The Labor Sweep

GREAT BRITAIN The Labor Sweep

Seldom had so smashing a victory come out of so dull and humdrum a campaign. For three weeks, Britons had barely suppressed yawns as the Conservatives and Laborites exchanged salvos of slogans. Searching for an issue, the Tories attacked Labor for not being eager enough to join the Common Market, for rising prices, for trade-union strong-arm methods, and for just about everything else untoward that has happened in the British Isles for the past 17 months. The Laborites shucked off the attacks, arguing that they had done their best, considering the mess that they had inherited after 13 years of "Tory drift and indecision."

British voters were plainly uninterested in such issues. Hence the campaign centered on personalities: Labor's Harold Wilson against the Conservatives' Ted Heath. The odds were on Wilson. Gone was the reputation as a slippery opportunist that had hurt him in the 1964 election. Instead, though operating with a bare three-seat majority, Wilson had proved to be an able statesman who could handle his own left wing, was not afraid to slap down raise-happy trade unions. In Parliament his acerbic wit and quick thrusts had continually kept the Opposition off-balance. Heath had no such advantages. He had taken over a badly divided party only eight months ago, and not entirely succeeded in closing the rifts. As a leader, he did not begin to shed his image of aloofness until the last ten days of the campaign. By then it was too late.

Happiest Victory. All the polls had predicted a Wilson sweep. On election night, the very first returns indicated that they might be right. The next reports confirmed it. All across Britain, party workers at Labor clubhouses swilled beer and danced with joy as one red pin after another replaced blue ones on election maps, indicating that yet another Tory constituency had fallen to Wilson. At the final count, Labor won 363 seats v. the Tories' 253. The Liberals picked up two seats for a total of twelve. It was Labor's best showing --and the Tories' worst--since 1945, and it gave Wilson an absolute majority of 97 seats in the House. Cried he: "This has been a great victory."

Wilson carried his own constituency of Huyton, a working-class suburb of Liverpool, by 20,940 votes. Of all the Labor victories, the happiest belonged to Patrick Gordon Walker, whom Wilson had appointed Foreign Secretary in his first Cabinet. But Gordon Walker lost in 1964 in a campaign marred by racism in the Midland town of Smethwick, then lost a "safe" by-election at Leyton last year and had to step down. This time Gordon Walker won Leyton handily, will probably be rewarded with a Cabinet post--perhaps as the minister to explore the possibilities of Britain's entry into the Common Market.

Dangers of Defeat. While losing 51 seats, the Conservatives took not one seat away from another party. Swept out of the House were a dozen former Tory ministers, including onetime Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft, former Aviation Minister Julian Amery, and onetime Minister of Agriculture Christopher Soames. Ted Heath managed to hold on to his seat in the genteel London suburb of Bexley, but his majority fell by 50% .

As the dimensions of Labor's victory became clear, the normally ebullient Heath spoke soberly to reporters. Privately, he had not thought that he could beat Wilson, but he had hoped to hold Labor to a lean margin. "Our campaign was ahead of its time," explained Heath. "We did not succeed in convincing the people of the dangers facing the country. But as time passes, people will remember what was said in this campaign." Perhaps so, but as leader during such a defeat, Heath is in some danger of being dumped as the Conservatives reshape their strategy to challenge Labor in the next election.

The Busy Future. The men who will swell Labor's back benches are markedly different from the hot-eyed Socialists who stormed to Parliament in the 1945 election and opened the first session with a rousing chorus of The Red Flag. The new M.P.s are young (average age: 36), drawn mainly from the professions, and generally are pragmatists like Wilson. In fact, the moderate character of the new Labor M.P.s reduced the fears that a large majority would give the party's left wing strength to force Wilson into abandoning his support of the U.S. position in Viet Nam.

Wilson will keep Parliament busy when it convenes April 21. Zeroing in on his party's last great doctrinaire objective, Wilson intends to press for the nationalization of Britain's steel industry. Other items high on his legislative agenda: stronger machinery for controlling Britain's rising prices and wages, a reform of the featherbedding trade unions, and a drive to make British industry more productive.

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