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Post by batman on Nov 24, 2021 11:51:33 GMT
I agree that the new MP for here will probably be in the Cabinet in the next Labour Government. However, I do miss Stephen Pound who was a marvellous character and when I once interacted for him in a work capacity was a total gentleman as well. Undoubtedly one of my favourite Labour MPs of all time. I'm acquainted with Steve Pound who is as you say a real character. His ability to remember details about people he meets is astonishing and I've seen him deploy it many times. He somehow remembered my name after meeting me at a noisy quiz night some months previously and only chatting to me for few seconds, though nowadays I know him a bit better having campaigned for him in E C & A, and bumped into him on other occasions. |
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Post by batman on Nov 24, 2021 11:54:03 GMT
Are there that many Poles in Ealing North these days? Sadly, I reckon many will have left following Brexit. a visit to, for example, Perivale would find that there still are quite a lot. The prosperous eastern part of Cleveland ward, in addition, is as Pete alluded to quite close to central Ealing, and there are significant elements of the longer-established Polish community there. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Nov 24, 2021 12:54:19 GMT
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. It's a very pleasant neighbourbood, within walking distance of Ealing Broadway station but if you don't fancy the walk there are plenty of buses to get you there quickly. It is true that many parts of the constituency are not particularly lovely residential areas these days, but there are other pleasant enclaves (such as just north of Hanwell station, itself a listed building of some beauty). The best pubs in the borough of Ealing, however, are almost all to be found in the Ealing Central and Acton constituency, and in a couple of cases in Ealing Southall (in the Hanwell section of that seat - very difficult to get a decent pint in Southall itself now, unless, apparently, you go to the Conservative Club, something I'd be pretty reluctant to do). Thanks to Pete for writing the profile of the seat which is a good reflection of the realities on the ground. Pitshangar will be coming back in May, with virtually identical boundaries to the current Cleveland ward. As my summary of this seat was a replacement for one of your deleted posts, you should know I won't feel at all affronted if you were to repost your original here. Although you and quite a few other people have been kind enough to like my post, I personally wasn't entirely happy with it and felt it lacked some detail. As is my tendency, I had 'written' this in my head many times over, typically while out for a long walk and was happy with what I had up there but when I came to publish it, so to speak, I felt I had rather lost interest and inspiration - It has been noted that large parts of this constituency are uninspiring at best so perhaps that was the problem. |
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Post by John Chanin on Nov 24, 2021 13:21:50 GMT
As my summary of this seat was a replacement for one of your deleted posts, you should know I won't feel at all affronted if you were to repost your original here. Although you and quite a few other people have been kind enough to like my post, I personally wasn't entirely happy with it and felt it lacked some detail. As is my tendency, I had 'written' this in my head many times over, typically while out for a long walk and was happy with what I had up there but when I came to publish it, so to speak, I felt I had rather lost interest and inspiration - It has been noted that large parts of this constituency are uninspiring at best so perhaps that was the problem. I have always recognised that it is prejudice, but I have to say that for me this is the most boring and uninteresting part of London. I also generally write my profiles in my head before eventually setting them down in writing. And yes, somehow they never seem as good once published. |
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Post by batman on Nov 24, 2021 17:03:18 GMT
the constituency does nowadays include the Pitshanger Lane area, which is now in Cleveland ward now that Pitshanger ward (which was the safest Tory ward in the borough) has been abolished. It's a very pleasant neighbourbood, within walking distance of Ealing Broadway station but if you don't fancy the walk there are plenty of buses to get you there quickly. It is true that many parts of the constituency are not particularly lovely residential areas these days, but there are other pleasant enclaves (such as just north of Hanwell station, itself a listed building of some beauty). The best pubs in the borough of Ealing, however, are almost all to be found in the Ealing Central and Acton constituency, and in a couple of cases in Ealing Southall (in the Hanwell section of that seat - very difficult to get a decent pint in Southall itself now, unless, apparently, you go to the Conservative Club, something I'd be pretty reluctant to do). Thanks to Pete for writing the profile of the seat which is a good reflection of the realities on the ground. Pitshangar will be coming back in May, with virtually identical boundaries to the current Cleveland ward. As my summary of this seat was a replacement for one of your deleted posts, you should know I won't feel at all affronted if you were to repost your original here. Although you and quite a few other people have been kind enough to like my post, I personally wasn't entirely happy with it and felt it lacked some detail. As is my tendency, I had 'written' this in my head many times over, typically while out for a long walk and was happy with what I had up there but when I came to publish it, so to speak, I felt I had rather lost interest and inspiration - It has been noted that large parts of this constituency are uninspiring at best so perhaps that was the problem. thanks Pete, I can't rule out that I might do that, although I'd want to replace other profiles that haven't yet been replaced first, if there are some. It's fair enough to rename the ward, as although there is a Cleveland Park it's only small and not well-known, and also it's a confusing name as quite a lot of people who live in Cleveland Road, unless I'm very much mistaken, don't vote in Cleveland ward but in the Ealing Broadway ward which is of course not even in this constituency. Whereas Pitshanger Park is much better-known and more visited, and as far as I know all of Pitshanger Lane is included in the ward. Pitzhanger Manor (which seems to be spelt differently) is a different matter though. |
