Post by batman on Jul 10, 2023 14:11:48 GMT
Edited to note the general election result (and also the Con to Lab defection of one councillor).
FELTHAM AND HESTON
This constituency, like Brentford and Isleworth next door, was first created, initially with a Hounslow prefix, in time for the 1973 GLC elections and the 1974 general elections. It has changed relatively little since then, apart from two wards in the Hounslow section of the seat being swapped, and the only change in the most recent boundary revision has been the excision of Heston East ward from the constituency. Despite this awkward splitting of the Heston community, the constituency name has not changed. The Heston East ward just as awkwardly includes the a north-western section of the Isleworth community, which has thus been included up to 2024 in this constituency, so at least this anomaly has been ironed out.
Heston has long been a parish, and has for many years been large enough to merit 3 (or perhaps almost 3) council wards of its own. It must surely be one of the largest communities in London never to have had a railway station. But despite its long existence as a parish, and the fact that it merited a mention in both a constituency and a borough name (the latter until 1964), it is not an independent postal town, and is part of Hounslow for postal purposes. It can therefore be regarded as Hounslow north of the A4 where it has its junction with the A312, or perhaps just east of there; immediately west of Heston lies Cranford, closer in still to Heathrow airport, which does cross the A4. Heston is mostly residential, and mostly owner-occupied; some of its almost entirely interwar owner-occupied streets remain very pleasant, but there are several council estates of some size, with Heston West ward in particular having a long Labour heritage because of its council estates. Heston just about creeps a few streets to the north of the M4 (Heston might well be best known for its motorway service station, in fact) but mostly lies between the A4 and the M4 which are both, amongst other destinations, major road routes to Heathrow airport, which has a very large influence on the constituency as a whole. Once upon a time, this was a safeish Labour seat (it was lost only in the 1977 GLC elections, and in the 2 1980s general elections) in which Heston was the more Conservative of the two major components of the seat. Nowadays, while the description safeish was still applicable until recently, the opposite is the case. One major reason for this is ethnicity. Heston for several decades now, not surprisingly perhaps in view of its location between Hounslow and Southall, has had a very large, in fact near-majority population of residents with heritages from the Indian subcontinent, mostly India itself. These voters have essentially become too numerous for the Tories to be competitive any more, especially as many of the remaining White British voters live in council estates and are predominantly Labour. Labour now wins commanding majorities in the two Heston wards, West and Central, which are to remain in the constituency. To this part of the constituency can conveniently be added Hounslow West and Cranford wards. Both of these wards, too, are split between owner-occupiers, private renters & council estate residents. These wards, too, have a very large Indian subcontinental population. Once upon a time the Tories were relatively competitive in Hounslow West ward in their very best years, but that is now going back a long while. Cranford ward, which includes some council estates rather further south than one might expect, has been totally safe Labour for even longer, and remains so. Cranford has some quite pleasant owner-occupied streets, but can be very noisy at times because depending on wind and other conditions it is often the last built-up area planes fly over before they land at Heathrow. Taken as a whole, these 4 wards, forming just under half the population of the new constituency, have now taken a step from being merely Labour-inclined to becoming very strongly Labour indeed. It is nowadays very rare for these wards, replete with workers at Heathrow but also nearby industrial estates (some of which house businesses directly related to Heathrow), to give Labour any electoral tremors.
