Ealing Southall

[timrollpickering]

According to his obituary in the Guardian, Khabra's second marriage certificate gave his date of birth as 1921 and so he would have already been in his 70s when first elected. www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jun/21/guardianobituaries.obituaries

[martinwhelton]

And Southall Green had the highest Labour share of the vote at 83.1% of any council ward in London where Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem’s stood in 2018; my own ward of Pollards Hill in Merton was second at 82.4%.

[Robert Waller]

Some interesting figures here, I look forward with eager anticipation to a seat profile!

2011 Census

Age 65+ 10.4% 605/650
One person household 23.5% 642/650
Owner-occupied 54.4% 548/650
Private rented 24.2% 74/650
Social rented 18.1% 263/650
White 30.4% 646/650
Black 10.5% 42/650
Asian 50.7% 6/650
Sikh 21.6% 1/650
Hindu 13.2% 6/650
Country of birth UK 47.6% 646/650
Passport Middle East & Asia 13.2% 3/650
No people in household have English (or Welsh) as main language 24.6% 3/650
Managerial & professional 26.1%
Routine & Semi-routine 23.8%
Degree level 30.8% 162/650
No qualifications 19.4% 477 /650
Students 12.9% 83/650


General Election 2019: Ealing Southall

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Labour Virendra Sharma 25,678 60.8 -9.5
Conservative Tom Bennett 9,594 22.7 +1.4
Liberal Democrats Tariq Mahmood 3,933 9.3 +5.1
Green Darren Moore 1,688 4.0 +1.7
Brexit Party Rosamund Beattie 867 2.1 New
CPA Suzanne Fernandes 287 0.7 New
Workers Revolutionary Hassan Zulkifal 170 0.4 -0.4

Lab Majority 16,084 38.1 -10.9

Turnout 42,217 65.4 −3.9

Registered electors 64,580

Labour hold

Swing 5.4 Lab to C

[batman]

Nov 25, 2021 18:49:45 GMT Robert Waller said:

Some interesting figures here, I look forward with eager anticipation to a seat profile!

2011 Census

Age 65+ 10.4% 605/650
One person household 23.5% 642/650
Owner-occupied 54.4% 548/650
Private rented 24.2% 74/650
Social rented 18.1% 263/650
White 30.4% 646/650
Black 10.5% 42/650
Asian 50.7% 6/650
Sikh 21.6% 1/650
Hindu 13.2% 6/650
Country of birth UK 47.6% 646/650
Passport Middle East & Asia 13.2% 3/650
No people in household have English (or Welsh) as main language 24.6% 3/650
Managerial & professional 26.1%
Routine & Semi-routine 23.8%
Degree level 30.8% 162/650
No qualifications 19.4% 477 /650
Students 12.9% 83/650


General Election 2019: Ealing Southall

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Labour Virendra Sharma 25,678 60.8 -9.5
Conservative Tom Bennett 9,594 22.7 +1.4
Liberal Democrats Tariq Mahmood 3,933 9.3 +5.1
Green Darren Moore 1,688 4.0 +1.7
Brexit Party Rosamund Beattie 867 2.1 New
CPA Suzanne Fernandes 287 0.7 New
Workers Revolutionary Hassan Zulkifal 170 0.4 -0.4

Lab Majority 16,084 38.1 -10.9

Turnout 42,217 65.4 −3.9

Registered electors 64,580

Labour hold

Swing 5.4 Lab to C

I think I know the seat well enough to write one, although I don't visit it often, with the exception of the Hanwell section where there are a couple of good pubs, one in particular.

[The Bishop]

Was there a profile originally for this one?

[batman]

Nov 26, 2021 13:55:30 GMT The Bishop said:

Was there a profile originally for this one?

yes, I think I wrote it, I am now about to do a new one.

[batman]

Southall is a very busy town in outer London of a predominantly working-class social composition. Since the end of WWII its eponymous constituency has been won by Labour, mostly by majorities ranging from comfortable to overwhelming. In 1974, with the abolition of the Ealing South constituency, the seat moved a good deal further east and acquired an Ealing prefix, which it still retains. At one point it took in so much of the Ealing community itself that it included the Ealing Common ward; but since the last boundary changes, when Ealing Central and Acton constituency was formed, it has once again become rather more compact and now only 2 of its 7 wards lie outside the Southall community itself, as Southall is a large enough town to form 5 complete council wards.

