Number of members 1 | Electorate 65,249 (December 2010) | |
 | ||
West Bromwich West is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2000 by Adrian Bailey, a member of the Labour Party and of the Cooperative Party.
Contents
Boundaries
1974-1983: The County Borough of West Bromwich wards of Greets Green, Hill Top, Horseley Heath, Lyng, Market, Tibbington, Tipton Green, and Wood Green.
1983-1997: The Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell wards of Great Bridge, Greets Green and Lyng, Princes End, Tipton Green, Wednesbury North, and Wednesbury South.
1997-present: The Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell wards of Great Bridge, Oldbury, Princes End, Tipton Green, Tividale, Wednesbury North, and Wednesbury South.
West Bromwich West is one of four constituencies covering the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, covering its west and north-west. Main settlements are the towns of Tipton and Wednesbury, others the villages or suburbs of Great Bridge, Princes End and Tividale.
History
The constituency was created in 1974 and took its present boundaries (except for partial ward shares with West Bromwich East) in 1997.
The seat has been held by either the Labour Party or one of its members as the Speaker of the House of Commons since its creation - the most marginal majority in 2005 was still a majority of 16.3% of the vote.
At local level, Labour safely hold most of the wards of the constituency, who were, from 2008 until 2012 followed by the controversial British National Party who held four councillors, ahead of the Conservatives with three, hence a fairly strong BNP showing in the 2005 general election, receiving nearly 10% of the vote.
From 1974 until 2000 this was the constituency of Betty Boothroyd, who was first elected for the former West Bromwich in its by-election in 1973 and became the first woman to be Speaker of the House of Commons in 1992. She retired as Speaker in 2000. The ensuing by-election was won by Labour Co-operative candidate Adrian Bailey, who has held the seat to date.
Constituency profile
Wednesbury and Tipton are economic centres and historic towns with considerable suburbs although overshadowed in the service sector by nearby Birmingham. Since the recessions of the 1970s and early 1980s, West Bromwich West has suffered from an acute, stubbornly great minority of unemployment, and as a result of the current recession which began in 2008 unemployment peaked at 14.3%. Only Birmingham, Ladywood nearby had higher unemployment rates in all of Britain.
Workless claimants who were registered jobseekers were in November 2012 higher than the national average of 3.8%, at 8.1% of the population based on a statistical compilation by The Guardian, this also exceeded the regional average of 4.7% of those of working age in receipt of this benefit, which is seen as the lower gauge of the breadth of unemployment.
Elections in the 2010s
For 2015, the Class War Party announced Mark Lees, but he failed to stand.
Elections in the 1990s
1Boothroyd stood as "The Speaker seeking re-election."