Ealing North

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Stephen Pound's memorable maiden speech majored on the fact that nothing of any interest had ever happened in Ealing North.

[Merseymike]

Certainly a selection of colourful MP's here - Bill Molloy certainly came into that category as well

I recall my sociology tutor at A-level turning the air blue when Greenaway was elected - he had previously been the head at a school where he had taught and he didn't have a very high opinion of him

The Polish community is very longstanding - I'd imagine most would be eligible to vote now, though?

[kevinlarkin]

Jun 1, 2020 17:19:40 GMT Merseymike said:

The Polish community is very longstanding - I'd imagine most would be eligible to vote now, though?

No, it was the existence of the longstanding Polish community that made Ealing a natural destination for post-2004 arrivals. The longstanding community that arrived in the 1940s would more likely be found in Ealing Central & Acton.

[Merseymike]

I worked for Thomson Publishing for 6 months in my early 20's, and recall my boss, a thoroughly unpleasant man who resembled a walrus, lived in Ealing and was of Polish origin, though he was actually brought up in Bradford, where there is another longstanding Polish community, and had moved down to Ealing when at university (studying Russian). Odd career trajectory, started off lecturing in Russian and then switched to become a sales manager.

[finsobruce]

Jun 1, 2020 18:44:21 GMT Merseymike said:

I worked for Thomson Publishing for 6 months in my early 20's, and recall my boss, a thoroughly unpleasant man who resembled a walrus, lived in Ealing and was of Polish origin, though he was actually brought up in Bradford, where there is another longstanding Polish community, and had moved down to Ealing when at university (studying Russian). Odd career trajectory, started off lecturing in Russian and then switched to become a sales manager.

Both Bradford and Ealing had reception centres for Poles after the Second World War.

[finsobruce]

Jun 1, 2020 19:51:32 GMT @barnabymarder said:

The older members of the Polish community have historically been very pro-Conservative, but there is some evidence that younger and more recent arrivals from Poland are less so (some have left because they hate the Law & Justice Party government so much, amongst other reasons). There was for some years a Labour councillor who was prominent in the Polish community, Wiktor Moszynski, but I haven't heard of him in some years. He was certainly unusual as a Polish-heritage Labour supporter when he was on the council.

I went to Catholic school in Brentford and many of my classmates were Polish. They were all Tories, to a greater or lesser extent, largely because (certain sections of) Labour were seen to be so pro soviet in those days.

I went to University with a girl whose dad was Lithuanian (and had fought for the Germans in WWII) and she said that she was almost always the only Labour supporter at British-Lithuanian gatherings in those days (mid 80s).

[kevinlarkin]

Jun 1, 2020 19:51:32 GMT @barnabymarder said:

The older members of the Polish community have historically been very pro-Conservative, but there is some evidence that younger and more recent arrivals from Poland are less so (some have left because they hate the Law & Justice Party government so much, amongst other reasons). There was for some years a Labour councillor who was prominent in the Polish community, Wiktor Moszynski, but I haven't heard of him in some years. He was certainly unusual as a Polish-heritage Labour supporter when he was on the council.

Wiktor was very interesting and well informed about the Polish diaspora on the few occasions that I met him.

[therealriga]

I lived in Northolt in the 1990s. It's fairly dreary and unremarkable suburbia.

IIRC the 1987 result wasn't just down to Greenway, didn't the Labour-controlled council enact a very unpopular rates hike? The other two Ealing seats swung to the Conservatives then as well, though not quite as dramatically.

[londonseal80]

Jun 1, 2020 21:25:10 GMT @barnabymarder said:

That's true, but his result was markedly better than the Tory result in the other 2 seats in the borough. Or indeed anywhere else in the country.

I have visited parts of this seat a few times in my life, Good description “ The seat is not quite the outer outer suburbs, but it does not have an inner-city feel” Perivale and Greenford feel very similar to Morden (The non St Helier bits) so I agree with that statement.

[iang]

The Polish connection presumably started as 303 squadron were based at RAF Northolt. They were one of the (more or less) all Polish squadrons in the RAF and the most successful squadron in the Battle of Britain

[Merseymike]

Its certainly interesting that there can be fairly dramatic shifts between one party and another over a period of time, and there are a number of seats where this is evident
The question is when do we regard that shift as having happened permanently? The consensus seems to be that Ealing North is not about to become a Conservative seat again, and some of our other discussions suggest the same for some previously Labour seats - Warwickshire North, to give an example. Is that down to demographic change, or mass shift of voting intention among existing demographics?