Most outsiders when asked what they know of Southall would say that it is known for its very large Asian community, and quite possibly know little else about it as a town. They would be correct about the large Asian community. By the 1960s the town was already becoming known as a popular area of settlement for people with an Indian background, attracted by modestly-priced owner-occupied housing and its closeness to Heathrow Airport, where so many of its residents work. By the later 1970s most of the town centre shops catered mainly for residents of Indian heritage. Although in appearance in many respects the area was transformed, it had relatively little effect on voting patterns in the area as both working-class white residents and those of Indian heritage voted by and large for Labour. It is not primarily a council estate area, although there are fair-sized estates in both Dormers Wells and Lady Margaret wards. These estates still have some white British voters, as Indians and more recent incomers from Pakistan have historically not tended to favour council estates. Most wards, instead, have long late-19th-century terraces of owner-occupied or privately rented houses, interspersed with a few streets where there are interwar semis. This is particularly predominant in Southall Broadway and Southall Green wards. The fifth Southall ward, Norwood Green, is a little different. Its southern parts are, in contrast, villagey and very pleasant indeed, complete with village green and a 16th-century village pub, the Plough, reckoned to be the oldest pub in west London. (Pubs have become a bit of a rarity in Southall, but at least one of those that remains accepts Indian Rupees as currency!) Even though it is distinctly upmarket from most of Southall, however, Norwood Green is still predominantly inhabited by voters with Indian or Pakistani heritage and is a good deal more Labour than some might think it looks. The ward in any case is large enough to take in areas closer to central Southall, where Labour as with the rest of the town is far ahead. Although the council wards have changed their names in some cases several times, politically Labour's complete electoral dominance in the Southall community has changed little for decades, with Conservative and Liberal Democrat challenges only sporadically enjoying even relative success despite some high-profile local defections from Labour to the Tories some years ago. While in more prosperous areas where there are large populations of British Indians, such as some wards in Harrow not so very far away, Labour appears to have lost its monolithic superiority amongst these communities, the party remains overwhelmingly ahead in the 5 Southall wards, where most voters are distinctly less affluent for the most part. Southall Green has emerged as the safest Labour ward of all in recent years; in both the last 2 London borough elections, it has seen the highest numerical Labour vote (and in 2014 the highest numerical vote for any party) anywhere in London. In 2018 it was exceeded only by the huge personal vote for ex-Conservative independent Mal Grimston in West Hill ward, Wandsworth. The Southall community has seen a slight increase in White voters in recent years, often poorer members of the Polish community, but these 5 wards have a very large outright majority of voters with heritages from the Indian subcontinent. These voters are divided between Indian Sikhs (probably still the largest, and perhaps earliest, component), Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims, but there is also a small but recognisable Nepalese community, as there is in several parts of West London; the current Mayor of Hounslow at the time of writing is a Nepalese Labour councillor.

