Previewing the two council by-elections of 28th July 2022
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Two by-elections on 28th July 2022:
Pilsley and Morton
North East Derbyshire council; caused by the death of Labour councillor Ann Holmes.
With the summer holidays now underway just two polls are taking place today, with Labour and the Conservatives defending one each. Our Labour defence is in north-eastern Derbyshire, in a ward which wraps around the southern side of the town of Clay Cross. Pilsley and Morton ward is an area of villages in post-industrial countryside, with both settlements in the name being pit villages. Pilsley Colliery was operational until 1957, Morton Colliery survived into the 1960s.
In last week’s Previews we touched on the railway pioneer George Stephenson’s early career at Killingworth, Tyne and Wear. Morton Colliery was founded by the Clay Cross Company, which was originally a spinoff of Stephenson’s railway operations. George Stephenson had been the contractor for what is now the Midland Main Line between Derby and Leeds; he found coal and iron reserves while digging that railway’s tunnel under Clay Cross, and set up the Clay Cross Company to exploit that. By the time Morton Colliery was sunk in 1855 the Stephenson family had sold out and the Clay Cross Company was controlled by England’s “richest commoner”, Sir William Jackson. Jackson was certainly well-off enough to sit in Parliament in those days before MPs drew a salary, and he was a Liberal MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme from 1847 to 1865 and then for the local constituency of North Derbyshire in the 1865–68 parliament.
The collieries in Pilsley and Morton are long gone, but there is still industry here: a large industrial estate on the edge of Clay Cross has spilled over into this ward. One remnant of past industry which can still be seen today is the Ogston Reservoir on the ward’s southern boundary, which flooded part of the Amber valley including the village of Woolley in 1958. Pilsley itself is the source of another river which gives its name to a parliamentary seat, the Rother.
Pilsley and Morton ward is in neither the Amber nor the Rother valley constituencies, however. In fact the boundaries here are a little confusing. Although the main service centre for the ward is Chesterfield, about seven miles to the north, this area is administered as part of the North East Derbyshire district which surrounds Chesterfield on three sides, and it is included within the Bolsover parliamentary seat.
Bolsover was one of the iconic Conservative gains in the December 2019 general election, as Labour MP Dennis Skinner went down to defeat after 49 years’ service in the House of Commons. Had Skinner been re-elected, he would have become Father of the House as the last survivor of the 1970 Parliament. Instead Bolsover is now a Conservative seat; its MP Mark Fletcher is only the third Bolsover MP since the constituency was created in 1950.
Early on the morning of 30th June this year Mark Fletcher was in the Carlton Club in London, a favourite haunt of Conservative MPs, and he had to intervene in what he described as a “very serious situation” involving the Government Deputy Chief Whip Chris Pincher. Fletcher reported the situation to the Chief Whip, leading to Pincher becoming the first in a flurry of government resignations which eventually brought down the Prime Minister Boris Johnson. One of those resignations was that of Mark Fletcher himself, who stepped down as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Business Department on Wednesday 6th July: his resignation letter did not pull any punches, describing Mr Johnson as “an apologist for someone who has committed sexual assault”, “crass and insensitive”, and “unfit to lead our country”. Remember kids, this is why Boris Johnson is soon to be an ex-Prime Minister. Chris Pincher is still an MP and this column has not yet seen fit to start researching a Parliamentary Special for Pincher’s Tamworth constituency.
The North East Derbyshire district also has a Conservative majority these days, although this predates the so-called “Red Wall”. The district includes the belt of ex-industrial commuter towns between Chesterfield and Sheffield, where the Conservatives gained the North East Derbyshire constituency against the national trend in 2017 and made large gains in the May 2019 local elections. Three years ago North East Derbyshire elected 30 Conservatives, 18 Labour councillors, three Lib Dems and two independents.
Most of the remaining Labour councillors are concentrated in the Clay Cross area, including Pilsley and Morton ward. In all five elections this century Pilsley and Morton has returned a mix of Labour and independent councillors, with the late Labour councillor Ann Holmes (listed on the Local Elections Archive Project under her first name, Patricia) being the only ever-present ward councillor. Holmes had sat for Pilsley and Morton since 1991, and she twice served as chairman of North East Derbyshire council.
The ward was left untouched by boundary changes in 2019 at which independent councillor Andrew Cooper topped the poll with 43% of the vote. Holmes was re-elected in second place at the top of the Labour slate with 31%, and the final seat went to independent John Funnell who gained a seat from Labour. In last year’s Derbyshire county elections the ward was included within the Clay Cross South division, which was the only seat Labour held in North East Derbyshire; Labour councillor Kevin Gillott was elected with a 55–40 lead over the Conservatives.
County councillor Kevin Gillott now has the chance to double-up at district level as the defending Labour candidate for this by-election. There are no independent candidates this time so the main challenge to him well come from the Tories’ Dave Sankey, who is a swimming coach from Pilsley. Also standing are Nadine Dart for the Lib Dems and David Kesteven for the Green Party.
