Previewing the Rhiwcynon, Powys by-election of Tuesday 4th June 2024
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
One by-election on Tuesday 4th June 2024:
Rhiwcynon
Powys council, Wales; caused by the resignation of independent councillor Heulwen Hulme.
There are 30 days to go to the general election on 4th July 2024, and there’s plenty for Andrew’s Previews to discuss before then. Coming up in June 2024 we have 15 council by-elections in the diary, plus one piece of unfinished business from last month’s ordinary local elections.
To start off this Tuesday preview we’ll come to the centre of Wales and visit the Rhiwcynon electoral division of Powys, which is a very rural area covering four communities to the north and north-west of Newtown. The name is a portmanteau referring to the Afon Rhiw, a tributary of the Severn which rises here and runs through the north of the division, and to the obscure sixth-century figure of St Cynon. What little we know of Cynon includes that he was chancellor of the monastery on Bardsey Island; he also reputedly founded and certainly gave his name to the church at Tregynon, the division’s largest village. A later age of religion in this area gave us Llanllugan Abbey, founded in the early thirteenth century and one of only two Cistercian nunneries in Wales; its monastery church survives as Llanllugan’s parish church. The fourteenth-century poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, whose surviving work includes a lot of love poetry, left us one poem called Cyrchu Lleian on the subject of wooing one of Llanllugan’s nuns.
Clsoe to Tregynog we find Gregynog Hall, a mansion occupied in the early 19th century by Charles Hanbury-Tracy. He came from the wealthy Hanbury family which owned the ironworks in Pontypool, and he served for many years as a Whig MP for Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire before entering the Lords in 1838 as the first Lord Sudeley. Hanbury-Tracy had chaired the commission which gave Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin the job of building the new Palace of Westminster following the disastrous fire of 1834, which makes it curious that when he rebuilt Gregynog Hall shortly afterwards the chosen building material was concrete, painted black and white to make it look like a timber-framed structure. In 1920 the hall was bought by Margaret and Gwendoline Davies who turned it into an arts centre; Gregynog has hosted a classical music festival on and off since the 1930s, and the concert pianist Llŷr Williams and violinist Enzo Sarici are scheduled to perform there on Saturday. In 1960 the Davies sisters sold the hall to the University of Wales, who turned it into a conference centre and started a tradition of mathematical and statistical conferences being held at Gregynog Hall.
The Llŷr Williams/Sarici concert on Saturday is in aid of the Council for the Protection of Rural Wales, and electoral wards don’t get much more rural than this. In the 2021 census Rhiwcynon made the top 40 wards in England and Wales for residents employed in agriculture, forestry or fishing (15.7% of the workforce). More than three-quarters of its households are detached properties.
Rhiwcynon ward is in the centre of Montgomeryshire, the largest of the three sparsely-populated counties which fused together in the 1970s to form Powys. Montgomeryshire, which is being abolished as a parliamentary constituency this year after 482 years, is the only part of Wales which has never elected a Labour MP: it was a Liberal and then Liberal Democrat stronghold for nearly all of the 20th century, before the antics of MP Lembit Öpik (broke up with his girlfriend to date a Cheeky Girl) and AM Mick Bates (punched a paramedic while drunk), combined with the formation of the Coalition to lead to the Lib Dem vote here falling apart. Montgomeryshire was gained by the Conservatives in the 2010 Westminster and 2011 Assembly elections, and it’s now a safe Tory seat. Craig Williams, the Prime Minister’s parliamentary private secretary, was elected for Montgomeryshire in 2019 after previously representing Cardiff North in the 2015–17 parliament; he is seeking a second term in the redrawn and expanded seat of Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr, and at the time of writing our genial host’s Britain Predicts model has Williams down as the only surviving Conservative MP for Wales in the next Parliament. We’ll see if there’s any truth in that in a month’s time.
It’s only in fairly recent years that party politics became a big feature of local elections in Powys, which was an independent stronghold well into the 21st century. The 2022 elections here returned quite a balanced council with 24 Lib Dems, 17 independents, 14 Conservatives (nearly all from Montgomeryshire), 9 Labour, 3 Plaid Cymru councillors and one Green. The Lib Dems and Labour run a coalition administration at County Hall in Llandrindod Wells.
Rhiwcynon ward has returned independent councillors at all five Powys elections this century, but the last two elections here have been hotly contested. Heulwen Hulme won her first term of office in 2017 at the top of a close three-way split, polling 343 votes against 324 for the Conservatives and 313 for Plaid Cymru. Things were even closer in 2022 when Hulme held off Plaid Cymru’s Ann Jones by just eight votes, 436 to 428; in percentage terms that’s 45–44. Hulme had been Powys council’s cabinet member for highways, transport and recycling going into that election; after 2022 she went into opposition as leader of the council’s independent group. She is now retiring from local politics.
No fewer than eight candidates have come forward to succeed Hulme as councillor for Rhiwcynon. Two of them are independents: Richard Jones is a farmer who lives within the ward at Aberhafesp, while David Markinson is a Llandrindod Wells town councillor who has contested a number of recent Powys council by-elections and got nowhere yet. Plaid Cymru have reselected Ann Jones after her near-miss here two years ago. Also standing are Richard Amy for the Liberal Democrats, Oliver Lewis for Reform UK, Rhodri Parfitt for the Greens, Paul Wixey for Labour and John Yeomans for the Conservatives.
Westminster constituency: Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr
Senedd constituency: Montgomeryshire
ONS Travel to Work Area: Newtown and Welshpool
Postcode districts: SY16, SY21
Richard Amy (LD)
Ann Jones (PC)
Richard Jones (Ind)
Oliver Lewis (Reform UK)
David Markinson (Ind)
Rhodri Parfitt (Grn)
Paul Wixey (Lab)
John Yeomans (C)
May 2022 result Ind 436 PC 428 Ind 84 Freedom Alliance 18
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
