Ealing North has been a hard-fought marginal seat since its creation in 1950, and it fell to Labour in 1997 on a typically large London swing. It is a rather unpretentious working class place, although it has the wealthy district of Pitshanger in the east which had previously kept Acton so Conservative. It lies on both sides of the A40 main road out of London towards Oxford. Many of the wards are quite marginal and prone to high swings in local elections. Its Labour MP Stephen Pound, in a witty maiden speech in 1997, described it as 'a mixture of hamlets, towns, villages and communities, bound together by many things - but most of all by the Boundary Commissioner' and rather devoid of interesting landmarks and local history, except for a curious incident in 1889 when a circus elephant, with its last breath, staggered out of the seat into Acton rather than die in Ealing North.

London has little manufacturing industry left, but there is still an industrial tone to Ealing North, particularly in the areas around Park Royal and Northolt. Ealing North has the largest Polish population in Britain, because of the Polish Air Force presence at Northolt during the war. Ealing North also boasts a large open space, spared from the developers in the 1930s, around Horsenden Hill. Labour were 5.6% in the 1998 Ealing borough elections in North, but it was one of the party's better performances in 1999 with a lead of 4.3%. The Conservatives probably led somewhat in the 2000 GLA elections and their candidate is Charles Walker but Labour start favourites. This is perhaps the only constituency where the populist slogan 'Keep the Pound' has pro-Labour connotations.

Parliamentary Statistics pre-Election 2001

Labour majority 9,160 (16.4%)  Conservative target 134
MP Stephen Pound
1997 (Turnout 72.3%)
Labour	29,904	53.7%
Conservative	20,744	37.2%
Liberal Democrat	3,887	7.0%
UK Independence	689	1.2%
Green	502	0.9%

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For Ealing North 2001 Election result - click here.