A significant portion of the work on the decline of the Conservative Party in Northern English cities since 1945 has been qualitative in approach, focusing on interviews, general party histories, and (auto)biographical accounts of the actions of key political figures. Despite the wealth of knowledge generated by quantitative electoral studies on a national level, this has yet to be applied to the more localised cases of specific English cities. This is a shame, especially when one considers the significant changes in the structure of party support since 1945 – specifically the collapse of the Conservative Party in northern urban areas, which have rapidly become Labour heartlands.
This paper is an attempt to remedy this lacuna, and build upon previous work undertaken by the author in the context of Liverpool. Focusing on Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, and Birmingham, and using local election and census data, this paper attempts to map out the changing dynamics of party support in Northern English cities from 1945 to 2003. This paper finds that whilst most cities followed a general, and expected, trend, we can see significant local variation between Northern cities – context does indeed matter. The extent to which Conservative vote share can be attributed to structural factors, and also variation in the rate of Conservative decline, varies amongst cities. Especially pertinent is the legacy of religious sectarianism, the extent of immigration within cities, and the strength of the rival Liberal Party as structural factors on Conservative support.
