This seat includes the mining towns of Hemsworth, South Kirkby and South Elmsall - at the very heart of the Yorkshire coal field - and Featherstone.
This large, rugby league-loving mining village of some 10,000 souls has historically been a Labour fortress, and has helped to bolster the party’s domination of this part of the world. In the May 2000 Wakefield Borough elections, Labour took 55 seats, leaving the Tories, LibDems and Independents to fight it out for the remaining nine.
In all general elections between 1950 and 1974, voters returned the Labour candidate with a majority of at least 30,000. It is said that Labour votes used to be weighed rather than counted in this constituency.
Those majorities have not been quite so mountainous in recent elections, due in part to boundary changes which brought 12,000 voters from the essentially Conservative Wakefield South ward into the seat.
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