Located to the north of Hartlepool and south of Sunderland, the pit village of Easington, which lends its name to this small, coastal Labour-held seat, witnessed widespread picketing and arrests during the minerís strike of 1984 after just one worker crossed the lines.
Labourís majority here is 30,012 but the seat is now completely bereft of its coal mining heritage.
Unsurprisingly, unemployment rates are high with manual occupations providing the mainstay of the remaining workforce, most of whom are concentrated in the seatís largest towns Seaham and Peterlee. Peterlee being a new town named after the Durham-born international minersí union leader Peter Lee.
Following the closure of the remaining pits at Horden, Murton and Easington itself in the early 1990s, attempts at regeneration have been made with the arrival of companies from Korea, France and America. Despite these initiatives, the seat remains the third highest in England and Wales for people on government schemes, 37% of its homes are council rented and it has the sixth highest proportion of one-parent families in the country.