Andrew Morrison, an accountant and Conservative candidate for Glasgow City Council, profiles the constituency of Glasgow North East, where a by-election is due to take place over the summer, once its sitting MP, Speaker Michael Martin, resigns from Parliament next month.
Another year, and yet another key by-election in an area of Glasgow neglected by political parties and their media entourage. By the time polling day in Glasgow North East comes, a year will have passed since the SNP’s John Mason won a totemic victory against Labour in Glasgow East.
The former stomping ground where Sir Teddy Taylor cut his political teeth, Springburn, is in the heart of Glasgow North East. Once the home to many locomotive factories, the area used to produce approximately 25% of all the trains in the world. Maintaining a theme common to most inner-city areas of Glasgow, the community never quite recovered from the decline in heavy industry and manufacturing.
Glasgow North East encompasses some of the most deprived wards in Glasgow City Council on the basis of a host of typical measurements: the percentage of owner-occupied houses, the number of households with no access to a car, the proportion of people who have never worked or claim benefits are all worse than average compared to the city as a whole. In many respects, the area is even more deprived than Glasgow East.
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