1987: Athershaw North
About Athershaw
For more information about Athershaw from the perspective of a casual observer, see: Athershaw (Earth: A Reader's Guide)
Our Only Fictional Town
A Grim Northern Town
Athershaw is the only major settlement in our fictional narrative that you will not find on Google Maps or anything penned by the cartographers of the Ordnance Survey. It is intended to be a generic post-industrial town somewhere in that part of south Lancashire which became part of Greater Manchester in the 1974 Local Government reorganization. It is the kind of town you might imagine the phrase “it’s grim up North” was invented for though Athershaw is actually slightly less grim than many of its neighbours.
Athershaw North is the Parliamentary constituency Jennifer unsuccessfully contested at the 1987 UK General Election.
Why Does It (Not) Exist?
The existence of Athershaw (in terms of this meta narrative) predates the decision that everywhere on Earth referenced in Visions in Blue should be a real place. It remains in the narrative as a fictional location because that way it serves to avoid any premature disturbance of the historical timeline that Jennifer’s candidacy in a real constituency at the 1987 General Election might otherwise have caused.
What Basis in Reality Does Athershaw Have?
Athershaw has no basis in physical reality. It is not a real town given a fictitious name; it exists alongside the real life localities of Greater Manchester not instead of any of them. It is a representation of an industrial town with elements typical of many in the region without actually being any one of them.
Exact Geographical Location
The location of Athershaw within Greater Manchester is strictly undefined; there are no maps, real, invented or imagined that depict where exactly it might be or how it fits in between its neighbours.
There are, however, some clues that constrain where it could be:
Geopolitical Status
Is Athershaw a Metropolitan Borough?
Athershaw’s status as the eleventh borough of Greater Manchester (and, prior to 1974, as a County Borough) is undefined. It is one of those towns which is really just a little too small to be a Metropolitan Borough in its own right but just a little too big to sit happily in someone else’s back yard.
The fact that the Parliamentary Constituency is named Athershaw North suggests it is, in fact, a large enough town that at least one other constituency has a part of Athershaw within it. This leads to an inescapable logic that either Athershaw is a relatively large town, bound to be a borough in its own right or else it is a relatively small one that has two constituencies named after it only by virtue of the existence of the larger borough.
Another scenario (ironic but currently un-canonical) is that Athershaw doesn't actually exist at all even in this alternate reality (as a named settlement) but that it was an arbitrary name given to the Locomotive Works by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (perhaps taken from a nearby farm or small colliery), subsequently adopted by the new Metropolitan District when it was cobbled together in 1974 from an assortment of smaller Urban and Rural Districts.
The Boundaries of Greater Manchester
It is also not defined how the existence of Athershaw - alongside everywhere else that exists in the real world - might affect the external boundaries of Greater Manchester. The best way to conceptualize a solution to this problem is to assume that both versions of Greater Manchester are exactly the same size and shape in outline but then imagine that the version which includes Athershaw is (in an entirely non-canonical and unexplained way) just a little bit bigger on the inside with the fabric of reality distorted just enough to allow it to exist and connect seamlessly with its neighbours.
Athershaw North Parliamentary Constituency
Athershaw North is the fictional constituency which Jennifer, in her first outing as a parliamentary candidate, unsuccessfully contested at the 1987 General Election.
The current working assumption is that there are two Athershaw constituencies, Athershaw North and Athershaw South which, together, are exactly coterminous with the fictional area that has been added to the map of Greater Manchester. According to data retrieved from the (real life) House of Commons Library, there were 650 constituencies represented in Parliament between 1983 and 1992. The two Athershaw seats exist in addition to all of these, meaning there were 652 constituencies in our version of reality at the time of the 1987 election.
Parliamentary Representation
Despite its industrial past, Athershaw has never been a town where the Labour Party could take the electorate for granted. Athershaw North is not so much a “marginal” constituency as a true bellwether, only once (in 1979) while it has existed in anything like its current form, has it elected a member who did not represent the party which won the election nationally. In 1987 the trend held good and Jennifer had her arse well and truly kicked.
Rarely are electors of Athershaw tempted by the promises or charms of third party candidates, so it is always comes down to a straight fight between the blue and the red candidates.
Athershaw South is a somewhat more left-leaning constituency. Being more closely associated with the area’s industrial past and more working class as a result, it tends to elect Labour candidates more often than not but it is still far from being a safe seat for the Labour Party: Athershaw South failed to return a Labour member at either the 1983 or 1987 elections.
Jennifer in Athershaw North
Why Jennifer Stood in Athershaw North
Quite how and why Jennifer fetched up in Athershaw as a General Election candidate are not at all clear; even Jennifer herself is not certain any more: "I honestly couldn't tell you how I’d even allowed myself to get into that position in the first place, never mind how I'd ever thought it was a good idea."
It is probable she had some pre-existing connection with Athershaw, or at least with people who lived there, possibly through professional collaborations with academics at Manchester University, one or more of whom were also party activists in Athershaw. Jennifer is simply not the sort of person who would have hawked herself around the political circuit until she found some random constituency willing to take her. One possibility (not canonical) is that she was an unwitting pawn in someone else's game.
Narrative Origins
In the beginning, it was intended that the initial events of Visions in Blue would take place in 1987, five years prior to the opening we have now. The premise was that Jennifer would win her seat in Parliament in a marginal constituency from the Conservatives at the 1987 General Election. It was to be a fictional constituency somewhere in the North of England that would be a big ask for the Labour Party to take but vital, nevertheless, if they were to win enough seats to be able to form the next government. This scenario was actually conceived somewhat prior to that election taking place in real life and it was intended that the overall result in our timeline would replicate that which played out in real life except, of course, come what may, Jennifer would win her seat. Whether she would be sitting on the Government benches or in opposition, whether her result bucked local or national trends or was very much in line with them was left very much to the fates.
Better Luck Next Time, Jennifer
As things turned out, the notion that Jennifer (or, for that matter, anyone else) could have taken Athershaw North for the Labour Party proved extremely fanciful, far more so than, say, the existence of unicorns and fairies. In the real timeline, just one incumbent Conservative was defeated in the whole of the North West of England. As time moved on (in terms of the creative process) it seemed sensible to defer Jennifer’s election to Parliament until the next General Election, whenever that might be, but to otherwise keep the circumstances unaltered.
As things turned out this temporal shift did nothing to make Jennifer's victory in Athershaw North any less implausible. The best she might have been able to hope for would have been not to lose quite so badly.
Why Jennifer Could Not Win in Athershaw North
To be clear, it is not that the Labour Party failed to gain any seats from the Conservatives in either 1987 or 1992, for they certainly did, just not in the type of constituency we envisage Athershaw North to have been at the time. It was in such marginal constituencies that Labour needed to make significant gains (by, in many cases, overturning substantial Conservative majorities) if they were to win sufficient seats in Parliament to form a government. This simply did not happen and, once the dust had settled on the 1992 result, we were again looking at a scenario such that if Athershaw North had fallen to Labour, so would many, many more seats like it. This was a divergence from actual history that we did not wish to pursue meaning that, for Jennifer to have won that seat, it would have needed either extraordinary circumstances peculiar to that constituency (which would have been fine had they been real circumstances in a real constituency but too contrived, perhaps, if applied to our fictional one) or else an extraordinary performance from the candidate herself.
Now, much as we love Jennifer and recognize her as a gifted mathematician, she is, at least before her Calmarendian experiences, no more than a competent local political figure and certainly no more competent or, indeed, charismatic than many other unsuccessful Labour Party candidates of the era.
So, back to the drawing board...
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