[carlton43]

Jun 3, 2020 8:36:56 GMT Merseymike said:

Its certainly interesting that there can be fairly dramatic shifts between one party and another over a period of time, and there are a number of seats where this is evident
The question is when do we regard that shift as having happened permanently? The consensus seems to be that Ealing North is not about to become a Conservative seat again, and some of our other discussions suggest the same for some previously Labour seats - Warwickshire North, to give an example. Is that down to demographic change, or mass shift of voting intention among existing demographics?

Enfield, Croydon, Ilford, Ealing, Streatham, Hampstead, Kensington, Hornsey, Southgate .......

Staffordshire, Norfolk and Nottinghamshire .............

[The Bishop]

Jun 1, 2020 21:25:10 GMT @barnabymarder said:

That's true, but his result was markedly better than the Tory result in the other 2 seats in the borough. Or indeed anywhere else in the country.

Almost - in 1987 the Tories had both a bigger swing and vote increase in Newham South. It was still the best in a Tory seat, of course.

[Pete Whitehead]

Doesn't look we're going to retrieve Barnaby's contributions, so here's mine...

Ealing North is now a quite long-standing constituency, having celebrated its 70th birthday this year. It can in fact claim a slightly longer lineage as it was effectively the successor to the short-lived Ealing West constituency, itself one of the many new constituencies created in this part of the world ahead of the 1945 election. That constituency included no part of the pre-war Ealing seat (which itself remained unchanged but rebadged as Ealing East) but included all those areas which had been added to Ealing borough since 1918 – Greenford and Hanwell came from the very weirdly drawn Harrow seat while Northolt was donated by Uxbridge. Labour won that seat very easily in 1945 but the strong swing back to the Conservatives in 1950 (especially marked in suburban London) combined with the boundary changes which translated this into Ealing North made for a closely fought marginal over many of the following decades.
The core and bulk of the seat remained the same – the communities of Greenford and Northolt, North of the river Brent – but Hanwell (predominantly working-class and Labour voting) was replaced by some very affluent parts of Ealing proper around Hanger Hill.

Besides this area, the Conservatives could also count on strong support on the Eastern side of Greenford, in Perivale and Horsenden Hill. Labour was strongest around Greenford Broadway and especially in Northolt. This made for a classic marginal which however did not quite achieve bellwether status – Labour held on by 120 votes in 1951, the Conservatives gained it in 1955 by 246. Labour regained it in 1964 by a mere 27 votes and held on in 1970 by 320.

Various subsequent boundary changes have had potentially decisive consequences. In 1974 it expanded further into the affluent neighbourhoods of Ealing proper, creating what would notionally have been a Conservative seat in 1970, but Labour held on in 1974 before losing quite narrowly in 1979. Then the boundaries were changed again, contracting more towards the original core and creating a notional Labour seat. Labour were unable to capitalise in 1983 as they suffered disaster nationally and in 1987, they suffered a disaster locally too with an 8% swing seeing the Conservative Harry Greenway winning by over 15,000. This was mainly due to the antics of Ealing council which Labour had gained control of the previous year (see also Brent and Waltham Forest) but may also have been partly influenced by a perception (almost certainly unfair, given subsequent developments) that the Labour candidate Hilary Benn shared the hard-left predilections of his father.

Labour recovered somewhat in 1992 but were not close and another boundary change ahead of the 1997 election again shifted the balance, this time back in favour of the Conservatives. Yet again the beneficiary of favourable boundary changes was unable to capitalise as this area saw a typically (for Outer London) huge swing to Labour and local councillor Stephen Pound gained the seat easily and again typically for this part of London, the seat swung further to Labour in 2001. It has not been close since and when Pound retired last year he was able to pass on a safe Labour seat without any fuss to the new MP James Murray.

The reasons for the political transformation are familiar enough. When the Conservatives last won this seat, in 1992, over 75% of the population was White. That figure is now (2011) below 50% and for White British the figure is only 30%. Only the two wards south of the Brent now have a majority of White residents with Asians now outnumbering the White British population in Greenford and Perivale and a significant Black population also, particularly in Northolt. There is also a substantial ‘White other’ population, though the electoral consequences of this are unclear (many will not have votes). This constituency more than any other was the main centre of post-war Polish migration and the third and fourth generation descendants of these have been augmented by post-2004 migrants from Poland and other East European countries (most of these will not have votes in General elections of course, while the longer established Polish community has been reckoned to be a good source of Conservative votes in the past).

