History
The seat of Barrow and Furness, tucked away in the west of Cumbria beyond the Lake District, is the location for one of Britain's most important industrial centres. The largest town in the constituency, Barrow-in-Furness, grew on the back of the ship building industry and is now the site of the BAE Systems nuclear submarine and ship building operation. This reliance on a single industry associated with controversial defence policies has, in the past, proved politically volatile in a constituency the Labour Party would consider its own backyard. Labour Cabinet member Albert Booth represented Barrow from 1966 but suffered a shock defeat in 1983. Many put this down to widespread fears of job losses because the Labour Party was then signed up to doing away with all its nuclear capabilities including the submarines. The Conservative Party Member of Parliament through the eighties was a Manchester lawyer, Cecil Franks.
As Labour moved back towards the retention of Britain's nuclear capability and following massive job losses in the town's ship building industry, Labour's fortunes revived in Barrow. John Hutton took the seat back for Labour in 1992 and retained it until the 2010 General Election when he was replaced as MP by the Labour candidate John Woodcock. In 2001 he had the support of more than half of all those who voted. There are other industries in the constituency including engineering and chemicals and more than a quarter of all jobs are in manufacturing. Surrounding this industrial mass is some wild and beautiful countryside, a sweeping mix of moors, hills, peaks and coast, including the towns of Ulverston and Dalton-in-Furness.
Read more about this topic: Barrow And Furness (UK Parliament Constituency)
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