Voice

At Skipton, a farm and mine town in Yorkshire, people said that if you put up a pig with the Tory blue about its neck, the pig would "get in the Dales" (Parliament). For 20 years Skipton elected only Conservative M.P.s and Winston Churchill's Coalition Government publicly expected Skipton to express the "voice of Britain" at a by-election last fortnight. Said London's Conservative Times, just before the voting: "The opinion is freely expressed that Skipton electors will give the Government candidate such a majority that will, in Mr. Churchill's own words, 'make it plain to the whole world that Skipton stands behind the National Government.' "

The Labor Party was equally complacent: it read out Manchester's Laborite Alderman and former Mayor Joe Toole for violating the Party truce, entering Skipton's race as an Independent. The local Conservatives put up a Party worker, 61-year-old Harry Riddiough. Socialistic Sir Richard Acland's up-&-coming Common Wealth Party entered young (31) Lieut. Hugh Lawson of the Royal Engineers.

The result: Lawson, 12,222; Riddiough, 12,001; (Toole also ran.) All Britain snapped to attention; very definitely, Skipton had jolted Winston Churchill's entire wartime Coalition (Conservative, Labor, Liberals). Said Lord Rothermere's ultra-Conservative London Daily Mail: "The appeal of the official [Coalition] nominee is to the past, whereas the country is looking to the future. . . . [Lawson] represents the Services, the technicians of this new age and the aspirations of the younger generation for the postwar world." The Times murmured: "It would be foolhardy for supporters of the Coalition to treat the verdict of Skipton as a freak result lacking any wider significance."

One meaning of Skipton: Britons, denied a general election since 1935, are getting impatient.

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