Post by batman on Jul 19, 2023 8:27:36 GMT
I have edited my original profile to take into account the general election result & the constituency's new MP.
EALING SOUTHALL
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 after the 2010 boundary changes, when the Ealing Central and Acton constituency was formed, it became rather more compact and for this period only 2 of its 8 wards lay outside the Southall community itself, as Southall is a large enough town to form 6 complete council wards as of the 2022 local elections. However, as well as a small boundary change in accordance with new ward boundaries which meant that a small area just south of Greenford Broadway was now included, the Walpole ward, which was part of this constituency for many years until 2010, was now added once again, taking the constituency further into Ealing proper, far enough to include part of its town centre. These areas are less heavily Labour than Southall itself, but are still very much on the red side of the spectrum nevertheless, and in no way detracted from this constituency's status as a safe Labour seat.
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, Southall West and Southall Green wards. The sixth 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, with real ale enthusiasts tending to make a beeline for the Conservative Club which is one of the few such clubs to be regularly included in the Good Beer Guide, though this writer has never visited.) Even though it is distinctly upmarket of 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 6 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 2022 it had the largest percentage Labour vote of any London ward. In 2018 its numerical vote for the top Labour candidate was exceeded anywhere in London only by the huge personal vote for ex-Conservative independent Malcolm 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 6 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 remaining wards are more competitive, but nothing like sufficiently to render the constituency anything like an even contest. These wards are Northfield, which is now split between W5 (Ealing) , W13 (West Ealing) and W7 (Hanwell); Hanwell Broadway, which despite its name is split between W13 and W7; and Walpole, which is split between W5 & W13 & reaches the western part of Ealing town centre as well as sharing West Ealing's town centre with Hanwell Broadway ward. All these wards lie exclusively to the south of the Great Western main railway line. Northfield, as befits a ward some 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. 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 local elections in 2018 Labour managed to gain two seats and split the ward with the Conservatives; Labour completed its overall victory in the 2022 elections, this time beating the Conservatives by a comfortable but not overwhelming margin. 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 (amongst the two most closely-set stations in the entire system), are included there; also right on the ward boundary is the next station down the line, Boston Manor. 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 with, and increasingly even beat, the Conservatives more 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. The Labour victory in 2022 came despite the ward boundary changes redrawing the ward to include the best residential areas formerly in the south of Elthorne ward. Hanwell Broadway is a truncated version of the former Elthorne ward which was named after a pleasant park (so is neighbouring Walpole still, and also Pitshanger). In the west and south of the ward, the housing is mostly terraced and the interwar semis are less numerous than they were in the predecessor Elthorne. Most of these terraced streets are quite upmarket and pleasant and 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 Pitshanger wards. There is a good proportion of council-built homes here, some of which have aged badly and are due to be replaced imminently, and some of which have already been replaced by modern housing of various types. West Ealing Broadway is decidedly less prosperous in its appearance than Ealing Broadway a mile or so further east. Labour polls particularly strongly in this part of the ward, but is not weak anywhere. A visit to some of the coffee shops and pubs in some parts of southern Hanwell will show that the area does have a noticeably alternative feel. The Tories' potential base has been eroded in the ward with the excision of the mostly prosperous south-west of the former Elthorne ward, and it comes as not that much of a surprise that the main challenge to Labour now comes from the Greens, who do well in the terraces both sides of the Boston Road; this now looks like the best chance of a future Green gain in the borough. Walpole ward was slightly extended north of the Uxbridge Road in the most recent ward boundary changes, taking in the minority West Ealing part of the former Ealing Broadway ward (perhaps this assisted the Tories slightly in retaining that ward with relative comfort in the 2022 local elections, as that is a rather socially-mixed and potentially marginal mini-district). Walpole was once regarded as a completely safe Tory ward, but has had essentially marginal characteristics since a by-election win in 1980 by Labour's Hilary Benn, who was to hold on to his council seat sometimes with hair-raisingly small majorities until he finally made it into Parliament, where of course he still remains, nearly two decades later. It has often been split between Labour & the Conservatives, although the Lib Dems were quite close to winning a seat in it in 2006. Currently, it is held by Labour with a reasonably firm majority, but still very much has a coherent Tory vote, as befits a ward with some absolutely excellent & very high-class residential areas, especially though not exclusively in its easterly W5 section. Labour is strongest in the rather dowdier western part of the ward, situated south of the relatively deprived Broadway area of West Ealing (it is much poorer than Ealing Broadway a mile or so east), which is mixed between mostly late Victorian & Edwardian terraced housing, a little of which is multi-occupied, and council estates of varying vintages although the latter is not a major feature. However, there are pockets of relative deprivation further east too, some of them above or close to the shops in the Uxbridge Road. Undoubtedly Labour's vote is supplemented by the "intellectual" vote mentioned above, which is quite noticeable in parts of this ward; poets, musicians and other people involved in the arts and higher education are maybe a minority, but far from absent. Taken as a whole, the ward does not really look like a Labour stronghold, but its Labour tenure is not completely implausible either, despite the very high quality & price of some of its owner-occupied housing.
