Islington South and Finsbury is the seat of Culture Secretary Chris Smith.
This was not a comfortably safe Labour seat in the 1980s. In 1983, Labour won it with a 363 vote majority. This subsequently increased to 805 votes in 1987, while in 1992 the majority jumped to 10,652 votes. The reason for this poor showing in the 1980s can be attributed to the SDP. In 1982, the sitting Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury, George Cunningham, defected to the SDP. His candidature here under SDP colours in 1983 and 1987 squeezed the Labour vote until the SDP subsequently collapsed.
Islington is said to have been yuppified over the last 20 years - parts of Canonbury and Barnsbury became fashionable residential areas, and trendy bars and shops opened on Upper Street and beyond. However, Islington is still in many parts very much a working class area. There are wards with a high proportion of council tenants, and over half of all housing here is local authority owned ( 55%). There is also a high non-white population here, 15%, which is mainly Afro-Caribbean.
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