Another demographic shift, often less remarked upon than the ethnic changes, is the shift in housing tenure here. In 1991 this constituency was 68% owner-occupied and that figure had dropped to 55% by 2011. The social housing proportion has remained steady at about a fifth of the total – there are large estates in Northolt especially, including some grim post-war blocks of flats around Rectory Park (Northolt West End ward) and the Hobbayne ward (Northern Hanwell) includes the large inter-war ‘cottage’ Cuckoo estate. Greenford and Perivale are dominated by private housing of inter-war vintage – terraced and semi-detached housing of indifferent quality – and an increasing proportion of this is now privately rented, much in the form of HMOs, as is a good proportion of the former council housing stock which had been subject to RTB.

The most upmarket ward by far remains that closest to the centre of Ealing itself - Cleveland. This does include some council estates as well, by the Greenford branch line, but is otherwise characterised by Edwardian villas. This remains the best Conservative ward in the constituency, but even here Labour won all the seats in the 2018 local elections, making Ealing North for the first time one of the many London constituencies to return a full compliment of Labour councillors that year.
Ealing North remains in many respects typical, demographically and politically, of the capital as a whole. But whereas for many decades this meant it was a keenly fought marginal, almost consistently voting for the party which won the election, just as London did, it now betokens a safe Labour seat. It illustrates in microcosm the deep and perhaps intractable problems the Conservative party faces in London – a city they have not carried at a general election this century.

[timrollpickering]

Jun 1, 2020 16:46:12 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Stephen Pound's memorable maiden speech majored on the fact that nothing of any interest had ever happened in Ealing North.

Perivale was the home of Ace, the last companion in the classic era of Doctor Who, and she regularly bemoaned that nothing ever happened in Perivale.

Despite this claim two stories were set here - Ghost Light (albeit almost studio only bar a far establishing shots of a grand house shot in Dorset) and Survival which did location shooting here. Both saw things of interest happening in the constituency.

The Greenford branch line is entirely in the constituency and adds to the reputation by being seemingly the least used railway line in the whole of London. A few years ago the service was cut back from Paddington to West Ealing (with a new bay platform being built for it) to allow longer services more platform space and this has reduced the line to a shuttle interchanging between the Central and TfLRail lines without any major destination in its own right on the route. All three of the intermediate stations (Drayton Green, Castle Bar Park and South Greenford - which has the suffix "West Perivale" on the platform signs) are almost always on the ten least used stations in London list. Reportedly when TfL got their hands on the National Rail services that became TfL Rail they were told they had to take one of the shuttles as well and opted instead for the Romford-Upminster service (now that bit of London Overground that's utterly detached from the rest of it).

[Merseymike]

The current MP is somewhat colourless compared to his three predecessors. Both Labour's Stephen Pound and Bill Molloy, and the Tory Harry Greenway, were "characters"

Whereas the incumbent has his eye on ministerial preference...

I recall now that my A level Sociology lecturer at FE college once worked as a PE teacher and the head was Greenway. He hated him!

[Davıd Boothroyd]

I think James Murray may be rather hiding his light; if you've not been watching London local politics you may not realise how good he is. He was a very important figure in pushing Islington's housing policy which delivered lots more new social rent housing, and was an early backer of Sadiq Khan for Mayor (when most London councillors backed Tessa Jowell). As a result he became Deputy Mayor for Housing and did a lot to help shape the Mayor's housing delivery.

[Merseymike]

Dec 21, 2020 16:41:42 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

I think James Murray may be rather hiding his light; if you've not been watching London local politics you may not realise how good he is. He was a very important figure in pushing Islington's housing policy which delivered lots more new social rent housing, and was an early backer of Sadiq Khan for Mayor (when most London councillors backed Tessa Jowell). As a result he became Deputy Mayor for Housing and did a lot to help shape the Mayor's housing delivery.

Oh, sure - he is a future Minister and scores in terms of competence

I was noting that he is, however, much more of a mainstream conventional politico than his predecessors. I think of that type of politician as colourless and production line

[Deleted]

Great summary. Striking (as someone who grew up outside of London) to see how much these seats have changed.

[hengo]

I lived here for a few years in the 90s. Can’t say much in its favour tbh. Takes ages to get out of London, and ages to get into the parts of London worth living there for.