Feltham is an old town which has been greatly modernised and extended. It has always had some middle-class owner-occupied streets, but has long had a population which is of a more working-class social composition than average. It does have some voters who commute and hold executive jobs, but that is not and never has been the principal demographic of the town. It is a large enough community to have sub-areas of significance, which can conveniently be described as Bedfont, Hanworth Village (much of which lies south of the A316 trunk road, which leads into the M3 motorway) and the at times rather more prosperous Hanworth Park which does have a few more obviously upmarket streets. Bedfont lies north of Feltham proper, along the A315 which is dead straight as befits a Roman road (it runs through the whole of the borough of Hounslow from Chiswick to Bedfont). It is sometimes known as East Bedfont, as there are the remains of a hamlet called West Bedfont which however lies outside the borough boundary, but generally the simpler term Bedfont is used. It too is frequently close to the end of aeroplanes' descent towards the Heathrow runway and can therefore be noisy at times. Bedfont has a small number of middle-class streets but is predominantly just a little scruffy, even including some of its owner-occupied and privately rented housing. Hanworth on the other side of Feltham is a rather woebegone community, especially if compared with neighbouring Hampton over the borough boundary, with no remaining pubs and only very local and basic shops apart from one small supermarket. It does have perhaps slightly more rather upmarket streets than Bedfont, but its council estates are of mixed quality and include some blocks which are fairly gritty. Feltham itself nowadays has 2 council wards (it used to be 3), and its character is not dissimilar to either Hanworth or Bedfont, except that it does still have a somewhat functional town centre, even if not one which attracts shoppers to the extent that for example Hounslow does, let alone Kingston. Once upon a time, the predominantly working-class social composition of these areas, with even owner-occupiers frequently having non-executive or even factory jobs, meant that Labour won all of the component wards easily. Since the Thatcher era, this pattern has been to some extent at least broken down. While Heston, Cranford and Hounslow West are quite heavily Asian areas, Feltham still has a clear White majority, many of them from long-established local families, even though the size of the White majority is slowly declining. Many of these voters, who are above averagely likely to have jobs in artisan trades or in construction, responded positively to Mrs Thatcher's new style of Conservatism, and as recently as in the 2010 local elections Labour was unable to win any of the total of 5 Feltham community wards (including Bedfont and Hanworth) outright. Labour had particular problems in Feltham North ward, despite its demographics not seeming that helpful to the Conservatives, partly because of the great effectiveness of local campaigner Mark Bowen, who had a remarkably high majority over Labour in the ward at one point. Since then, Feltham has undoubtedly, along with a lot of the rest of London, swung back towards the left again, and in the 2014 and 2018 elections Labour managed a clean sweep in all 5 wards, with only 2 of them being all that close. Bowen himself stood in the 2011 parliamentary by-election in the constituency, performing respectably but being easily beaten by Labour's Seema Malhotra; he has since departed the local scene. The demographics which so helped the Tories in these White part-lower-middle and part-working-class communities have become gradually a little less favourable to the Tories, but still fairly slowly, and in the 2022 local elections not only were the Tories able to confirm their by-election gain (in what had been a favourable time for the party) in Feltham North ward, but they were also more surprisingly able to gain one of the seats in Hanworth Village ward, which few had predicted. (However, the Tory councillor elected in Feltham North as it happens subsequently defected to Labour.) The Tories are not yet dead in the Feltham community, but generally face an uphill task in avoiding some sort of fairly clear Labour lead taking it as a whole. Feltham now plays the psephological role in the constituency previously played by Heston, and vice versa; Labour-inclined it certainly is, but it is much less heavily Labour than Heston and neighbours are, the opposite to the situation in the constituency's earlier days. There is still some very small-scale manufacturing and quite large industrial estates in Feltham, but surely its most famous product must be the mega-rock group Queen, whose members were all local to this area when they met each other. Brian May still lives no more than a mile away from the constituency boundary. In the 2024 general election, there was a strong showing from Reform UK, which one might surmise was principally in the Feltham part of the constituency, and this would certainly have prevented the Tories from outpolling Labour in any wards therein.
The excision of Heston East ward slightly reduces the Labour majority in this constituency, but the remaining 9 wards as a whole are just too Labour-inclined for it to be a serious worry for the Labour Party, and even a Tory landslide of 1983 proportions would probably not see Labour lose the seat now. It is an interestingly split seat but its component parts in psephological terms really differ only in the degree of their allegiance to Labour. Its MP since the 2011 by-election, Seema Malhotra, has spent much of her time in parliament on Labour's front bench, though not for long under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. It is not easy to foresee circumstances in which she or her successors could be effectively challenged here. She easily survived a drop of no less than 10% in the Labour share of the vote here, not least because the sharp increase in Reform UK's share of the vote more than compensated for Labour's loss of votes to George Galloway's Workers' Party of Britain; the Tories dropped by over 14%, and she was only just short of twice as many votes as the Tories managed. This makes this less than a supersafe seat especially by London standards, but there seems to be little prospect of an upset in the seat at present.