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Post by kitesurfer on Nov 24, 2021 22:58:53 GMT
the constituency does nowadays include the Pitshanger Lane area, which is now in Cleveland ward now that Pitshanger ward (which was the safest Tory ward in the borough) has been abolished. It's a very pleasant neighbourbood, within walking distance of Ealing Broadway station but if you don't fancy the walk there are plenty of buses to get you there quickly. It is true that many parts of the constituency are not particularly lovely residential areas these days, but there are other pleasant enclaves (such as just north of Hanwell station, itself a listed building of some beauty). The best pubs in the borough of Ealing, however, are almost all to be found in the Ealing Central and Acton constituency, and in a couple of cases in Ealing Southall (in the Hanwell section of that seat - very difficult to get a decent pint in Southall itself now, unless, apparently, you go to the Conservative Club, something I'd be pretty reluctant to do). Thanks to Pete for writing the profile of the seat which is a good reflection of the realities on the ground. Pitshangar will be coming back in May, with virtually identical boundaries to the current Cleveland ward. As my summary of this seat was a replacement for one of your deleted posts, you should know I won't feel at all affronted if you were to repost your original here. Although you and quite a few other people have been kind enough to like my post, I personally wasn't entirely happy with it and felt it lacked some detail. As is my tendency, I had 'written' this in my head many times over, typically while out for a long walk and was happy with what I had up there but when I came to publish it, so to speak, I felt I had rather lost interest and inspiration - It has been noted that large parts of this constituency are uninspiring at best so perhaps that was the problem. Was the old Pitshanger ward quite different to the current Cleveland? I know that there was an Argyle ward at the time and the councillors from Argyle switched to Cleveland. Was much of the current Cleveland in the former Pitshsanger? It’s my understanding that the old Pitshanger more closely resembled the current Ealing Broadway ward. Is that right? |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Nov 24, 2021 23:10:27 GMT
Pitshangar will be coming back in May, with virtually identical boundaries to the current Cleveland ward. As my summary of this seat was a replacement for one of your deleted posts, you should know I won't feel at all affronted if you were to repost your original here. Although you and quite a few other people have been kind enough to like my post, I personally wasn't entirely happy with it and felt it lacked some detail. As is my tendency, I had 'written' this in my head many times over, typically while out for a long walk and was happy with what I had up there but when I came to publish it, so to speak, I felt I had rather lost interest and inspiration - It has been noted that large parts of this constituency are uninspiring at best so perhaps that was the problem. Was the old Pitshanger ward quite different to the current Cleveland? I know that there was an Argyle ward at the time and the councillors from Argyle switched to Cleveland. Was much of the current Cleveland in the former Pitshsanger? It’s my understanding that the old Pitshanger more closely resembled the current Ealing Broadway ward. Is that right? I'd tend to see Ealing Broadway as the successor to Pitshanger and Cleveland as the successor to Argyle as you say. Certainly I think the greater part of the electorate of Cleveland came from Argyle with the minority coming from Pitshanger. The relationship between Pitshangar and Ealing Broadway is less clear cut. The old Pitshangar was divided fairly equally between Cleveland, Ealing Broadway and Hanger Hill, while Ealing Broadway brought in large chunks of both Pitshanger and Hanger Lane but also non-negligible sections of Ealing Common and Walpole |
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Post by batman on Nov 24, 2021 23:29:41 GMT
yes I'd completely agree with that analysis. The old Pitshanger ward has a fairly clear relationship with Ealing Broadway as it is today, but there are substantial differences too. The resemblance of the current Cleveland (or soon to be Pitshanger) to the former Argyle is closer. Some fairly Tory-inclined territory which was formerly in Argyle isn't in Cleveland now, but it's compensated for by territory acquired from the former Pitshanger. But Cleveland is clearly recognisable as a successor to Argyle. I think I'm right in saying that Argyle was never won by Labour, except in a by-election where IIRC the majority was exactly 100.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Nov 24, 2022 19:31:48 GMT
On both the initial and revised proposals by the Boundary Commission, this constituency is unchanged other than to realign with new ward boundaries. In practice this means a small area near Greenford Broadway being moved from this seat to Ealing Southall. The partisan impact will be all but non-existant.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Nov 27, 2022 21:27:39 GMT
Notional result 2019 on the proposed new boundaries | Lab | 27518 | 56.4% | | Con | 15541 | 31.8% | | LD | 4319 | 8.8% | | Grn | 1441 | 3.0% | | | | | | Majority | 11977 | 24.5% |
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Post by spinach on Dec 27, 2022 22:38:10 GMT
The MSOAs with the highest % Polish passport holders in London 2021 are mainly located in Ealing North.