Parliamentary constituency: Bolsover
Derbyshire county council division: Clay Cross South
ONS Travel to Work Area: Chesterfield
Postcode districts: DE55, S45
Nadine Dart (LD)
Kevin Gillott (Lab)
David Kesteven (Grn)
Dave Sankey (C)
May 2019 result Ind 692/496 Lab 504/460 C 243/189/162 LD 173/111
May 2015 result Lab 1278/1028/816 Ind 1026 C 714/681/643 Patriotic Socialist 266
May 2011 result Ind 833/754 Lab 763/471/431 C 359/313
May 2007 result Ind 887/857 Lab 499/351/323
May 2003 result Ind 634 Lab 561/538/443
Previous results in detail: 2003–15, 2019
Lexden and Braiswick
Colchester council, Essex; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Martin Leatherdale.
For out Conservative defence this week we have come to England’s oldest and newest city. This is Colchester, the first major settlement of Roman Britain (as Camulodunum) and one of eight new cities created in 2022 to mark the Platinum Jubilee.
Our by-election today takes place on the western edge of Colchester. Lexden is a former village which was once important enough to give its name to a Hundred of Essex, but it’s now firmly part of the Colchester built-up area. This is the first part of Colchester which travellers will see as they enter the city along the London Road and the Cymbeline Way; Shakespeare’s Cymbeline was based on the real-life Cunobeline, who ruled this corner of Britannia as king of the Catuvellauni from AD 9 to AD 40. Cunobeline is reputed to be buried in this area in the Lexden Tumulus; this earthwork was excavated a century ago, yielding a silver medallion bearing the head of the Roman emperor Augustus which can now be seen in the Colchester Castle Museum. Next to the tumulus is the Colchester County High School for Girls, a grammar school which has educated two current MPs: Stella Creasy (Lab, Walthamstow) and Virginia Crosbie (C, Ynys Môn).
Braiswick is of rather more recent vintage. This lies on a road running north-west from Colchester towards West Bergholt, and has seen a large amount of housing built in this century. It may help in this regard that Braiswick is close to Colchester’s intercity railway station, which lies quite a long way from the city centre.
This is the only Colchester ward to contain a mixture of urban and rural areas, as Lexden and Braiswick also takes in three rural parishes to the west of the city. These are West Bergholt, Eight Ash Green and Aldham. Aldham’s village sign features a silhouette of Philip Morant, an eighteenth-century local historian who was the rector here; one more famous Aldham resident of recent times was the Blur and Gorillaz singer Damon Albarn, who lived here for a time in his youth.
Lexden and Braiswick ward was created in 2016. Despite the name the main predecessor ward is West Bergholt and Eight Ash Green, with part of the former Lexden ward, Braiswick (previously in the oversized Mile End ward) and Aldham (previously in Great Tey ward) making up the numbers. With the exception of Mile End where the Lib Dems were competitive (the current Mile End ward is safe Lib Dem), all of these were safe Conservative units and Lexden and Braiswick ward has followed in that vein.
The outgoing councillor Martin Leatherdale was first elected in 2021 in a by-election to replace Conservative councillor Brian Jarvis. Leatherdale finished Jarvis’ term and was then re-elected in May for a full term of his own, polling 52% of the vote against 22% for the Lib Dems and 15% for Labour. This was against the backdrop of a rather poor election for the local Conservatives who lost four of the ten seats they were defending and the leadership of Colchester council. This council has had no overall majority for many years, and the new administration which took over after May’s elections is a coalition of the Lib Dems, Labour and the Greens.
Having only just secured re-election to Colchester council, Martin Leatherdale then left the Conservative party on 31st May and resigned from the council the following day. It appears that, with the Conservatives no longer in power on the council, he has decided to concentrate on his business interests. Leatherdale has had a long career in the retail sector, and since 2019 he has been the manager of the Lion Walk shopping centre in Colchester city centre.
Defending for the Conservatives is West Bergholt resident Sara Naylor, whose Twitter profile reads “I live in the ward. I’m Conservative.” Short and to the point. The Lib Dems have selected Kieron Franks, who chairs the Essex branch of the party and the Eastern branch of the Young Liberals; Franks contested Tiptree ward in May, and in the 2021 local elections he stood for election simultaneously in Colchester and Doncaster. Labour have selected Catherine Bickersteth, a former school headteacher. Those are your three candidates.
Parliamentary constituency: Colchester (part: unparished area), Harwich and North Essex (part: Aldham, Eight Ash Green and West Bergholt parishes)
Essex county council division: Constable (part: Aldham, Eight Ash Green and West Bergholt parishes), Drury (part: Lexden area), Mile End and Highwoods (part: Braiswick area)
ONS Travel to Work Area: Colchester
Postcode districts: CO3, CO4, CO6
Catherine Bickersteth (Lab)
Kieron Franks (LD)
Sara Naylor (C)
May 2022 result C 1416 LD 607 Lab 406 Grn 302
May 2021 double vacancy C 1941/1597 LD 594 Grn 532 Lab 396/333
May 2019 result C 1745 LD 442 Grn 403 Lab 209
May 2018 result C 1812 LD 407 Lab 338 Grn 181
May 2016 result C 1712/1704/1609 LD 515/410/367 Grn 386/247/219 Lab 335/321/284
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