FELTHAM AND HESTON
This constituency, like Brentford and Isleworth next door, was first created, initially with a Hounslow prefix, in time for the 1973 GLC elections and the 1974 general elections. It has changed relatively little since then, apart from two wards in the Hounslow section of the seat being swapped, and the only change in the most recent boundary revision has been the excision of Heston East ward from the constituency. Despite this awkward splitting of the Heston community, the constituency name has not changed. The Heston East ward just as awkwardly includes the a north-western section of the Isleworth community, which has thus been included up to 2024 in this constituency, so at least this anomaly has been ironed out.
Heston has long been a parish, and has for many years been large enough to merit 3 (or perhaps almost 3) council wards of its own. It must surely be one of the largest communities in London never to have had a railway station. But despite its long existence as a parish, and the fact that it merited a mention in both a constituency and a borough name (the latter until 1964), it is not an independent postal town, and is part of Hounslow for postal purposes. It can therefore be regarded as Hounslow north of the A4 where it has its junction with the A312, or perhaps just east of there; immediately west of Heston lies Cranford, closer in still to Heathrow airport, which does cross the A4. Heston is mostly residential, and mostly owner-occupied; some of its almost entirely interwar owner-occupied streets remain very pleasant, but there are several council estates of some size, with Heston West ward in particular having a long Labour heritage because of its council estates. Heston just about creeps a few streets to the north of the M4 (Heston might well be best known for its motorway service station, in fact) but mostly lies between the A4 and the M4 which are both, amongst other destinations, major road routes to Heathrow airport, which has a very large influence on the constituency as a whole. Once upon a time, this was a safeish Labour seat (it was lost only in the 1977 GLC elections, and in the 2 1980s general elections) in which Heston was the more Conservative of the two major components of the seat. Nowadays, while the description safeish was still applicable until recently, the opposite is the case. One major reason for this is ethnicity. Heston for several decades now, not surprisingly perhaps in view of its location between Hounslow and Southall, has had a very large, in fact near-majority population of residents with heritages from the Indian subcontinent, mostly India itself. These voters have essentially become too numerous for the Tories to be competitive any more, especially as many of the remaining White British voters live in council estates and are predominantly Labour. Labour now wins commanding majorities in the two Heston wards, West and Central, which are to remain in the constituency. To this part of the constituency can conveniently be added Hounslow West and Cranford wards. Both of these wards, too, are split between owner-occupiers, private renters & council estate residents. These wards, too, have a very large Indian subcontinental population. Once upon a time the Tories were relatively competitive in Hounslow West ward in their very best years, but that is now going back a long while. Cranford ward, which includes some council estates rather further south than one might expect, has been totally safe Labour for even longer, and remains so. Cranford has some quite pleasant owner-occupied streets, but can be very noisy at times because depending on wind and other conditions it is often the last built-up area planes fly over before they land at Heathrow. Taken as a whole, these 4 wards, forming just under half the population of the new constituency, have now taken a step from being merely Labour-inclined to becoming very strongly Labour indeed. It is nowadays very rare for these wards, replete with workers at Heathrow but also nearby industrial estates (some of which house businesses directly related to Heathrow), to give Labour any electoral tremors.
Feltham is an old town which has been greatly modernised and extended. It has always had some middle-class owner-occupied streets, but has long had a population which is of a more working-class social composition than average. It does have some voters who commute and hold executive jobs, but that is not and never has been the principal demographic of the town. It is a large enough community to have sub-areas of significance, which can conveniently be described as Bedfont, Hanworth Village (much of which lies south of the A316 trunk road, which leads into the M3 motorway) and the at times rather more prosperous Hanworth Park which does have a few more obviously upmarket streets. Bedfont lies north of Feltham proper, along the A315 which is dead straight as befits a Roman road (it runs through the whole of the borough of Hounslow from Chiswick to Bedfont). It is sometimes known as East Bedfont, as there are the remains of a hamlet called West Bedfont which however lies outside the borough boundary, but generally the simpler term Bedfont is used. It too is frequently close to the end of aeroplanes' descent towards the Heathrow runway and can therefore be noisy at times. Bedfont has a small number of middle-class streets but is predominantly just a little scruffy, even including some of its owner-occupied and privately rented housing. Hanworth on the other side of Feltham is a rather woebegone community, especially if compared with neighbouring Hampton over the borough boundary, with no remaining pubs and only very local and basic shops apart from one small supermarket. It does have perhaps slightly more rather upmarket streets than Bedfont, but its council estates are of mixed quality and include some blocks which are fairly gritty. Feltham itself nowadays has 2 council wards (it used to be 3), and its character is not dissimilar to either Hanworth or Bedfont, except that it does still have a somewhat functional town centre, even if not one which attracts shoppers to the extent that for example Hounslow does, let alone Kingston. Once upon a time, the predominantly working-class social composition of these areas, with even owner-occupiers frequently having non-executive or even factory jobs, meant that Labour won all of the component wards easily. Since the Thatcher era, this pattern has been to some extent at least broken down. While Heston, Cranford and Hounslow West are quite heavily Asian areas, Feltham still has a clear White majority, many of them from long-established local families, even though the size of the White majority is slowly declining. Many of these voters, who are above averagely likely to have jobs in artisan trades or in construction, responded positively to Mrs Thatcher's new style of Conservatism, and as recently as in the 2010 local elections Labour was unable to win any of the total of 5 Feltham community wards (including Bedfont and Hanworth) outright. Labour had particular problems in Feltham North ward, despite its demographics not seeming that helpful to the Conservatives, partly because of the great effectiveness of local campaigner Mark Bowen, who had a remarkably high majority over Labour in the ward at one point. Since then, Feltham has undoubtedly, along with a lot of the rest of London, swung back towards the left again, and in the 2014 and 2018 elections Labour managed a clean sweep in all 5 wards, with only 2 of them being all that close. Bowen himself stood in the 2011 parliamentary by-election in the constituency, performing respectably but being easily beaten by Labour's Seema Malhotra; he has since departed the local scene. The demographics which so helped the Tories in these White part-lower-middle and part-working-class communities have become gradually a little less favourable to the Tories, but still fairly slowly, and in the 2022 local elections not only were the Tories able to confirm their by-election gain (in what had been a favourable time for the party) in Feltham North ward, but they were also more surprisingly able to gain one of the seats in Hanworth Village ward, which few had predicted. (However, the Tory councillor elected in Feltham North as it happens subsequently defected to Labour.) The Tories are not yet dead in the Feltham community, but generally face an uphill task in avoiding some sort of fairly clear Labour lead taking it as a whole. Feltham now plays the psephological role in the constituency previously played by Heston, and vice versa; Labour-inclined it certainly is, but it is much less heavily Labour than Heston and neighbours are, the opposite to the situation in the constituency's earlier days. There is still some very small-scale manufacturing and quite large industrial estates in Feltham, but surely its most famous product must be the mega-rock group Queen, whose members were all local to this area when they met each other. Brian May still lives no more than a mile away from the constituency boundary. In the 2024 general election, there was a strong showing from Reform UK, which one might surmise was principally in the Feltham part of the constituency, and this would certainly have prevented the Tories from outpolling Labour in any wards therein.
The excision of Heston East ward slightly reduces the Labour majority in this constituency, but the remaining 9 wards as a whole are just too Labour-inclined for it to be a serious worry for the Labour Party, and even a Tory landslide of 1983 proportions would probably not see Labour lose the seat now. It is an interestingly split seat but its component parts in psephological terms really differ only in the degree of their allegiance to Labour. Its MP since the 2011 by-election, Seema Malhotra, has spent much of her time in parliament on Labour's front bench, though not for long under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. It is not easy to foresee circumstances in which she or her successors could be effectively challenged here. She easily survived a drop of no less than 10% in the Labour share of the vote here, not least because the sharp increase in Reform UK's share of the vote more than compensated for Labour's loss of votes to George Galloway's Workers' Party of Britain; the Tories dropped by over 14%, and she was only just short of twice as many votes as the Tories managed. This makes this less than a supersafe seat especially by London standards, but there seems to be little prospect of an upset in the seat at present.
