Halifax Alice Mahon 16,253 27,465 6,059 0 779 Halifax 24,637 25,115 7,364 0 649 Labour With its prominent mills and chimneys among dark terraces of housing, Halifax in West Yorkshire's Calderdale district is one of those dramatically hilly Pennine towns whose industrial townscape betokens a Labour stronghold to the untutored observer. This impression is to a large extent misleading, for although Labour have indeed won Halifax in most elections since the war, losing only in disastrous years like 1955, 1959 and 1983, the contests have usually been very narrow. Indeed 1992 was one of the closest elections, when the majority of the Labour MP Alice Mahon was actually reduced, against the national trend, from 1,212 to 478. There are a number of reasons why Labour cannot ever seem to rely on Halifax's loyalties. There are solid gritstone houses in the town's more desirable residential areas, and overall over 70 per cent of the stock is owner-occupied. Unlike in some Pennine ex-textile towns, there is only a small minority of non-white voters. The Labour-controlled Calderdale Council has been far from popular in recent years. Finally, Alice Mahon is one of the more hard and uncompromising left-wing members of the parliamentary party, far removed from the soft face of Tony Blair's New Labour. There are no boundary changes in this part of West Yorkshire for the 1997 election, and though Labour must be favourites, Halifax has shown that it can almost never be relied on to produce anything other than a very close, competitive, and exciting major party contest.

	690	1.59	9.03	18
	2,044	4.71	11.17	42
	4,117	9.49	11.25	84
	7,254	16.73	14.70	114
	4,372	10.08	10.45	96
	112	0.26	2.81	9
	5,533	12.76	8.01	159
	7,741	17.85	15.25	117
	5,837	13.46	7.13	189
	5,494	12.67	10.17	125