The remaining two wards are much more competitive, but nothing like sufficiently to render the constituency anything like an even contest. These wards are Northfield, which is split between W5 (Ealing) and W13 (West Ealing), and Elthorne, named after a pleasant park, which is split between W13 and W7 (Hanwell); both wards lie exclusively to the south of the Great Western main railway line. Northfield, as befits a ward much of which is in Ealing proper, is a mostly very pleasant and also fairly expensive residential area, with many voters commuting to London to carry out their professional or managerial duties. Its boundary with Walpole ward, and therefore with Ealing Central and Acton, is not very obvious as a natural community boundary. Labour's success in gaining a council seat in the ward in 1986, when its successful candidate at the time was very well-known and popular locally, was regarded as a bit of a freak at the time by both Labour and Conservative members, but Labour won the ward in its entirety in its wonder years of 1994 and 1998 when it carried almost all before it in much of London and the country, and more narrowly in 2002 when Labour were slightly weaker, though not that much. A period of Conservative tenure resumed in 2006, but at the last local elections in 2018 Labour managed to gain two seats and split the ward with the Conservatives. This is a middle-class, although not superwealthy, still majority-White residential area, and has the added attraction of the Underground two of whose stations, Northfields and South Ealing (as it happens, the two most closely-set stations in the entire system), are included there. The proportion of residents with Indian heritage and some other BAME backgrounds has however definitely increased in recent years, as in much of Ealing and West Ealing, and this has helped (not single-handedly though - other more general demographic factors have also assisted in this) Labour to compete on more equal terms with the Conservatives than was once the case. Again, however, note that Ealing and the more prosperous parts of West Ealing do have a somewhat "intellectual" population - many people working in the sorts of jobs where the Conservatives are increasingly not the natural choice, heavily interested in the arts, and so on. This too has had a slight draining effect on the Conservative vote, although the Tories still have a strong core vote there. Elthorne has a very high-quality residential southern end, with excellent owner-occupied interwar housing stock, also convenient for the Underground at Boston Manor, right on the border with Brentford. However, the housing is mostly terraced in more central parts of Hanwell and the Tories are weaker in this part of the ward, even though some of these terraced streets are quite upmarket and pleasant. These voters are again somewhat "intellectual" in many cases. The more north-easterly part of the ward, however, takes in some less desirable residential areas which are part of the West Ealing community; West Ealing's more upmarket streets are generally to be found in Walpole and Cleveland wards. There is a good proportion of council-built homes here, some of which have aged badly and are due to be replaced imminently. West Ealing Broadway is decidedly less prosperous in its appearance than Ealing Broadway a mile or so further east. Labour polls strongly in this part of the ward, and this was a major reason for them holding Elthorne ward uninterruptedly for quite a number of years. However, it fell to the Tories in Labour's pretty bad year of 2006, before in 2010 producing a 3-way split, with one councillor from each of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties being elected, the latter being Nigel Bakhai who was also the party's parliamentary candidate at the time and in the 2007 parliamentary by-election which followed the death of the very elderly Indian-born MP, Labour's Piara Khabra. Of course, in 2014 in much of London the Liberal Democrat vote collapsed after the formation of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, and this meant that many of these voters returned to Labour where they appear to remain for now. Some of the pleasant terraces around Green Lane look for all the world like typical urban Liberal Democrat territory, and perhaps the 2010 result should not come as so great a surprise retrospectively. This however turned out to the only seat lost by the party in the borough in the 2014 election, as they held off Tory (and to a lesser extent Labour) challenges in their other seats in Ealing Common and Southfield (which is nowhere near Northfield) wards. For now, Labour looks fairly safe in Elthorne, though it is clearly not a ward quite of the political monolithicity of the 5 Southall community wards. Labour therefore won all but one of the constituency's council seats in the most recent elections, and will be aiming for totality in 2022. Although the Tories remain very much competitive in Northfield ward, the combined Labour lead in the remaining 6 wards makes this a very safe Labour seat, and there is little reason to suppose that Labour's dominance is likely to be challenged all that closely in the foreseeable future as in general this is not the type of constituency where the Tories or Liberal Democrats could reasonably expect to achieve general success.

Labour's current MP, Virendra Sharma, who previously ran a community centre, was already 60 at the time of his election in the 2007 by-election, in which he was strongly challenged by both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives (not all that surprisingly, as the constituency at the time included Ealing Common and Walpole wards), but won comfortably enough. He has been very safe indeed since this time. Unlike his predecessor, who was a Sikh, Sharma is a Hindu, not the largest religious group in the constituency, but still a substantial one. He is himself getting to the elderly stage now, and when he decides to retire there will be a long queue in the Labour corridor to apply for the seat, as it is a seat which gives a Labour MP the chance of a very lengthy and uninterrupted career.

[batman]

May I just say ; with respect to the profiles I've written, both recently and before my absence, both Robert Waller and others may recognise bits and pieces that he originally put in his printed profiles in the Almanac of British Politics 20 years ago. I'm very happy to pay tribute to Robert for giving me some of the ideas I've used in my profiles, and my own style of writing these profiles is undoubtedly influenced by his. In the case of some constituencies, however, such as Manchester Central, I may have borrowed his idioms but not any actual phrases or specific ideas. Thanks Robert!