Greenford North - 12.0%
Perivale - 11.7%
Bilton Road - 9.9%
Whitton Avenue West - 9.9%
Horsenden - 9.6%
Greenford South - 9.6%
Brent Valley - 9.3%
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Post by batman on Dec 28, 2022 8:12:56 GMT
that comes as much less surprise to me than e.g. the South African passport-holders one. the only surprise perhaps is that Perivale is as low as that, though I suspect that the fringe areas of Perivale ward have fewer Poles than the more core ones.
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Post by spinach on Dec 28, 2022 19:03:37 GMT
that comes as much less surprise to me than e.g. the South African passport-holders one. the only surprise perhaps is that Perivale is as low as that, though I suspect that the fringe areas of Perivale ward have fewer Poles than the more core ones. Outside of London, the only MSOAs with a higher % is Fenside and Lister Way (12.5%), Boston Central and North (10.5%) and Manor Park in Slough (10.3%). It seems the Polish population is fairly evenly dispersed across England's cities and towns. |
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Post by batman on Jul 13, 2023 20:53:51 GMT
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. the representative of the Boundary Commission who recommended the boundary changes which took effect in the 1983 election, reversing the BC's earlier far more complicated proposals, was Bernard Marder QC. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jul 13, 2023 21:12:48 GMT
What were the earlier proposals?
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Post by batman on Jul 14, 2023 6:26:46 GMT
they were to rotate all 3 constituencies in a sort of clockwise direction, with 1 or 2 wards lopped off & donated to the neighbouring seat. They were complicated. Sorry I can't recall the exact details. The local Tories who were represented by a Cllr Hetherington supported them as they were helpful to the Tories, Labour opposed them and came up with the much simpler counter-proposal which was adopted. Labour was represented at the inquiry by none other than Neville Sandelson, not long before he defected to the SDP.
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Post by batman on Jul 14, 2023 6:28:55 GMT
After the Boundary Commission decided to accept my father's conclusions, a letter appeared in the Times from Harry Greenway MP decrying the "autocratic nature" of the assistant commissioner at the inquiry. It was not very nice at all. My dad's nature was nothing like autocratic.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jul 14, 2023 7:29:26 GMT
they were to rotate all 3 constituencies in a sort of clockwise direction, with 1 or 2 wards lopped off & donated to the neighbouring seat. They were complicated. Sorry I can't recall the exact details. The local Tories who were represented by a Cllr Hetherington supported them as they were helpful to the Tories, Labour opposed them and came up with the much simpler counter-proposal which was adopted. Labour was represented at the inquiry by none other than Neville Sandelson, not long before he defected to the SDP. The only way they could have helped the Tories was to move Ravenor ward (and possibly West End) from Ealing North to Ealing Southall, replace those with Pitshangar and Hangar Lane from Ealing Acton and move Northfields and/or Walpole from Ealing Southall to Ealing Acton. The last of these could be risky though so maybe the optimum would have been just be to rotate three wards - Ravenor, Pitshangar, Nortfield or Walpole |
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Post by batman on Jul 14, 2023 7:37:25 GMT
that sounds like what was originally proposed Pete, although after 43 years it's not straightforward to remember. I also remember that a Ravenor councillor, E.T.Drabwell (whose demeanour went rather well with his surname), who had been elected as Conservative but was now independent, opposed the proposals and supported Labour's counter-proposals. A series of local churches had clerics who did the same, and they turned out all to be Labour Party members. The original proposals were supported by one local resident, a Mr McLaughlin, who presumably was a Conservative supporter. He had taught me French at prep school, rather well as I got 96% in the French exam. My French rapidly went downhill from there.
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Post by batman on Jul 14, 2023 7:40:02 GMT
One other mildly amusing incident was when Cllr Hetherington (Con) was, I suppose you'd say, cross-examining Cllr Hopkins (Lab). The latter, a real old-school Labour man, was supporting Labour's counter-proposals. He ended one contribution by saying "that's why the Conservatives are always in favour of change". Cllr Hetherington recoiled somewhat and said "Not social change, surely?" and Cllr Hopkins explained that no, he meant boundary changes.
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