LONDON LETTER
ELECTION BLUES
Perhaps it is a little late to be writing about the British
General Election, but since we are going to have to live with the
results of it for the next four or five years, I would like to say my
say.
As
anyone who has read my other London Letters will realize,
my say is both prejudiced and relatively inexpert. I give fair warn–
ing. What follows is less an analysis than a description of what it
was like to follow one part of the campaign closely as a partial
observer and part-time helper.
I had returned to England too late to get onto the voters list.
Moreover, Hampstead, like Chelsea, despite its claims to be an in–
tellectuals' borough, is a safe Conservative seat. So my wife and I
went out to help the Labour candidate who was contesting another
Conservative constituency just outside London. It is one of those
Thames-side townlets where Army officers retire, maiden ladies
pinch along in frail gentility, and wealthy businessmen commute.
But recently some industry has moved in, the town is expanding
and the potential Labour vote with it. There is a shortage of hous–
ing, schools, libraries; a good number of the workers have to camp
down
in
an unspeakable trailer park just outside the town where
facilities are non-existent and the rents high. In 1955 the Conserva–
tive majority had been eight thousand. Since then the town had
grown, as it were, financially downwards, a Li·beral candidate had
moved in to split the vote, and the Conservative member, nearly
decrepit when he was given the seat years ago, had grown no
younger. So there was just a chance-remote but not altogether
hopeless-that the Labour candidate might swing the election. After
all, they say the man, if he is good enough, is worth a thousand
