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The Oldham East and Saddleworth parliamentary election will be re-run following a court judgement that has removed Labour's Phil Woolas as the constituency's MP.
If the ruling stands Woolas will not be able to contest the new election. The poll will be a headache for the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives as it will pit the coalition partners against each other for the first time in a Westminster election.
One of the classic electoral contests in recent history has been the battle for this area. The Conservatives had held the Littleborough and Saddleworth seat safely through the genial Geoffrey Dickens from 1983, but the writing was on the wall for the Tories when his death led to a by-election in 1995. Such a knife-edged three-way marginal was bound to attract massive interest and so it proved.
The Liberal Democrat Chris Davies took the seat with the Conservatives slipping into the predicted third place. In the 1997 general election Chris Davies lost the seat to his 1995 by-election Labour opponent, Phil Woolas. In the 2001 general election there was very little change to the relative positions of the three main parties.
It was not the success or otherwise of Mr Woolas and his mainstream opponents that had the television cameras back in numbers, but rather the increase in votes for the British National Party in the North West towns of Oldham and Burnley. For the BNP to claim over 11 per cent of the vote in 2001 in a largely rural seat was rather disturbing. However, the BNP advance on Oldham was halted when they polled almost 3,000 fewer votes in the 2005 election, which were shared evenly among the three mainstream parties. In fact, the incumbent MP, Phil Woolas, increased his majority to over 8 per cent, his highest percentage majority since he was first elected in 1997.
At local authority level the constituency is served by Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, which remained under no overall control following the 2008 elections. However, the Lib Dems replaced Labour as the largest party with 30 and 23 seats respectively.
Boundary changes have moved all the wards that fell within Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council into the neighbouring seat of Rochdale. In addition, the Oldham Borough wards of Medlock Vale and Royton South are now entirely within Oldham West and Royton's boundaries.
Woolas saw off a strong challenge from the Liberal Democrats in 2010 and scraped back into Parliament with a majority of just 103.
Economic and Social Profile
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As the marginal nature of the seat suggests, this is a diverse constituency. In small parts of the seat contained within the town of Oldham there are many racial and poverty-related issues, culminating in and highlighted by the riots of 2001.
The rest of the seat, and the overwhelming part of its geographical area, is in the Saddleworth region. Saddleworth is one of the most middle-class parts of the North West and houses prosperous commuters to Manchester.
Unemployment here is much lower than in the western division, but is still slightly higher than the national average in May 2008.
Political issues
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Oldham’s educational standards were considerably below the national average in 2007. In the constituency itself (under its existing boundaries) the Blue Coat CoE School and Crompton House CoE School produces excellent GCSE results, while Breeze Hill and Counthill Schools prefrom well below the average.
Oldham Council and their partners in the Greater Manchester Police have been looking with great concern at the underlying problems that have led to the social tensions which have created the atmosphere in which the BNP can thrive. A way must be found to improve the cohesion and harmony between the two communities that are currently in a state of cease-fire but not really peace, and it is to be hoped that an environment can be created that gives little welcome to the far right in the electoral contests of the future.
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