Batley and Spen remains a predominantly working-class seat. The constituency consists of an urban sprawl between Huddersfield and Bradford.
It reinforces the classic image of the West Riding of Yorkshire, small towns with a history of textile manufacturing, streets of traditional terraced housing filled by a mostly working-class population.
The seat consists of the town of Batley, whose eastern ward is home for a large Asian minority (approximately one third of the town’s overall population) and whose western half is home to extensive council housing.
Smaller, semi-rural communities such as Birstall and Birkenshaw, Gomersal, Oakenshaw and Cleckheaton all fall into the borough of Spenborough, named after the river Spen. This element of the constituency is almost all-white, strongly owner-occupied and possesses strong conservative cultural values.
Although the Tories lost this seat to Mike Wood during the Labour landslide of 1997, the outgoing MP Elizabeth Peacock didn't fare as badly as some of her party colleagues did in supposedly safer seats, losing by only 6,141 votes.