A mixed residential and industrial constituency, Garston includes some of Liverpool’s docks and the city’s old industrial heartland, much of which was devastated by the recession in the early 1980s. It elected Maria Eagle with a majority of 18,000 in 1997.
Perhaps the most socially and economically diverse of all the Liverpool cosntituencies, it has always been a volatile swing seat. Formerly a true Labour-Conservative marginal - going with the national flow in 1974 and 1979 and resisting Liberal municipal success, Garston has recently swung strongly to the Labour party.
Garston contains some of the most desirable and expensive housing in Liverpool, in the Woolton and Allerton areas, and has the highest proportion of owner-occupation in the city. Woolston is, in fact, the only one of the 33 wards in Liverpool to return any Conservative councillors but even then not consistently so. The ward of Grassendale down by the river Mersey has large houses in private gated estates and returns Lib Dems at a local level.
In her maiden speech to the House of Commons, Maria Eagle described the list of factories and employers who had left the constituency as ‘depressingly long’ and unemployment in the constituency is well above the national average.