s current ward boundaries dating from 1999. All previous elections in Bedwell ward over the last 23 years have resulted in large Labour majorities, with the last contest in May 2022 giving Labour a 57–27 lead over the Conservatives. That’s a swing in Labour’s favour from May 2021, when Matt Creasey was elected for his first term with a 54–33 lead. Labour also hold the Bedwell division of Hertfordshire county council, which also takes in most of the Pin Green and Martins Wood wards to the north.
Matt Creasey resigned as a councillor at the start of December and this by-election is being held to replace him. Defending for Labour is Conor McGrath, who manages a pub in the ward (the Poachers) and is the youth officer for the local Labour party branch. The Conservatives have selected Matthew Wyatt, who works in the accountancy trade. Also standing is Chris Berry for the Lib Dems, who also stood here in May last year.
Parliamentary constituency: Stevenage
Hertfordshire county council division: Bedwell (residential areas), Broadwater (town centre), Shephall (unpopulated corners)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City
Postcode districts: SG1, SG2
Chris Berry (LD)
Conor McGrath (Lab)
Matthew Wyatt (C)
May 2022 result Lab 941 C 452 LD 191 TUSC 73
May 2021 result Lab 979 C 596 LD 175 TUSC 55
May 2019 result Lab 813 C 356 Grn 213 LD 119
May 2018 result Lab 1001 C 506 Grn 151
May 2016 result Lab 917 C 415 Grn 147 LD 95 TUSC 68
May 2015 result Lab 1530 C 687 UKIP 605 Grn 136 LD 117 TUSC 31
May 2014 result Lab 901 UKIP 514 C 301 LD 80 TUSC 37
May 2012 result Lab 897 C 258 UKIP 218 Grn 88 LD 78 TUSC 39
May 2011 result Lab 1107 C 421 UKIP 258 Grn 114 TUSC 53
May 2010 result Lab 1114 C 744 LD 522 UKIP 421
May 2008 result Lab 788 C 467 LD 243
May 2007 result Lab 1037 C 430 LD 241
May 2006 result Lab 1144 C 561
June 2004 result Lab 869 C 408 LD 365 Socialist Alternative 119
May 2003 result Lab 1398 C 440 LD 399 Socialist Alternative 112
May 2002 result Lab 1616 C 448 LD 336 Socialist Alternative 116
May 2000 result Lab 1122 C 376 LD 282
May 1999 result Lab 1135/1097/1097 LD 262/246 C 235
Previous results in detail
If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them — going back to 2016 — in the Andrew’s Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale
