Ealing North

[batman]

the next profile I will write will be Ealing North. Pete Whitehead wrote a profile of the constituency under its (very similar) present boundaries, but said in the thread that he would not mind in the least if I were to write a profile of it, having written the original & deleted it. After that I will turn my attention to Vauxhall on its new boundaries, although I can't pretend to know the new part of the constituency anything like as well as the present parts of it which are remaining in it. Perhaps after that it will be Lambeth Central.

[YL]

Jul 14, 2023 16:15:04 GMT batman said:

Perhaps after that it will be Lambeth CentralClapham & Brixton Hill.

Fixed that for you: the BCE changed the name in the final report.

[batman]

edited to take into account the 2024 election result, and the sad but actually rather belated closure of the Kosher butcher which got a rather long stay of execution. Its former manager is I believe setting up a new business in one of the most Jewish areas of north London. 



EALING NORTH

This constituency was formed in 1950 and although it has had fairly frequent boundary changes it is recognisable as the same seat today. Before that there was a short-lived Ealing West constituency that was won overwhelmingly by Labour in its only electoral outing of 1945. Ealing North has been a great deal more competitive for most of its history, and has seen some extreme volatility at times. However, it has in the last few elections settled down into a blamelessly safe Labour existence in common with most though not all of its neighbours. Ealing North is said to be one of the least interesting areas of London, so its recent electoral history could be fairly said to reflect that. It has, however, had two rent-a-quote MPs for a number of years up to the 2019 election, one Conservative, one Labour. Essentially, the constituency is a mostly outer-city seat which takes in the communities of Northolt and Perivale in their entirety, the vast majority of Greenford which is the largest single component of the seat, and parts of Ealing, West Ealing and Hanwell. West Ealing although it has very strong links with Ealing itself does have its own W13 postcode. The seat reaches far enough north to come very close to the fringes of the Harrow community.

In terms of social composition the most working-class of the communities, perhaps a little surprisingly, is Northolt which is the furthest out from central London. Northolt is famous for its RAF airbase, but this is something of a misnomer as it is actually situated in South Ruislip across the borough boundary into Hillingdon. Northolt proper is divided, as quite a lot of the constituency is, by the A40 trunk road which takes huge amounts of traffic from London towards Oxford, but actually ends in west Wales. The southern end of Northolt is covered by the (Northolt) West End ward, which is dominated by council estates, some of which have seen much better days. This ward is the only one in the constituency which has had a largely uninterrupted safe Labour history. Its council estates are a mixture of traditional white working-class voters and those belonging to other ethnicities. North of the M40 lies (Northolt) Mandeville ward, which has in the past given Labour some serious electoral headaches, as its middle-class residents (of whom there are distinctly more than in West End ward) have seen their Conservative preferences augmented by a significant white working-class Conservative vote. This ward however has become, in common with pretty much the whole constituency, a good deal more multiethnic than it was, and Labour has now reopened a very large lead over the Tories which it often enjoyed several decades ago. This ward is in the far north-western part of the constituency, and has a boundary with the South Harrow community which comes as a little bit of a surprise to those who don't know this corner of London as well as some. Northolt has only rarely failed to give Labour some sort of lead, taken as a whole, but Mandeville ward in particular has often been volatile, as its owner-occupiers tend to be rather less well-to-do than in some other wards in the borough and can swing quite a bit between Labour and the Tories, and in their very best years in the past the Tories have sometimes as a result been competitive in Northolt for this and other reasons. A by-election in the ward following the 2024 general election, in which one of its councillors had been elected to parliament in neighbouring Ealing Southall, saw Labour hold on without serious difficulty, though there was a distinct revival in the Conservatives' position, albeit from a historically low base.

Hanwell unlike Northolt lies entirely south of the A40. Essentially, half of the Hanwell community lies in this constituency, that part which lies north of the railway line which now carries the Elizabeth Line as well as the Great Western main line out of Paddington. This element of the constituency contains the substantial low-rise Cuckoo estate, which is partly pre- and partly postwar. The western half of the ward concerned, which is now called North Hanwell (previously for many years Hobbayne), is much more middle-class and its residential streets are still mostly very pleasant. The south of the ward contains a series of roads named after poets, which are unglamorous but mostly owner-occupied, and there is a small conservation area just north of Hanwell station (itself the most unspoilt station in outer West London, with some mid-19th century signs and other features preserved) which is very upmarket and desirable. As Hobbayne, this ward too tended to oscillate between quite large Labour majorities in the party's strongest years and very close calls between Labour and the Tories, though outright Tory victories have been rare; again, some of its owner-occupied areas seem to have had more than their fair share of swing voters, and Labour's dominance in the council estates has risen and fallen too. Hanwell is also much less of a White-dominated area than once it was, lying as it does only just to the east of Southall, and this added to the unmistakable swing of the political pendulum has led to Labour amassing a commanding lead in the ward in the 2022 elections. North of the ward lies one of several open spaces in the constituency, the rather misleadingly named but pleasant Perivale Park, through which flows the River Brent on its way from its eponymous borough to the Thames at Brentford.

Greenford stretches from the north-east of Southall quite a long distance north, crossing the A40 and stretching quite a bit further still until it gives way to Sudbury, most of which is in the borough of Brent. Greenford is large enough to have several distinct areas, and 3 council wards. The ward names were changed in 2002 so that they all mention Greenford in their names. Central Greenford does include Greenford Underground (and National Rail) station, but it is not the town centre, Greenford being a lopsided community in that respect, rather being the bits that lie between the other two wards, which are called Greenford Broadway (this contains the real town centre of Greenford, even though it lies way towards the south of its community) and North Greenford. North Greenford is a lot more extensive east-to-west than the rest of Greenford. Although a mostly owner-occupied area, North Greenford has voted consistently Labour and Labour is well over 2 to 1 ahead of the Tories. Central Greenford has substantial industrial estates, but also some very good residential streets especially the closer you get to the almost semi-rural Horsenden Hill and the area sometimes known as Greenford Green (there used some decades ago to be a Horsenden ward, which was very marginal between Labour and the Tories). Central Greenford ward does still have a coherent Tory vote but they here too have slipped quite a bit behind Labour now. Greenford Broadway ward includes a small section in its south which is now included in Ealing Southall constituency after the boundary changes. Essentially, this ward tends to get scruffier the further south you get away from the A40, though some of its northern streets are very pleasant semis and even detached houses. Greenford Broadway, with its proximity to Southall, is now quite a heavily British Asian area, and while not quite having the monolithic pro-Labour voting patterns of some Southall wards is very safe for Labour these days; in days gone by it was much more marginal. Greenford as a whole is fairly evenly divided between council estates and interwar semi-dominated streets, and was very marginal and volatile in days gone by. Nowadays it seems that its marginality and volatility are largely a thing of the past.

Those minority parts of the West Ealing and Ealing communities included in the seat are to be found in the recently renamed Pitshanger ward, a return of a ward name which existed for most of the borough's history until the 2002 boundary changes. However, the area it occupies is completely different from that previous ward, which stretched south towards central Ealing. This ward on the other hand stretches westwards towards Scotch Common and a rather polarised section of West Ealing that until 2002 was in a ward called Argyle, named after the A road which ran through it. Pitshanger Lane is a popular local shopping and dining area for those who do not wish to undertake a journey to the much more major shopping and dining area of central Ealing, and is close to another very pleasant park. This would in the past have been a very strongly Conservative area, but is much less so today, as it is replete with the kind of "intellectual" pro-Remain prosperous voters who have been the Conservatives' bugbears in the last few years. The western parts of the ward are also for the most part well-to-do and owner-occupied, but there is the strongly contrasting Gurnell council estate, the other side of the railway line which divides it from the Cuckoo estate. This is a traditional Labour stronghold estate although not hugely extensive - there are a few other council dwellings nearby as well. This ward has a strong affinity with the Cleveland ward which existed from 2002 to 2022. It was once an almost completely safe Tory ward, as befits a ward with some very good owner-occupied houses and flats, but Labour started to become competitive in recent years, and now while Pitshanger ward still has a coherent Conservative (and to some extent Liberal Democrat) vote, it is starting to take on the safe Labour characteristics of the rest of the constituency. This contrasts strongly with neighbouring Ealing Broadway ward over the constituency boundary, which the Tories held with perhaps surprising ease in the 2022 elections. While more multiethnic than once it was, this ward still has a clear White majority, just about the only significant part of the constituency which still does. Alone in the constituency it has a small but recognisable Jewish community, and there was until 2024 a Kosher butcher just outside its boundary, which until its closure was the only such establishment for several miles.

Finally we come to Perivale. Perivale is officially part of Greenford, but to all intents and purposes is a separate community, separated from Greenford proper by the same quiet little railway line which separates Hanwell from West Ealing (it runs from West Ealing to Greenford, with generally only 2 trains an hour in each direction and has a few very quiet stations in between). Perivale does have a bit of a council estate element, chiefly in its east close to the borough boundary with Brent, and in the minority part of the community which lies south of the A40. Mostly however it is owner-occupied and privately rented. It was once a Conservative stronghold and even in Labour's excellent year of 1971 it was well out of the party's reach. In those days it was an overwhelmingly White area, but this is no longer really the case, as the number of White British residents is particularly small now; the ward has a very large British Asian population, but also many members of the Polish community, who are spread almost throughout this constituency, and who form a very longstanding element of this area. Perivale has in the last few elections ceased to be a competitive area for the Tories, and it too has become a Labour stronghold. Perivale has quite a large industrial estate element as well as a residential one. Its story is typical of this constituency, which has with its proximity to well-known areas of British Asian residence become very multiethnic. Not all members of the Asian community vote Labour of course, far from it, but those elements of the Asian community who have in very recent years started to favour the Tories much more (especially Gujarati Hindus) are a less predominant part of that community than they are, for example, in Harrow East or neighbouring Brent North, and the change in emphasis re ethnicity has been a problem which the Conservatives here at least are a long way from solving. Most people of Polish heritage have families who have lived in Britain for several generations, and very close to the constituency boundary lies the Polish War Memorial or the Polish Air Force Memorial as it is officially called. Traditionally British Poles have tended quite strongly towards the Conservatives, and probably remain amongst the more Conservative elements of this constituency, although there are some signs that Conservative allegiances may be slowly loosening within that community too.

Ealing North had a rather stolid Labour MP from 1964 to 1979 in Bill Molloy. He fell to the Conservatives' Harry Greenway in 1979. At first Greenway came over as a pro-comprehensive-education, rather serious-minded or even dull representative, but as his term went on he became increasingly outspoken and willing to seek local publicity. He had exceptional results in the 1983 (despite an unfavourable boundary change) and 1987 elections, and in fact the swing from Labour to him in 1987, against the national trend, was just about the largest in the entire country. This may have been down to the unpopularity or distrust of Labour's candidate Hilary Benn, at the time an Ealing councillor, but not in this constituency, but would have been contributed to by Greenway's forthright style going down well with voters too. As the 1990s began Greenway began to be questioned about some of his activities, the local Labour Party started to recover from its torpor, and the swing back to Labour in 1992 was a sizeable one, even though it did not threaten him at the first time of asking. In 1997, this time despite a favourable boundary change, he was finally out on his ear, beaten by the constituency's counterweight character, Steve Pound, who had previously been on Ealing Council. Pound combined an astonishing ability to get himself known to very large numbers of constituents, and to remember who they were, with a rent-a-quote style which in some ways rivalled Greenway's, but unlike Greenway he gained himself a reputation as the House of Commons's resident comedian, able to knock up Muhammad Ali-style doggerel verses at the drop of a hat. Pound amassed an enormous personal vote, as is clear when one compares his 2010 general election result with the local election results from the same day. At one point it seemed that on his retirement Labour would be once again endangered here, but in 2017 his majority went up still further and it was starting to become clear that the Tories would no longer be competitive, at least for the time being, in the constituency. Rather counter-intuitively he ended his parliamentary career as a shadow Northern Ireland minister under Jeremy Corbyn, of whom he was no suppcan be orter, and displayed at times his command of quite obscure detail. He was able to hand over to the more standard-issue Labour politician James Murray in 2019, and Murray looked very safe in this seat, notwithstanding its volatile history. In 2024, Murray enjoyed a small further increase in his lead over the Tories, as the latter lost votes to ReformUK, and he in turn lost some votes to the Workers' Party, which saved its deposit, and to the Greens, while squeezing the small Liberal Democrat vote a little further. Labour now has well over twice as many votes as the Tories, and it seems unlikely that they will pose a serious challenge to Labour here again for the foreseeable future. 

[Robert Waller]

2021 Census New Boundaries (ranks England and Wales)

Age 65+ 12.4% 507/575
Owner occupied 51.6% 489/575
Private rented 28.7% 74/575
Social rented 19.8% 153 /575
White 43.2% 550/575
Black 13.3% 36/575
Asian 26.8% 38/575
Managerial & professional 28.9% 386/575
Routine & Semi-routine 21.0% 391/575
Degree level 39.0% 130/575
No qualifications 19.3% 214/575
Students 9.4% 111/575


General Election 2024: Ealing North

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Labour Co-op James Murray 20,663 47.8 −8.5
Conservative Maria Khan 8,144 18.8 −13.1
Green Natalia Kubica 4,056 9.4 +6.5
Reform UK Leon Harris 3,948 9.1 N/A
Workers Party Sameh Habeeb 3,139 7.3 N/A
Liberal Democrats Craig O’Donnell 2,543 5.9 −2.9
Independent Helmi Alharahsheh 499 1.2 N/A
SDP Leslie Beaumont 240 0.6 N/A

Lab Majority 12,489 28.9 +4.5

Turnout 43,202 57.7 –9.0
Registered electors 74,820

Labour Co-op hold
Swing 2.3 C to Lab



General Election 2019: Ealing North

Party Candidate Votes % ±%

Labour Co-op James Murray 28,036 56.5 −9.5
Conservative Anthony Pickles 15,767 31.8 +3.3
Liberal Democrats Henrietta Bewley 4,370 8.8 +6.4
Green Jeremy Parker 1,458 2.9 +1.5

Lab Majority 12,269 24.7 −12.8

Turnout 49,631 66.6 −3.6

Registered electors 74,473

Labour hold
Swing 6.4 Lab to C


Boundary Changes
Ealing North consists of
98.1% of Ealing North

Map
boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/review2023/9bc0b2ea-7915-4997-9d4a-3e313c0ceb51/london/London_131_Ealing%20North_Landscape.pdf

Notional result 2019 on the new boundaries (Rallings & Thrasher)

Lab	27463	56.3%
Con	15555	31.9%
LD	4311	8.8%
Grn	1435	2.9%
Majority	11908	24.4%