Clacton is a

constituency An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger State (polity), state (a country, administrative region, ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

represented in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

of the

UK Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremac ...

. It contains the seaside towns of

Clacton-on-Sea Clacton-on-Sea is a seaside town in the Tendring District in the county of Essex, England. It is located on the Tendring Peninsula and is the largest settlement in the Tendring District with a population of 56,874 (2016). The town is situated ...

, Frinton-on-Sea and

Walton-on-the-Naze Walton-on-the-Naze is a seaside town on the North Sea coast and (as Walton le Soken) a former civil parish, now in the parish of Frinton and Walton, in the Tendring district in Essex, England. It is north of Clacton and south of the port of H ...

. Clacton has been represented since 2017 by

Giles Watling Giles Francis Watling (born 18 February 1953) is a British Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party politician serving as Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for Clacton (UK Parliament constituency), Clacton since ...

of the

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

. The seat was created in 2010;

Douglas Carswell John Douglas Wilson Carswell (born 3 May 1971) is a British former politician who served as a Member of Parliament from 2005 to 2017, co-founded Vote Leave and currently serves as president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. ...

, who was previously the Conservative MP for

Harwich Harwich is a town in Essex, England, and one of the Haven ports on the North Sea coast. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the north-east, Ipswich to the north-west, Colchester to the south-west and Clacton-on- ...

, won seat at the general election that year. In 2014, Carswell announced his defection to the

UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest par ...

(UKIP); this triggered a by-election in the constituency, which Carswell won with a large majority, becoming UKIP's first elected MP. Carswell retained his seat at the 2015 general election; this was the only constituency won by UKIP at the election. In March 2017, Carswell left UKIP and became an independent MP; he did not stand for re-election in the 2017 general election, and the seat was gained by Watling for the Conservatives.

History

The seat was created for the 2010 general election following a review of the Parliamentary representation of

by the

Boundary Commission for England The boundary commissions in the United Kingdom are non-departmental public bodies responsible for determining the boundaries of constituencies for elections to the House of Commons. There are four boundary commissions: * Boundary Commission for ...

. It was formed from the abolished

constituency, excluding the town of Harwich itself and surrounding areas.

Boundaries

The District of Tendring wards of Alton Park, Beaumont and Thorpe, Bockings Elm, Burrsville, Frinton, Golf Green, Hamford, Haven, Holland and Kirby, Homelands, Little Clacton and Weeley, Pier, Rush Green, St Bartholomews, St James, St Johns, St Marys, St Osyth and Point Clear, St Pauls and Walton. The new seat consists essentially of the former Harwich constituency, minus the town of

itself and a few nearby villages, plus St Osyth and

Weeley Weeley is a village and civil parish in Tendring District, Tendring, east Essex, England. The population of the parish at the 2011 Census was 1,768. It is served by Weeley railway station on the Sunshine Coast Line. It has bus links to Clacton-on- ...

, transferred from the old North Essex constituency. Apart from the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

it is surrounded by the Harwich and North Essex constituency on all other sides. It contains the towns of

, Frinton-on-Sea and

, as well as surrounding villages.

Constituency profile

The new seat is almost completely coastal, comprising seaside resorts along the

Tendring Tendring is a village and civil parish in Essex. It gives its name to the Tendring District and before that the Tendring Hundred. Its name was given to the larger groupings because it was at the centre, not because it was larger than the other ...

peninsula. It shares an inland border with just one constituency –

Harwich and North Essex Harwich and North Essex is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament by Bernard Jenkin of the Conservative Party since its creation in 2010. History The seat was created for the 2010 general election follow ...

. Like some other coastal seats, such as

Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / ...

in Dorset, the electorate is one of the oldest in the country, with a high proportion of retired people, and low numbers of non-White residents. The area has experienced a considerable influx of

White British White British is an ethnicity classification used for the native white population identifying as English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Northern Irish, or British in the United Kingdom Census. In the 2011 census, the White British population wa ...

families from multicultural areas of East London such as

Barking Barking may refer to: Places * Barking, London, a town in East London, England ** London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, a local government district covering the town of Barking ** Municipal Borough of Barking, a historical local government dist ...

and

Dagenham Dagenham () is a town in East London, England, within the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Dagenham is centred east of Charing Cross. It was historically a rural parish in the Becontree Hundred of Essex, stretching from Hainault Forest ...

, leading to the town of Clacton becoming known as "Little Dagenham." The village of

Jaywick Jaywick is a coastal village in the Tendring district of Essex, England, west of Clacton-on-Sea. It lies on the North Sea coast of England, from London and from Colchester. It was constructed in the 1930s as a holiday resort for Londoners, ...

was, in both the

Indices of deprivation 2010 ''The Indices of Deprivation 2010'' (ID 2010) is a deprivation index at the small area level, created by the British Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and released on 24 March 2011. It follows the ID2007 and because much of th ...

and 2015, identified as the single most deprived

LSOA ONS codes are geocodes maintained by the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics to represent a wide range of geographical areas of the UK, for use in tabulating census and other statistical data. These codes are also known as GSS codes, wh ...

in England, out of around 32,000, with unemployment estimated at almost 50%. Many homes are essentially beach huts and lack basic amenities. In the 2007 Index, this area was the third-most deprived in the country.

Members of Parliament

The constituency's Member of Parliament until 3 May 2017, was

, who had previously sat for the

constituency since gaining that seat for the

Conservatives Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...

in 2005. On 28 August 2014, Carswell announced his defection to

UKIP The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest p ...

. Although not required to seek re-election following a change of party allegiance, Carswell triggered a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

, held on 9 October 2014, in which he was elected as the UKIP candidate. He became the first elected UKIP MP. Carswell retained the seat for UKIP at the 2015 general election, seeing his majority cut by roughly three-quarters, with an 11% swing to the Conservatives. Carswell then became UKIP's sole MP in the

, as Mark Reckless, a fellow Conservative defector, lost his seat. On 25 March 2017, Carswell announced on his blog that he was quitting UKIP to sit as an independent MP, saying that "I switched to UKIP because I desperately wanted us to leave the EU. Now we can be certain that that is going to happen, I have decided that I will be leaving UKIP". After

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...

Theresa May Theresa Mary May, Lady May (; née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019. She previously served in David Cameron's cab ...

called a

snap election A snap election is an election that is called earlier than the one that has been scheduled. Generally, a snap election in a parliamentary system (the dissolution of parliament) is called to capitalize on an unusual electoral opportunity or to ...

on 19 April 2017, Carswell announced that he would not stand for re-election, and he endorsed the Conservative Party candidate

. Watling was elected at the 2017 general election; at that election, UKIP's share of the vote fell by 36.8%, one of its largest declines in the country, and the subsequent Conservative victory in Clacton marked the first time every constituency in Essex had returned a Conservative MP since 1987.

Elections

Notes

References

External links

nomis Constituency Profile for Clacton
– presenting data from the ONS annual population survey and other official statistics. {{DEFAULTSORT:Clacton (Uk Parliament Constituency) Clacton-on-Sea Parliamentary constituencies in Essex Tendring Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom established in 2010