The seat of Don Valley curls around the south side of Doncaster in roughly a kidney shape, but has a more diverse political make-up than one might suspect.
Of its six Doncaster borough wards, two, South East and Southern Parks, have little ties to the mining industry and are usually Conservative. A third, Hatfield, is marginal. The other three wards are all colliery communities and traditionally Labour, indeed the latter has a history of flirtation with Communism and militancy.
Following the decline of coal mining, other industries have been attracted to settle here to compensate for loss of pit jobs, while engineering and agriculture were industries already established when coal was still king. This has led to the majority of the seat's workforce being involved in manual jobs, although not perhaps to the same extent of surrounding constituencies.
Following the redistribution of some 23,000 primarily Labour-inclined voters away from here to help form the Barnsley East and Mexborough seat, there was much speculation before 1997 that Labour's grip on this South Yorkshire stronghold may be about to weaken, but its majority remained healthy.