Labour's MP here until 2024, 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. It was hardly surprising that having reached his late 70s he should have opted to retire, although at the time of writing he was clearly in good health (this writer canvassed with him in Uxbridge & South Ruislip in the general election campaign). He and his predecessor Piara Khabra are/were of Indian origin, Sharma being a Hindu and Khabra a Sikh, but his replacement is of very different stock; the new MP is Deirdre Costigan, who is of White Irish heritage and up to the general election was Deputy Leader of Ealing Council. She is openly gay. Following George Galloway's short-lived success in the Rochdale by-election, the Workers' Party rapidly got together quite a large number of general election candidates, and here they selected former England Test spin bowler Mudsuden "Monty" Panesar, although it later emerged that he had never voted in a general election before. However, he soon realised that he was ill-prepared for the task in hand, and resigned after only a few days as prospective candidate; he had no known links with the area either. The WPB selected instead Darshan Azad, who polled a very respectable 9.1% although this was nothing like enough to inconvenience Costigan and Labour really; he finished ahead of the Liberal Democrats, but behind the Greens who anecdotally did very well in Hanwell Broadway ward and polled well in the other non-Southall-community wards too. Second place went once again to the Conservatives, who continue to have a coherent vote in especially Northfield and Walpole ward, but they fell not much less than 16,000 votes short of the victorious Labour candidate. This seat sees more competition than it sometimes has done, but a safe Labour seat it very much remains.
EALING SOUTHALL
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 after the 2010 boundary changes, when the Ealing Central and Acton constituency was formed, it became rather more compact and for this period only 2 of its 8 wards lay outside the Southall community itself, as Southall is a large enough town to form 6 complete council wards as of the 2022 local elections. However, as well as a small boundary change in accordance with new ward boundaries which meant that a small area just south of Greenford Broadway was now included, the Walpole ward, which was part of this constituency for many years until 2010, was now added once again, taking the constituency further into Ealing proper, far enough to include part of its town centre. These areas are less heavily Labour than Southall itself, but are still very much on the red side of the spectrum nevertheless, and in no way detracted from this constituency's status as a safe Labour seat.
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, Southall West and Southall Green wards. The sixth 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, with real ale enthusiasts tending to make a beeline for the Conservative Club which is one of the few such clubs to be regularly included in the Good Beer Guide, though this writer has never visited.) Even though it is distinctly upmarket of 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 6 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 2022 it had the largest percentage Labour vote of any London ward. In 2018 its numerical vote for the top Labour candidate was exceeded anywhere in London only by the huge personal vote for ex-Conservative independent Malcolm 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 6 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 remaining wards are more competitive, but nothing like sufficiently to render the constituency anything like an even contest. These wards are Northfield, which is now split between W5 (Ealing) , W13 (West Ealing) and W7 (Hanwell); Hanwell Broadway, which despite its name is split between W13 and W7; and Walpole, which is split between W5 & W13 & reaches the western part of Ealing town centre as well as sharing West Ealing's town centre with Hanwell Broadway ward. All these wards lie exclusively to the south of the Great Western main railway line. Northfield, as befits a ward some 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. 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 local elections in 2018 Labour managed to gain two seats and split the ward with the Conservatives; Labour completed its overall victory in the 2022 elections, this time beating the Conservatives by a comfortable but not overwhelming margin. 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 (amongst the two most closely-set stations in the entire system), are included there; also right on the ward boundary is the next station down the line, Boston Manor. 