Vale of York: The challengers slug it out
In 1644, the area now known as the Vale of York witnessed one of the largest and bloodiest battles in English history. At the height of the Civil War, the Parliamentary and Royalist forces lined up against each other just west of York in what became known as the Battle of Marston Moor. The Parliamentary army, its cavalry under the command of a certain Oliver Cromwell, routed the Royalists, killing some 4,000 of their number. York was forced to surrender, and the north of England was lost to the King.
The battle for the Vale of York constituency, in contrast, is unlikely to go down in political history as one of the bloodiest or most hotly contested election struggles. It is held by a Conservative frontbencher, Anne McIntosh, with a 12,000 majority; such is her dominance that none of her challengers from either 1997 or 2001 has come back for a second shot.
And since neither one of her challengers this time around is talking about an upset, the main issue is whether the Liberal Democrats can beat Labour into second place. The Liberal Democrats have chosen Jeremy Wilcock, a former business executive and university lecturer, while Labour have selected David Scott, a lawyer with a trade union background. Both have had unsuccessful attempts at standing for local government, Scott in 2002 and Wilcock the previous year.
- Keighley
- Bethnal Green & Bow
The seat they are contesting starts in York’s northern suburbs and heads further north. Sitting in a bowl between the Yorkshire Dales on one side and the moors on the other, Vale of York is mostly rural; the largest town is Thirsk, in the north of the constituency, which boasts its own racecourse.
Created for the 1997 election, the seat lacks a coherent identity. It often suffers a “ripple” effect from the larger towns outside its borders: when parking prices go up in York, or house prices increase in Leeds and Harrogate, there is a knock-on effect in the Vale.
Farming is a major employer, but the region has not seen the decline suffered by many areas dependent on agriculture, as its unemployment rates are among the country’s lowest.
It is a “pretty varied” area, the Liberal Democrats’ Wilcock says, waxing lyrical about its large rural areas, small market towns and commuter dormitories. His background is in business: 20 years working for the multinational cleaning products company Reckitt Benckiser, then a stint in the Hull University business school.
His biggest bugbear is what he calls the “desperate” need to do something about the hardship facing many farmers and growers in the area. They are finding business more and more difficult, especially in a market where for every £1 spent on food, they get just 8p.
Wilcock says he is “really concerned” that farmers and growers should get a good deal, and will be calling for supermarkets’ buying practices to be made accountable to the Food Trade Inspectorate.
“I know the aggressive practices they use,” he says. However, he is quick to point out he is not calling for price controls – just some degree of recognition of farmers’ rights to ensure they are not selling under forced conditions. Getting people to “buy local” would also help, he says.
For Labour, Scott’s most powerful message is also a business one – but is more broadly focused. Sitting in his offices in the heart of York’s old town, he says the seat fits with his working-class background: his family were miners from way back, but his mother also had to work on a farm to provide them with a second income.
He says he is engaged in an “agenda-setting” campaign, trying to find out what issues matter most to the locals. The issues that his research turns up are familiar ones: the economy, first and foremost; then health services, education and crime.
This suits him perfectly, since the first three at least are firm ground for Labour politicians. His message to voters is: “We’ve had unprecedented growth in the economy, and with that growth you can fund the other projects you need to do. Only Labour can do that.”
He will also be asking voters who they trust to deliver on those issues. Politicians can quote statistics all they like, he says, but what matters is how people feel – and they feel that life has improved in all those essential areas.
On crime, he admits he faces a tougher task to convince voters that Labour has the answers. There, he has to back away from his claim that people’s feelings are all-important, because the perception that crime is soaring is actually contradicted by statistics – those from the British Crime Survey, at any rate -which show crime is down.
“The independent British Crime Survey shows that crime’s at an all-time low, but it’s not that, [it’s] perception of crime, and it’s perception of what people see in the newspapers and what they actually feel when they see more and more locks on the doors.”
Tourism is another issue he feels strongly about. It’s becoming more and more a source of income for the region, driven by new attractions such as the James Herriott Museum in Thirsk, but he does not feel it gets the support it needs.
“You’ve got to have the infrastructure in place. Thirsk is a small market town – to cope with that number [means] including parking, other alternative access to the town and making sure that other facilities build around it to promote the economic growth.”
In a constituency whose villages are as far-flung as the Vale’s are, transport is always important. Scott wants a better bus service, one that will actually make people want to leave their cars at home – “which means reliable, which means clean, which means efficient; and there’s when people start to use bus services”.
Both candidates support the campaign for a new train station in Haxby, one of York’s northern suburbs, to serve the large commuter population. As Wilcock puts it: “Anything that gets people out of their cars and onto trains is welcome.”
Hunting, perhaps surprisingly for such a rural area, has not been a big issue. Scott said he expected his postbag to be full of mail from both the pro- and anti-hunting camps, but has had nothing.
He adds that the vast size of the constituency is forcing him to concentrate on key centres: Thirsk in the north, where there is also a Labour county councillor up for re-election; Easingwold and Boroughbridge in the centre; and the York suburbs in the south.
“I would love to visit every little part of the constituency, every village, and I certainly have been to a number of small villages as well to show that Labour doesn’t think that the villages are unimportant, but in terms of resources..”
The villages of York are not natural Labour territory, but Scott says his reception there has been surprisingly positive.
“Certainly, we don’t get a rough reception, which is what I would have anticipated initially. We get a friendly reception, a polite reception.”
In 1997, McIntosh took 23,800 votes to Labour’s 14,100 and the Liberal Democrats’ 12,700. In 2001, the story was much the same: she gained 25,000 votes – over half of all those cast – while Labour got 12,500 and the Liberal Democrats 9,800.
Both contenders admit McIntosh has a huge majority, but remain upbeat. Scott says there are no “no-go” areas for Labour any more, and that it won seats in 1997 and 2001 that no-one would have ever thought it could win.
He has had many Conservative voters telling him they will not back the Tories this time – which surprises him – and their immigration-centred campaign may turn a lot of people off, he says.
Both candidates, not surprisingly, are bullish about their chances of taking the second spot. Scott says: “The Lib Dems have proved very poor here on the [council in the]
