2010 Constituency Profile: Aberavon

A rock solid Labour seat where a popular local MP is sure to be re-elected.

Candidates

Keith Davies (Liberal Democrat)
Hywel Francis (Labour)
Caroline Jones (Conservative)
Paul Nicholls Jones (Plaid Cymru)

2005 Result

[table id=21 /]

Current Majority
13,937 (46.3%)

Swing needed
23.2%

Local Authority

Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council

Key Towns

Port Talbot and the Afan valley, Skewen, Llandarcy and Briton Ferry

Social Profile

Aberavon is an area that saw substantial depopulation in the 1980s with the closure of part of the steel strip mile that dominates its skyline. Indeed, the town seemed for a time to have lost its way while the neighbouring towns of Neath and Bridgend kept more of their original character. In 1991, 8.7% of the population were described as Welsh-speaking – this had risen to 10.5% by 2001.There is considerable social deprivation in the Afan valley it is one of the five constituencies which make up the Valleys Initiative project, set up by 5 Labour MPs in 2001 to assess the needs of local communities.

Economic Profile

Aberavon is Wales’ foremost steel town and, despite a reduction in capacity, this industry still dominates the local economy. The decision of Corus to retain much of its capacity in Port Talbot while closing Ebbw Vale and Llanwern was followed by the decision to rebuild a blast furnace destroyed in a tragic explosion, and signals steel very much has a future in the town. The scaling back of the petro-chemical industry has given way to new energy technology, with the pioneering Baglan Energy Park, and this vision is changing the area and helping to undo some of the decline of the 1980s.

Political Profile

There is a very low rate of political change in Aberavon – it has only been represented by 5 MPs since the seat was first created in the 1920s. Sir John Morris (now Lord Morris of Aberavon) sat as MP for the seat for an impressive period of over 40 years from 1959 to 2001; and another notable previous incumbent was the first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsey McDonald, who represented Aberavon from 1922 to 1929. Even in Labour’s electoral wilderness years of the 1980s, nothing remotely threatened this party stronghold. Labour easily won Aberavon in the National Assembly elections of 1999, 2003 and 2007 when neighbouring seats came under pressure, not least because no single opposition party has ever previously presented itself as the leading challenger. Labour’s hegemony is unlikely to be seriously challenged in this seat – but Plaid Cymru has fought good campaigns here in the past and will hope to achieve a credible second for the first time.

Prediction

Hywel Francis will undoubtedly be returned as the MP for Aberavon.

See also:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/guide/seat-profiles/aberavon

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey electionmap service. Image reproduced with permission of Ordnance Survey and Land and Property Services – where electionmaps, Ordnance Survey and Land and Property Services are hyperlinks to http://www.election-maps.co.uk, http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ and http://www.lpsni.gov.uk/ respectively.