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> United Kingdom > Wales > Wales
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| Established | June 09, 1983 |
| Disbanded | Still Active |
| Contributor | RP |
| Last Modified | RBH December 04, 2019 04:12pm |
| Description |
This was the constituency of the late James Callaghan who was succeeded by Alun Michael in 1987, who fights this seat for the fifth time. In 1998, Alun Michael became Secretary of State for Wales and in 1999 became Wales' first First Minister in the National Assembly. He resigned in 2000 on the eve of a no-confidence vote in the assembly, following a row over securing European funding. He gave up his seat on the assembly to concentrate on his Westminster career, where he became rural affairs minister. Most notably, he was the minister responsible for steering the hunting legislation through Parliament. In the Assembly elections, Labour AM Lorraine Barrett, Alun Michael's former assistant, won comfortably in both the 1999 and 2003 elections. No area of Wales has undergone a greater transformation in recent years than Cardiff South and Penarth. This is due to the redevelopment of Cardiff Bay, which has received hundreds of millions of pounds of public and private investment since the late 1980s - a decision taken by the then Conservative government but endorsed by most local politicians of all colours. The effect has been dramatic, replacing a wasteland of disused docklands with a vibrant mixture of housing, cinema, restaurants, bars, clubs and shops. The area is also home to the National Assembly and the Wales Millennium Centre which opened in November 2004, and the 500-acre freshwater lake created by a huge new barrage has been completed, despite a long fight by local protestors and environmentalists. Cheek-by-jowl with the bay is Butetown, one of Wales's poorest areas and also home to one of the oldest ethnic minority populations in Britain. The constituency also takes in the Victorian seaside town of Penarth, a mixture of middle-class and working-class areas which comes under the control of Cardiff's neighbouring council, the Vale of Glamorgan. The seat has long been safe Labour territory, partly thanks to such working-class areas as Splott and Tremorfa.
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