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 with, and increasingly even beat, the Conservatives more 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. The Labour victory in 2022 came despite the ward boundary changes redrawing the ward to include the best residential areas formerly in the south of Elthorne ward. Hanwell Broadway is a truncated version of the former Elthorne ward which was named after a pleasant park (so is neighbouring Walpole still, and also Pitshanger). In the west and south of the ward, the housing is mostly terraced and the interwar semis are less numerous than they were in the predecessor Elthorne. Most of these terraced streets are quite upmarket and pleasant and 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 Pitshanger wards. There is a good proportion of council-built homes here, some of which have aged badly and are due to be replaced imminently, and some of which have already been replaced by modern housing of various types. West Ealing Broadway is decidedly less prosperous in its appearance than Ealing Broadway a mile or so further east. Labour polls particularly strongly in this part of the ward, but is not weak anywhere. A visit to some of the coffee shops and pubs in some parts of southern Hanwell will show that the area does have a noticeably alternative feel. The Tories' potential base has been eroded in the ward with the excision of the mostly prosperous south-west of the former Elthorne ward, and it comes as not that much of a surprise that the main challenge to Labour now comes from the Greens, who do well in the terraces both sides of the Boston Road; this now looks like the best chance of a future Green gain in the borough. Walpole ward was slightly extended north of the Uxbridge Road in the most recent ward boundary changes, taking in the minority West Ealing part of the former Ealing Broadway ward (perhaps this assisted the Tories slightly in retaining that ward with relative comfort in the 2022 local elections, as that is a rather socially-mixed and potentially marginal mini-district). Walpole was once regarded as a completely safe Tory ward, but has had essentially marginal characteristics since a by-election win in 1980 by Labour's Hilary Benn, who was to hold on to his council seat sometimes with hair-raisingly small majorities until he finally made it into Parliament, where of course he still remains, nearly two decades later. It has often been split between Labour & the Conservatives, although the Lib Dems were quite close to winning a seat in it in 2006. Currently, it is held by Labour with a reasonably firm majority, but still very much has a coherent Tory vote, as befits a ward with some absolutely excellent & very high-class residential areas, especially though not exclusively in its easterly W5 section. Labour is strongest in the rather dowdier western part of the ward, situated south of the relatively deprived Broadway area of West Ealing (it is much poorer than Ealing Broadway a mile or so east), which is mixed between mostly late Victorian & Edwardian terraced housing, a little of which is multi-occupied, and council estates of varying vintages although the latter is not a major feature. However, there are pockets of relative deprivation further east too, some of them above or close to the shops in the Uxbridge Road. Undoubtedly Labour's vote is supplemented by the "intellectual" vote mentioned above, which is quite noticeable in parts of this ward; poets, musicians and other people involved in the arts and higher education are maybe a minority, but far from absent. Taken as a whole, the ward does not really look like a Labour stronghold, but its Labour tenure is not completely implausible either, despite the very high quality & price of some of its owner-occupied housing.
Labour's MP here until 2024, 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. It was hardly surprising that having reached his late 70s he should have opted to retire, although at the time of writing he was clearly in good health (this writer canvassed with him in Uxbridge & South Ruislip in the general election campaign). He and his predecessor Piara Khabra are/were of Indian origin, Sharma being a Hindu and Khabra a Sikh, but his replacement is of very different stock; the new MP is Deirdre Costigan, who is of White Irish heritage and up to the general election was Deputy Leader of Ealing Council. She is openly gay. Following George Galloway's short-lived success in the Rochdale by-election, the Workers' Party rapidly got together quite a large number of general election candidates, and here they selected former England Test spin bowler Mudsuden "Monty" Panesar, although it later emerged that he had never voted in a general election before. However, he soon realised that he was ill-prepared for the task in hand, and resigned after only a few days as prospective candidate; he had no known links with the area either. The WPB selected instead Darshan Azad, who polled a very respectable 9.1% although this was nothing like enough to inconvenience Costigan and Labour really; he finished ahead of the Liberal Democrats, but behind the Greens who anecdotally did very well in Hanwell Broadway ward and polled well in the other non-Southall-community wards too. Second place went once again to the Conservatives, who continue to have a coherent vote in especially Northfield and Walpole ward, but they fell not much less than 16,000 votes short of the victorious Labour candidate. This seat sees more competition than it sometimes has done, but a safe Labour seat it very much remains.
