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District council elections 1st May 2003

Tory vote 760/1773 = 43 percent.  

Bilsthorpe is an ex-mining village surrounded by farms.  Much of the previously council- or coal board-owned housing stock has now been transferred to housing associations, and some has been sold to the occupants.  

The colliery closed in 1997 following three fatalities in a serious pit accident in 1993.   There is still considerable reluctance among ex miners and their families to vote Conservative.  The party is perceived as having let them down after their support of Mrs. Thatcher during the Scargill coal strike of 1983.    

The main local issue on the doorstep was the council's plans to expand the already large landfill site adjacent to the village by piling the rubbish high above the village.  There is also an alleged threat by Banks's to open a clay pit on a separate green field site adjacent to the village.  The residents fear that, if planning permission is given, the resulting hole in the ground will be used for landfill for years after the clay has been extracted.   

The Labour MP Paddy Tipping is not popular.  He failed to support the village when it fought against the landfill site being used to for dispose of foot and mouth carcasses, and his failure to vote in the final Iraq war debate was also noticed.   

Both the farmers and the villagers support the Countryside Alliance and oppose the government's plans to ban foxhunting.  There is considerable hostility to New Labour, but ex miners find it hard to vote Conservative.  In the adjacent ex mining village of Blidworth an Independent councillor was elected.  Neither Hazel nor I came across any support for Lib Dems.  

Jim Thornton 3 May 2003

Click here for the results for the whole of Newark and Sherwood District Council

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Last modified: February 05, 2006