How you can help the Lib Dems in Glasgow North East

8.33.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Sat 17th Oct 2009

• [Oct 17] Andrew Reeves writes: THE by-election will be held on the 12th of November.

On Wednesday, the Liberal Democrats launched their campaign: the Lib Dem candidate is Eileen Baxendale, who has been a social worker for over twenty years, with much of her time being spent in Glasgow North East, and she has always wanted to represent those same people she has helped. Now Eileen has her chance. If you want to help Eileen with telephone canvassing or come to Glasgow for a weekend please contact Eileen at Eileen.Baxendale@scotlibdems.org.uk, and if you wish to send a donation please make your cheque payable to "Scottish Liberal Democrats" and send to Andrew Reeves, Scottish Liberal Democrats, 4 Clifton Terrace, Edinburgh, EH12 5DR.

• Robert Waller's description of the seat in the Almanac of British Politics [Routledge, 8th edn. 2007]: ' . . [The seat] . . is one of the most poverty-stricken and deprived in Britain, with the second highest premature mortality rate and a male unemployment rate double the national average, and one of the highest in Scotland.

[It] is somewhat less changed than some others after the radical redrawing of boundaries in Scotland. It contains the whole of Martin's former Springburn division plus three wards including 16,000 electors from Maryhill. These include the crime-ridden and deprived Possil and Milton estates, and do not alter the overall character of the seat as almost uniformly working class. Like several other Glasgow constituencies, North East is dominated by housing schemes towards the edge of the city, to which residents were moved in the inter- and post-war years as a result of slum clearance in the inner city.

The stark tower blocks of Balornock and Barmulloch hang broodingly on their hills above the city centre, and the proportion of social housing in the more peripheral Lethamhill approaches 80%. The seat includes the grim and troubled neighbourhood of Sighthill, where a Kurdish asylum seeker was stabbed to death in the high summer of 2001; over 1,000 immigrants could not be assimilated into a development of only 5,000 inhabitants. There is a large amount of railway influence too, including the remains of the Cowlairs railyard, and in the inner part of the seat is the older and more mixed neighbourhood of Dennistoun, about half of which is owner-occupied.

Overall, however, North East has the highest proportion in social rented housing of any seat in Scotland, the fewest households with a car, and the fewest in professional and managerial occupations. Michael Martin still commands much personal loyalty, but it easy to see why left wing fringe parties took 19% of the vote against him in 2005.'

Related Links:

• [Oct 17] Andrew Reeves writes on Lib Dem Voice

• Cllr Eileen Baxendale has been selected as the Scottish Liberal Democrats' candidate for the seat. The by-election will be held on the 12th of November.