Backbench Revolt

When Edward Heath served as a parliamentary whip under Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Tories squeaked through a vote by a particularly thin margin, the old man comforted the younger: "In the House of Commons, one vote is enough." Last week Ted Heath, now President of the Board of Trade, had the uncomfortable opportunity to test that axiom. The Tories, who nowadays can usually muster a majority of 80 votes or so, just barely managed to survive a vote by the wafer-thin margin of 204 to 203.

The vote came over the embattled Resale Price Maintenance bill, sponsored by Heath with the purpose of abolishing retail price fixing, which enables manufacturers to set the consumer price of their products. Heath argues that his measure will both encourage competition and cut consumer costs. A group of rebellious Tory backbenchers retort that small shopkeepers can only compete with chain stores by keeping their prices at the artificially high RPM levels. The backbenchers are less concerned with free enterprise and modernizing the British economy than with the votes of the 500,000 small shopkeepers who are registered Tories; many of the rebels have a shaky majority in their home constituencies and need those votes. After hours of debate in the Commons last week, the rebels forced a division on one clause of the bill. In the vote, more than 100 Tories abstained, and 31 voted against the government, gleefully joined by 171 Laborites, who are actually opposed to retail price fixing but could not pass up the chance to embarrass the government.

Though shaken, Heath and the other Tory leaders refused to abandon the bill. Prospects now are that the impending general election will not be held until the last possible moment in the fall, not only to give Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home the maximum national exposure but to allow the new breach in the party to heal.

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